My on-call job that I've done for almost three years (a new record by FAR I'm told by my site director since the job is high-stress and high burn-out) is coming to an end. Tomorrow. At 8:30am. I am dancing dancing dancing on the inside!
But... this hellish job wasn't going to go quietly. There are occasional weekends where I periodically check the phone to make sure it's still working because it hasn't rung in a few hours. And then there are weekends where it's a good thing that I don't know where the site director lives or it's possible I'd have done a drive-by flinging the phone and scheduling books into his yard without cracking the throttle. This weekend is almost one of the latter weekends.
I had hoped that my last weekend on-call would be peaceful. I had hoped that everyone would show up to work at the right place, ideally on time. Heck... that they'd show up at all! I had hoped that all new clients needing immediate services would call at 8:31am on Monday morning. This was not meant to be.
By 6:30am Saturday morning, I had already received two call-outs for 7am and 8am shifts and one "I can't find where I was supposed to be 30 minutes ago" call. By 10am the number of call-outs had grown. At 11am I got a call I'd never gotten before (hey, at least she was original!), "I know I was supposed to be at this client's house 3 hours ago [for an 8am - 4pm shift] but I'm lost and can't find it. Can you help me?" [This is where the words "Are you f*&^ing kidding me?!?!" ALMOST erupted from my mouth especially when she explained she was sitting at home waiting for her husband to come watch the kids... while an 84 year old woman sat at home ALONE and hungry!] Around 4pm came the first "I need an overnight aide for tonight for a new client" call. Only to be followed by "Never mind" once I spent time working on covering it. The rest were boring usual "I need to check my schedule" or "What time is my aide coming" - minor inconveniences in the grand scheme of things.
Sunday morning wasn't much better. We were trying to make a run to IKEA at 10am (optimistic, I know) as we needed to get out of the house while the house cleaner was here (yes, I'm THAT spoiled!). The first caller waited until 6:50am to make their "I need the address for my 7am client" call. From there it was all down hill. We did finally leave around 10:30am but I fielded calls the whole time we were in IKEA and most of the time we were on the road. My favorite (cough cough) call today was spending an hour talking with someone (and her discharge planner, and the on-call nurse, and the client service manager etc) that wanted an overnight aide for her soon-to-be-discharged husband for tonight... then no, never mind... then yes, then no, then maybe... and finally at 4pm, the final decision that YES they wanted an aide tonight and "OH MY! It's HOW MUCH?" "Yes ma'am, that's how much a last-minute on Sunday overnight aide costs..." I'm not entirely sure they won't cancel later this evening but hey... that also happens all of the time! Sometimes they call me at 4am to change the plan. Sometimes they think I sit up waiting for them to call.
But this job hasn't been all bad. There was one fellow that used to call because he was lonely. I adored him. Everyone else thought he was an old crank but I figured out early on that he was lonely because both of his kids has pre-deceased him and his wife of 50+ years had passed away a few months before. (He was also a veteran and I'm a sucker for anyone that wrote THAT check!) He used to call at random times and I'd let him just chatter on while I was cooking or driving or watching TV etc. He just needed a friendly voice to talk to now and then. Sometimes he'd call me in the middle of the night to tell me he was itchy - I could laugh those off though because he really thought I was sitting in an office waiting for a call all night.
My regret about him is that he wanted me to meet him. He asked me multiple times to come to his home and visit. I asked my site director if I could and he said that I couldn't as he didn't want him to get confused about who his client manager was. I should have just dropped in anyway. I'd have happily been fired if I'd just gotten to meet TF in person once and given that man the hug he was practically begging for. One day A came home and put an obituary down in front of me. "Isn't this your guy?" he asked kindly. (He hears everything...) TF had passed away and I hadn't been told. It deeply saddened me that I COULD have brought some joy to the "old crank pot" in his last days if I'd just ignored the imaginary boundary lines that the site director seemed to make up as he went along.
I did violate the bounds of my job last year... and I don't care. I'd learned from my experience with TF that reaching out to a human in need is way more important than following some blurry rules. I sent him a Christmas basket from "anonymous". I never heard if it made him happy as he was too busy grousing about some aide that wouldn't cash a check for him (against company policy - a rule even I wouldn't break!) to hear me asking "Did anything good happen this week?". Oh well. My hope is that for a brief moment, the basket made him happy.
I also learned a lot about people through this job. I learned that just because you have a title, doesn't mean you've got the experience or judgment to do a job. This lesson came one morning when a client called and said that her aide that had come religiously every day for nine years at the same time hadn't shown up and she was worried. I used some inside sources at a local police department to do a wellness check and... her fears were accurate... the aide had passed away alone in her home. When I checked in with my supervisors about how to handle it, they gave me bad advice that I refused to follow. They wanted me to lie to the client and say the aide was sick and they would break it to her later. I couldn't do it. Instead I proposed getting another aide there to support her while I told her the bad news. In the end, all agreed that was the best plan and that's what I did.
So... it's with joy that I give up this job that has interfered with more dinners, family functions, special events, and plain old evenings and weekends than I want to think about but it's also with a tiny twinge of sadness that I leave all of the positive interactions that I've had with people. But I'm not quitting... I'll cover for them when they need help (the money is too good to completely walk away from too) so I'm sure I'll be reminded again why exactly I'm dancing on the inside right now that tomorrow morning is my last (scheduled) hurrah!
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