I used to work at a nursing home. It was as terrible as you might imagine, but it paid the bills. Even when I tried to take days off, they would still call me in and ask if I could work. I usually accepted since I had the habit of internalizing the employees problems as my own. The only time they didn’t call me was when I went out of state for a two night vacation. I even worked holidays — including Christmas — since I felt bad for the other employees.
Of course, we had plenty of disgusting residents with health problems. I’ll try not to go into too many details. We had a resident with dementia that would wander the halls and we usually were too short staffed to get her right away. Pretty much all the doors squeaked while I worked there. The maintenance staff was too slow on the upkeep. The main door eventually got so bad that I decided to oil the hinges myself. A couple of employees reprimanded me for unauthorized fixing, but some of the others thanked me in secret.
One time I had to work 1 a.m. after everyone else bailed on the job. Long story short, pretty much everything had to be washed from lunch time. I don’t blame the “activities” workers at all, but it still got annoying when they had to talk loud to make sure the residents heard.
During 2020 we switched to disposable utensils for a while. Although it made washing much easier for a month, I spent less time at the facility and fell behind on my personal finances. It took me six months to build my money back up and I worked a record amount of days in October, including on my birthday. Strangely enough, I was the only member of my family to not get Covid.
I almost quit a couple times and actually left a note saying I would leave in 1-3 weeks. One would too few, Two would mess up the schedule, and I wasn’t sure I could last all three.
I ended up staying. Thankfully, one of the Heads of Staff said that employee I hated would be leaving soon. This employee would be extremely demanding and constantly ask others to get things from the freezer. Sometimes they would come to work with their pants unbuttoned. So glad that I eventually quit.
Although I don’t fault my friend for recommending this job since it kept me afloat. I now have a much better job in my new location. I hope they eventually make robots to assist the staff and take some of the workload off.