• flicker@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    64
    ·
    17 days ago

    I quit my job as a caregiver for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities to make more money… working in retail.

    • Case@lemmynsfw.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      16 days ago

      My first job was in a nursing home. I lasted three weeks.

      First let me say, the place was horrible and the state shut it down a week after I left, so my experiences tend to the dramatic.

      I’ve worked Medical IT for a long time and I have to say, even in IT, patient care is a priority.

      I’ve told a president of the company they can go fuck themselves because a patient needed assistance. Thankfully, they saw my point (this was not the nursing home)

      All that said, this nursing home was awful. I washed dishes. That was it. I didn’t have to bus trays, or any of it, it all got dumped on my sink and I washed it. I got paid minimum wage, and had difficulty with things like taking a state mandated lunch break. Yeah.

      I got dishes back from both the lunch room and the guest rooms.

      The stuff that came back from guest rooms haunted me.

      We’re talking about a person who has lost the plot, so to speak, and is not sensible; stuffing mashed potatoes and napkins into a cup and it festered. I don’t mean like, it was room temperature and gross - thats whatever. The shit that came from their rooms was a biohazard.

      Medical work is gross, and grueling, but at the end of the day, maybe you helped someone. I wasn’t clinical, but I spent enough time in patient rooms fixing stuff to get to know a few.

      I didn’t cure their condition, but when a child wakes up screaming in a hospital bed, sometimes its just an IT guy who is there to calm them down, let them know their situation (as best you can, I don’t have their medical info) so they stop freaking and pulling out IVs and sensors and shit.