Roughly at two o’clock this morning a resident called me into her room and asked me my name. I told her she didn’t need to know, it was two in the morning and she’d just forget – besides you always run the risk of residents reporting you for something you did or didn’t do if they know your name. She said that she’s trying to learn everyone’s names, so I told her my name. She’s like “Janelle?” “No Janae.” “Oh Janae, that’s pretty – its French.” I agreed with her that it was and then she said that I shouldn’t be ashamed of my name or hesitate to tell people – I told her that people mispronounce or forget my name all the time so I just don’t really bother anymore. Seriously I’ve gotten Janine, Janie, Janice, Janelle, Janette, Jena, Danielle and Sabrina – I can understand all the J’s but Danielle and Sabrina explain that to me.
I had another resident ask if he could touch my fanny. I told him no but that I appreciated him asking. In what reality is it okay to touch someone’s fanny or grab their boobs? I don’t get it. But I did appreciate him asking, a lot actually – it’s a huge step up from just grabbing.
And then a couple hours after this, the other two aids that I work with asked me if I’d be working Thanksgiving week. Thanksgiving is the farthest thing from my mind right now I have no idea. If I come to Colorado for Thanksgiving I’ll be working, if I decide to let my ninety days lapse then I self-terminate and either I’ll be staying in Idaho or going to Utah, it depends.
Right now self-terminating is looking more and more appealing – anyone who tries to quit they try to talk right back into working again or guilt trips you into feeling horrible. With everything that’s been going on, I am ready to kiss this nursing home good-bye but I don’t want to burn my bridges just yet when I have no idea what lies in store for me after graduation or what I’m doing.
It occurred to me roughly at 4:30 this morning that I am doing the same thing that I am getting mad at morning crew for. Morning crew is complaining about everything night crew does and doesn’t do, they pitch a fit just because they can and are just plain irritating, both morning crews.
I was in a residents room changing them and getting them ready for the day when a line from The Count of Monte Cristo came to mind like a soft whisper – “don’t commit the crime you’re being punished for.”
Everything I’ve said about morning crew came to mind – I had to cringe and blush a bit for it too. It was like the dots finally connected in my mind – I’m just as guilty as they are.
Morning crew complains about us either directly to our face or behind our back, while I complain them behind their back to either other night shift people or my parents.
Opps! Epiphany number three of the summer.
This morning after having one of my residents threaten to sue the pants off me, swear at me, throw a couple of punches and make other vile threats he meekly apologized and said he didn’t want to argue anymore and he apologized for his previous behavior. That helped a little but at the same time not really because after getting ten people dressed and/or up for the day we, meaning the other aid and I, had to stay for an extra 45 minutes to help one of the halls even though one of the aids working that hall came in an hour early for that express purpose. We have to stay regardless of who is coming in and regardless of the fact that he already got just about everyone up.
Why? Because two weeks ago when our census for the hall was at full capacity they, the two morning aids, were having problems getting all the residents up and down for breakfast on time. Why? Because they come in late and lolly gag around taking their dear sweet time about getting started. Therefore, even though night shift has been awake all night long and are tired we have to stay to help morning crew, who are fresh and wide awake, do their work. Yeah that’s fair.
At which point the other hall gets irritated with us because there are anywhere from three to five aids on one hall, the float is helping the shower aid, which they’re not suppose to be doing, or the other hall and they are completely ignoring the third hall, which has just as many heavy lifts as the first. So even though the census for the hall has dropped by four we had to stay. We’d just done our own rounds and get-up and our backs hurt and we’re tired but oh no, we can’t go home yet.
Most mornings I’m okay with this but not this morning – this morning I was already upset, partly because of what that resident had been doing all night and partly because one of my co-workers is spreading rumors and slandering my reputation. Why? Because she can. So this morning I was a bit bitter and I did not want to stay. The other night aid and I were talking about who we had to get up on the hall and the shower aid told us that we needed to go home and get some sleep. Well duh! Do you think we’re here by choice? No, we’re here because we have to be.
So we got on the hall and was getting someone up when the morning aid who’d come in early asked us why we were doing his work when we could just hide for 45 minutes. We tried that already and we got in trouble for it.
What management is doing by having night shift stay late is enabling morning shift to continue to slack off and meander on in. And morning shift is taking advantage of that. I have a short temper when I’m tired anyway, so I’m already on edge but few things get me riled up faster than when I perceive that I am being taken advantage of unjustly – and that would be the case right here.
It was at this point that I remembered something that occurred to me several weeks ago when this first happened – there is a point to management’s stupidity and morning shift’s incompetence. And that is that I’m suppose to be learning to bridle my passions and not let them control me. In this case I’m suppose to be learning to control my temper and not react to irritating situations or people. But that’s proving to be harder than I thought because like I said my temper is short when I’m tired and I have a low tolerance for crap like that when I’ve been awake all night.
