Bent Bear Blog

WARNING: Long Rant Ahead

I’m not sure exactly when it was that I started to hate my job. Over the last few months, it has gotten harder and harder for me to go into work, and harder still to maintain a positive attitude once I’m there. 

Don't get me wrong, I still like WHAT I do for a living, and am still sure that I made the right career move. Lately however, I’m not too sure that I like WHERE I work. I’m now more convinced than ever that I need to make a change. 

Although it is hard to identify the straw the broke the proverbial camel’s back, I can list a few of the straws in the pack: 

Maybe it was the day that a nursing assistant’s baby daddy showed up in the parking lot with a gun, and the DON called ME to see if I could go and see what was going on. (Fortunately, I had already left the building for the day and wasn’t trapped there while the facility was locked down for 2 hours.) 

Maybe it was the day that the DON stood at the nurses station and loudly proclaimed that “None of you nurses are passing your medication! There are too many boxes of pills in the med carts!” (Even though we had been telling her for months that the pharmacy we use was over delivering medication, and probably over billing for it too. But no, we were the incompetent ones, not the pharmacy.) 

Could it have been the day I found the rock of crack wrapped in a dollar bill in the middle of a hallway? Or the bag of weed in a patient’s room? Or the day the IV patient with a history of drug abuse became irate because her nurse wouldn’t give her a dilaudid injection through her PICC line? (For those who don’t know, a PICC line is a catheter for IV meds that runs directly into a major vein. Putting dilaudid in it fast would get you really high, really fast.) 

Or, maybe it’s the fact that most of our nursing assistants seem to thin it’s OK to drop the f-bomb in every sentence, and have gang tattoos up their necks, and think it’s OK to be 10-30 minutes late every day. (Then I’m the one who gets criticized when I have to rearrange the daily assignment list to make sure that there are enough aides to care for the patients.) 

Perhaps it the fact that the nursing assistants are allowed to be openly insubordinate to us nurses (their supervisors) but the minute we try to actually BE managers (like the DON says we should) the nursing assistant go crying to the DON who then comes to us and berates us for being “Nasty and rude” to the staff. (Um.. asking them to clean up a resident that has soiled themselves, NOW instead of "After I take my break" is rude? Huh. News to me...) 

Is it the fact that I haven't had a regular schedule in the 3 years I have been working there, and that I never get my monthly schedule until nearly the first of the month, making it impossible to plan any further ahead than 3 weeks at a time? (The person that does the scheduling says it’s impossible to do a set schedule, even though everyone knows it can be done. The problem is that SHE can’t figure out how to do it.) 

There are those that will tell me that these are problems that I might find at any facility. But I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that the people managing the facility I work at are really all that concerned, and in fact spend more time barricaded in their offices than they do paying attention to what is going on in the rest of the building. (As long as the beds are full and the money is coming in, they really don't seem to care about much else.) 

All of these things are contributing to my dissatisfaction with my job. It’s a struggle to go in every day, a struggle to stay focused and positive, and a struggle to maintain a professional attitude with the staff, residents and families. 

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve started looking for a new job, putting in applications at a few other facilities, and have had a couple of interviews.  I owe it to myself to see if there is a better place out there before I decide to get out of long term care all together. 

Memorial day has come and gone, and even though I had to work Saturday and Sunday, we still managed to have a good time for part of he weekend. Saturday the 24th was my husband's 40th birthday, so we celebrated in bits and pieces during the entire weekend. 

Friday night, we met our friends Devon and Joe for sushi at our new favorite japanese restaurant,  Kobe.

After many plates of sushi, and  a few bottles of Asahi Dry, we rolled ourselves over to Best Buy for a stroll through the electronic goodness.  

Devon and Joe

Steve. Who would be 40 in just a few hours. 

An Empty Glass. How Tragic. 

As I mentioned, I had to work Saturday and Sunday, but Steve met me for lunch on Saturday, and after I got home, there was birthday cake to be eaten. For his birthday, I got Steve the accessory kit for the new digital SLR camera he picked up earlier in the day.  I wish I could have bought him the camera, but things are still a little tight financially, at least until a couple of bills get paid off later this year. 

Sunday, more work, and a quiet dinner at home with Steve. 

Monday, we got to celebrate the holiday and Steve's birthday with mimosas and Cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and buffalo burgers (Yes, real bison.)  and corn on the cob for dinner. (Note to self: Any corn sold this early in the year is going to be tough. Ugh.) 

Even with the working, it turned out to be a fairly good weekend, and we did get to spend some time together. Now we have the rest of the summer to look forward to, and if things go right, I won't have to work too many more weekends. (More on that later as things develop.)

The house next door to us is empty now. The family that had lived there for the last 3 and a half years moved out over the weekend. There had never been a for sale sign posted, or a realtor's  key box on the front door, so I assume (and I hope that I am wrong) that they were another casualty in the sub-prime mortgage mess that seems to have hit Ohio particularly hard. 

We didn't know them well, but there seemed like nice people: A mom, dad and three kids ranging in age from teen to toddler. I would see the teenage daughter every day as I walked Dakota, and she walked to the school bus stop at the end of the street to wait for her little sister to get off the bus and walk her home. The little girl would always smile and say hello to Dakota when she saw him. They are good kids, and I hope that moving isn't too traumatic for them. 

I waved at the mom as they were moving things out of the house on Saturday. We exchanged good mornings, but after that I was not sure what else to say. "So, I see you're moving..." just didn't seem appropriate. especially when we never really talked much, other than the occasional "Hello" when seeing each other outside. 

When I think about it, Steve and I are lucky that even though our interest rate is adjustable, it can only go up by a small percentage each year, and only to a max that is a fraction of what some of the sub-prime rates out there have hit. We may have to adjust our spending a bit, cut back on things like dinners out and trips to IKEA, but we are not in danger (knock on wood) of losing our house. Many of our neighbors are not so lucky. 

Since it is public record, I know that there are several houses in our subdivision that have been foreclosed upon and are now in the hands of the banks.  This affects the property values of the other houses, and I'm worried about having an empty house next door to us will do to the value of our place. Am I wrong to worry about that? Am I selfish to worry about the effect of others losing their homes on my pocket? 

I sincerely hope that people that need help to keep their houses get it, and that the current mess in the real estate market is over soon. I don't think our neighborhood can take much more before the bottom falls out completely. 

Just WRONG.. so very very wrong! I mean really, as if Clamato isn't an unholy alliance of flavors to begin with, but to combine it with cheap beer? 

I'm afraid.. very afraid..