This job is so interesting. It’s a group home for people with intellectual disabilities. The ladies in the one I work at are sort of elderly (but not that old). They are all older than me, and so are the three other staff members.
The house supervisor, let’s call her drunk text boss. (See below). I went from gift card boss in Houston to drunk text boss haha. She takes the job very seriously. I noticed that in the beginning, she was calling the residents of the group home “the girls”. I decided on my own not to do that. I call them “the ladies”. Girls are children, to me anyway. I didn’t tell drunk text boss that I felt that way, I just started doing it. The past couple days, she’s called them “the ladies” around me too. I guess she “caught on” and “figured” that I thought girls meant children. I don’t mind what she does either way. But it was nice to see her adapt to my lingo like that. She works 8-4. The 4-midnight shift and the other overnights that I’m off are alternated between two other staff ladies that have been there decades.
My schedule is as follows: Saturday evening to Sunday morning 8pm-8am. Sunday evening to Monday morning 8pm to 8 am. Tuesday morning midnight to 8, and Friday morning midnight to 8 (driving to work at 11pm Monday evening and Thursday evening.)
Some group homes do 8 or 12 hour shifts, and some do live in shifts, where staff members stay 2-5 days at a time and sleep on the job. This group home has a staff bedroom, and they did it like this until honestly just a couple months ago. The other two staff ladies that have been there decades aren’t used to it at all. They were getting overtime to sleep on the job, pretty much. I would have liked that arrangement too. But this new company took over a couple months ago, and they aren’t allowing staff to sleep on the clock. That also means that you can’t work the ENTIRE weekend from Friday till Monday or whatever else for several days. This company is only allowing us to work 16 hours at a time max, if that. I don’t blame them, I would run it the same way if possible. However, if the clients who live in the group home do not need constant care and sleep well through the night, then sleeping staff might make sense, especially if they get paid less on the graveyard shift.
We have to prove that we aren’t sleeping on the job by logging into the desk computer in the office and doing bed checks every hour. When I went to training, bed checks consisted of basically looking to see if they’re breathing and/or had an accident. I always check for breathing. 32 years of working with kids and elderly and one child of my own, I look for breathing automatically. The ladies that live in this home never have accidents. I do not check for accidents. That would be an invasion of privacy imo, for them specifically. I just assume they didn’t if I walk into the rooms and it smells ok. They’d wake up if they did have accidents anyway.
We cannot cheat on logging bed checks, because the computer logs what time you enter it. This means if you do sleep on the job, you better be awake at least every hour to log the bed checks. Drunk text boss is on board with this and like “yeah we have to do what they say” but the other two staff ladies are outraged. It’s honestly funny and sad at the same time to listen to them become so appalled at having to do their job, and stay awake on the job lol. And these are women basically old enough to be my mother. I don’t express out loud how funny and sad I find them. I just smile and nod, because I want them on my good side.
One of them actually said it was abuse to check on them every hour. It’s not abuse. You just don’t want to do it.
To be honest, I could never sleep at night knowing I was getting paid to be in charge of five vulnerable people. I would be scared to death and doing their job checks anyway. Especially since like I said, people with intellectual disabilities have a slightly lower life expectancy, and these ladies are basically there. I would NOT be able to sleep at ALL.
I do not want to mention to these to coworkers that live in caregiving jobs are all over indeed. Not a lot of people want them, because most people have a place to live. I used to like them when I was living with my parents and my daughter spent the weekend with her father. It was the perfect way to get away for a weekend and get paid for it. And I was allowed to sleep, but didn’t except for just an hour or two at a time! They could go to any other place and do them and probably get paid better than here. I just don’t want to say it out loud, because in the new person. And they don’t seem to be holding the changes against me, which is REALLY NICE. They’re mad at the company and know it’s not “my fault”.
I’m not sleeping very well at all, because on my shifts I have my alarm set every hour on the hour. When it goes off I do the checks. I do some household chores that don’t take long, then just hang out on the couch doing the bed checks when the alarm goes off. When 6:30 am comes around, one of the ladies checks her sugar. I start giving meds after that. The resident ladies actually make breakfast themselves. They have rotating jobs of cook and dishwasher, although this morning I was the dishwasher. Yes I’m dozing off in those interim hours between bed checks a couple times a night. Because of that and my daily 6 am Red Bull so I can focus on meds, I don’t come home and sleep immediately. I’m really just sleeping on my nights off. It has to change.
One way I’m able to sleep during the day is if I take my anxiety meds, gabapentin. But I’m trying to only do this once a week. Gabapentin is hard to get, and I need to have a stash of it in case my anxiety gets really bad. Acquiring it is a delicate balance of finding a doctor who will prescribe it, keep prescribing it, and a pharmacy who will fill it. So far so good. I can get another three months worth on 8/21, and there will be one more refill which I can probably get November 21. Being the only thing that works for my severe anxiety though it needs to last. I can’t just be like “I’m going to pop some gabapentin just because I want to sleep today!” If I keep that shit up, it will disappear.
I really really miss Kevin. He went to Louisiana from Wednesday through Monday with the job. He’s coming here for good once the Houston crew hires more people, and I have had a hunch that the Houston manager has been running them off. Well Kevin told me that a guy is supposed to start tomorrow, and on the car ride back from Louisiana today, the guy called the manager’s phone twice to ask about two different things. When the second call happened, the manager’s wife yelled “Tell him to stop calling.” I asked Kevin, was the guy on the line in order to hear her say that? Kevin didn’t know. It was funny- but at the same time, it’s not funny.
Just a disclaimer, I know I’m supposed to be more of an independent woman and not miss my husband so much. I’m ready for the criticism that might come with saying I miss him. I’m ready for the flogging. I had my own place at least twice before I met Kevin. But now, being alone in an apartment and knowing he exists just makes me miss him. It was easier to be alone when I didn’t know who he was.
I worked last night from midnight until 8:00 am. I shadowed the lady who everyone thought would be pissed that I was starting, thus taking away overtime hours from her. I was ready to work alone, but they just gave me an extra shadowing shift so she wouldn’t be that upset. I was relieved to get to know her and see that she’s not “going to kick my ass” At all. She’s very cool. She talks to me in Spanglish. She goes back and forth from English and Spanish, even in the same sentence. I had coworkers 25 years ago that did that. I appreciate it when people do that, because my Spanish is terrible. I know all the words, but cannot put them together to communicate with someone. If I turn on a Spanish radio station or tv channel, I know what each word means but have no idea what they’re talking about. “Spanglish” helps get over that.
The shift was basically watching the ladies sleep for about 6 and a half hours, then giving everyone their morning medications starting at 6:30. There are five ladies that take about 12-15 medications each, so it’s intense. I knew I was going to do it by myself with her watching this time (as opposed to watching someone else doing it), so I drank a Red Bull at 6:00 am. I wanted a lot of focus, because that is a lot of prescription medication. This caused me to not be able to sleep all day. Finally I fell asleep at 4:00 pm and woke up again at midnight. I’m off now, but am working Saturday 8pm-Sunday 8am and then Sunday evening 8pm until Monday morning 8 am. I packed a little backpack with notebooks, pens and books to read. It will be great to get back into the habit of reading and writing.
Kevin is coming today with the furniture! Yay! At least the bed! Thank God!!
Kevin was supposed to have a new coworker on the Houston crew yesterday, but she never showed up. I believe this is person number 7 that “didn’t show up”. It’s a little clear at this point that once they talk to the Houston manager, they’re being told something unsavory, because it’s the austin manager that’s hiring them. It also seems like some of their jobs have been delegated to crews in other cities.
Having a spouse that works for your previous employer is bewildering, because you want to ask him how his day was, but you don’t want to hear about that place at the same time. I was thinking back to my first husband, Anna’s father. When we were starting to have problems, he’d get home and I would ask how his day was. He found that annoying. Once he said to me, “You just asked me yesterday how my day was.” Ok? And today is a new day!!! It’s almost tempting to wish Kevin was like that, but I would not want the communication problems that come with that dynamic, either. I’m also mentally invested in the Houston crew hiring people, because when it happens, my husband can come and be with me here.
There is another more complicated denim seam kitchen or bathroom rug technique where you use a zigzag stitch. Maybe I’ll do that one next time.
Tomorrow marks ten years since the car accident death of my little cousin Evan at age 23. Evan was born in 1993, right after my parents and ...
