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I wouldn’t say that what I do for a living is terribly skill intensive. There is a lot of physical work and it does take an ounce of intelligence and the ability to not lose your cool in an emergency. When the director isn’t here, I or my counterparts on the other shifts, be it night or day are in charge of the entire building. We are responsible for making sure that those who live here are safe in the case of an emergency and seem to have the role of a catch-all for other mundane parts of this job. I work 12 hour shifts. There is someone there 24 hours a day, seven days a week doing the same job. It’s not particularly easy to fill in when others get ill. There are only 4 people in that particular role. Two of us in the daytime and two at night. It’s much harder to fill in for the night shift because not that many people can stay up all night and function normally. I have the gift for negligible amounts of sleep, so it’s not all the surprising that I am able to fill in for any shift because I’ve worked both of them. I have the most seniority however and can pick my shift.
One of my co-workers, who works the night shift on the days I am off is ill. Now I’m not even going to get into that because if he stubs his toe it’s the biggest event EVAR! Needless to say, he’s one of the biggest drama queens I have even had the pleasure to meet. He’s fine if EVERYONE IS LOOKING AT HIM AND GIVING HIM PRAISE. And he’s fine if he’s not obsessing over some stupid bullshit. I, being the kind and generous soul that I am, offered to work his shift because it’s far easier to replace someone in the daytime because there are other people here and if you’re going to work the night shift, you had better be able to stay awake and do your work.
I can, but it appears that not everyone who works the night shift here is able to understand that when you are at work you are not paid to nap. Especially if you are supposed to be watching Alzheimer’s patients. If you don’t understand Alzheimer’s, do you really think that you should be working with them? The one thing about this is, while the Alzheimer’s unit is a secure floor, the people I work for don’t run the floor. My boss is not the one who hires and fires the staff that work up there. She is not their boss. The entire floor is run by an agency. There is very little I can do when their boss won’t do what she should to correct any errors her employees make. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working here, it’s that Alzheimer’s is a very bad disease. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone, ever. It robs a person of many things, including their dignity at times. Unfortunately, this young lady apparently has never had to deal with someone who is a Sundowner. Sundowners have no concept of time and as with dementia, the person can be insistent, confused and downright mean at times. I’ve seen people afflicted by this quite a bit. It can be dealt with. And if you’re working with Alzheimer’s and dementia, you have to be patient. That person may ask you the same thing a million times. You cannot be angry with that person because they don’t do it to be aggravating. They don’t remember. Short term memory is affected with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Now when most people come to work, they don’t bring their very young children with them unless they work in a daycare and their child is enrolled there. The staff on this floor do this often. Also, not an hour after this young lady came on, she was down, scared shitless by some rain. I had to walk through the floor to reassure her that there were no fucking boogeymen up there. She also has never worked an overnight shift. I have. I know that you are here for a reason when you work overnights. You don’t get paid to sneak off into an empty room and take a nap. You don’t get paid for leaving the keys to the secure unit lying out in the open for the residents to pick up. And yes, that is what happened. Had I not been down in the lobby, one of the residents would have walked right out of the front door, in a rainstorm at 3 in the morning. I have patience and I know how to control my temper. I was close to asking this girl why the fuck she was here after I actually FOUND her. She expected me to deal with this resident. She expected me to do her job while I have my own to deal with.
I am very close to calling her boss right now and waking her up and asking her where the fuck she finds these people that she hires and if they are actually trained to be able to take care of the residents that are up there. The fact that she brings a child to her job while she’s supposed to be taking care of the people that are up there tells me that she really doesn’t care all that much. The fact that the only thing I’ve seen her do is sit on her ass and watch TV tells me that she doesn’t do that much at all. If a resident doesn’t sleep because his body is telling him he’s supposed to be up, don’t expect me to stay up and do your job. You are supposed to take care of those residents, not hide in a fucking empty room to sleep. If you can’t do the job, why the fuck are you here? No really, why the fuck did you take the job if you aren’t competent or capable of making rounds and dealing with the residents on a one to one basis to deal with their needs. If you can’t do that, why the fuck are you here? That’s your job!
I guess it goes to show that any fucking moron can get work, even in a bad economy like this. I fucking can’t believe people like that are left to take care of those who are the least able to speak up. I suppose I should start smoking again so I don’t have to worry about things like that in my old age.
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