What I Hate About My Job

On both hands, maybe toes too:

• Dealing with crazy people, with no support -- none -- from my boss -- everything that happens, I should've done something different
• Dealing with crazy people, with no training -- none -- except what I came by naturally, and it's not all that effective.
• Having to carry and answer the pager every other week. Staff and clients call with emergencies, or sometimes situations that aren't even urgent. Even when the other staff member carries the pager, I still have to respond when she calls me. It's like I'm never "off."
• The "life & death" nature of the work we do. There are some clients that need us for their very survival, have no family, no friends, no one but us. Someone's car breaks down or their kid gets sick, and this client has no food in the fridge and that client may fall trying to get to the bathroom and the suicidal one may finally do it.
• The way it tests my faith every single minute of every single day. I have to come face to face with my lack of belief in people, and my lack of belief in myself, and my lack of belief in any real pattern that the universe operates by. If you ask me in other situations about all those things, I would say, of course I believe, I believe in the people who work for me, I believe in my ability to at least learn what do in most situations, I believe the universe is orderly and runs on real, often-easy-to-observe principles. But this job tests every one of those beliefs, and today I don't feel like dealing with the struggle at all.

Here's how it goes: I'm doing my job, matching caregivers to clients, scheduling, re-scheduling, re-re-scheduling, building and re-building my little house of cards, and a client and caregiver get into a disagreement. Each one says, "I can't talk to her, tell her this" or "I can't talk to her, tell her that." Against my better judgment I get pulled in, and I'm not good at handling mentally-unbalanced people. The debacle du jour involves a bi-polar woman who periodically goes off her meds and gets mad at everyone, just like today. Only in the past she's called to apologize and said she's going to a hospital, to get her meds adjusted, and we all forget about it. Today, instead, she's made an appointment with my boss. I know where I'll come out, on the shit end, because he seems constitutionally incapable of supporting me. "Oh, yes, dahling, it's a terrible job" is the extent of his understanding of where I am.

OK, I'm finished venting, I'm going to lunch.