#my coworker sent me a picture of what she’s wearing like at 11pm asking me if I thought it would look good for the event

[aprillikesthings]

Today at work:

We had the farmer’s market across the street, which always makes traffic a clusterfuck and we get a lot more visitors. 

A charter school that works with some of our residents hosted their 8th-grade promotional thing (like a graduation but not actually a graduation??) in a big room we rent out

As I posted earlier, one of the residents was convinced that someone was late to pick her up, and then that they had forgotten, and they were agitated and kept asking me to do something about it. (They didn’t even have an appointment today, as their own daughter pointed out later. “Huh, I wonder how I got that mixed up?” Gee I dunno, but you do this once a week. At least their kid knows this is happening--we deal with a lot of families who insist their parents don’t need to be moved to a higher level of care because “She’s just fine with us!” Yes, and people are always a little better around familiar faces. You try dealing with someone who comes to your desk over and over in the middle of the day to ask the same question, because every time they walk away they forget you already had a conversation about it. (That was a different resident a few months ago. It was incredibly frustrating.))

The UPS guy was late and I didn’t have a chance to label the packages and call for them until nearly 8pm (I usually get it done by three or four at the latest)

Someone in independent living called 911 and my phones lit up and I forgot we had two people with the same first and last name and sent our facilities people to the wrong apartment at first (it wasn’t crucial but I still felt shitty about it)

Just....a lot of phone calls today, and questions from residents about thing I didn’t know how to answer (why, oh why, does the facilities manager not email ALL of us when there’s a memo that goes to the residents? I had no idea the gas was going to be out on the 22nd and looked like an idiot). 

When I went on lunch, the person in front of me took FIVE FUCKING MINUTES TO ORDER A PIZZA. WHY. (I only get half-hour breaks and I was starving to boot.)

“Did you know the trash chutes won’t open?” Yes. Yes I did. No I don’t know when it’ll be fixed. Facilities is working on it, and I know because I heard them talking about all the things they’d tried so far. 

TO TOP OF IT ALL OFF I have had a headache all day, and I took two excedrine, and I still had a headache, I was just jittery af on top of it, and when they wore off I couldn’t take more ‘cause otherwise I’ll never sleep tonight. (I took ibuprofen when I got home, which was a significant improvement.)

OH BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE like 45 minutes before I was supposed to clock out, a resident (who was already getting really forgetful) comes down asking where [name of our building, that we were in] was. “I need to get to [name of building].” “You’re in it.” “What? I don’t have my hearing aid in.” 

I literally walked him to the elevator and up to his floor and his unit (which I never do, but my coworker was already at the desk--just not on the clock) and he didn’t recognize his own apartment. “Is this the way out?” “No, this is your apartment.” I try to get him to stay and run back downstairs and get facilities on the radio. We call my manager who says we should call 911 (he doesn’t have diagnosed memory issues, and it turns out he’d already had to be walked back to his apartment four times today). We do....and the resident comes back down wondering where [our building] is again. He tries to leave and we talk him into staying in the lobby. He tells me (god, this is heartbreaking) that “a lady took me to some place upstairs just now, and the room had a bunch of old pictures of me!” The lady is me. The room full of old pictures of himself is his own apartment. 

The EMT’s convince him he should go to the hospital. They can’t force him, so this takes some doing. “I just need to get back to [our building].” “Sir, you’re in [our building], and you don’t recognize it, so you need to see a doctor.” I think he finally went only because he was confused and figured they must know better than he did. 

Keep in mind that, because he wasn’t wearing his hearing aid, every conversation was held via shouting and enunciating as clearly as possible, to which he frequently replied, “What? I don’t have my hearing aid in.”

And then because facilities management are fucking idiots (the actual workers are usually fine; but god the management is shitty) I had to write out two incident reports BY HAND--that said the exact same thing I’d already emailed to my own manager, just with lots of scratch-outs and less detail, because I fucking hate writing shit out by hand. UGH. 

....ANYWAY. Now I’m home. And I should probably just smoke a bunch of weed and go to bed early but I think I’m gonna try poking tumblr and writing a little and THEN smoking some weed and going to bed. Though “early” for me is still 2am. Last night I went to bed at nearly 5am. (It’s 11pm at the moment.)

MAN I feel better typing that all out. Shit.