I was taking a short break from my video game list to give a gargantuan write-up on my previous job experience.

You will often hear political pundits do stories of how dysfunctional certain aspects of or services are. Whether they are pubic or private, in a sector to benefit aid the public or punish them, foreign or domestic, these things are often portrayed rife with dysfunction, corruption, and even at times devastation. When I originally came to my job I, believed at least, that I was prepared for the worst the place had to offer. In my mind the kids were going to be extremely disrespectful and tough while I will often have to get back up by staff to tackle them to the ground. I would also likely have to do serious follow-ups in processing with the kids step by step as I vigorously document their feelings and behaviors.Despite this the place easily surpassed expectations, though admittedly they went to different routes. One of the main reasons is due to the first point.

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Chapter 1: You Will Hate the Staff More Than You Will Hate the Kids

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I got my first taste of this not at my previous job, but another placement about ten minutes away. It was my first interview after college. I was was interviewed by the manager who right off the bat seemed pressing and rude. I accidently left my portfolio in the waiting room. I went to go get the manager gave me an unusually hard time, even humiliating me by mocking my mistake at the secretary. During the interview he just seemed to have a very condescending tone with me. When I got to the midpoint of the interview a staff went up to him telling him they had a situation. He proceeded to tell me that we would finish the second half of the interview at another time and that he would call me back in a few days...the call never came.

Eventually I finally found a job at the placement I was just at.  I'll just get this out of the way. The management is virtually invisible, they are hardly every present. When I worked 2nd shift, the program manager was scheduled to work 4pm to 12am every weekday. However, half the time he wouldn't show up until 5pm and leave at 6:30pm. The other half of the time he just wouldn't come in. It didn't matter just how chaotic the house was, it didn't matter if we only had two staff on duty for the entire shift, he would keep this schedule. The management that is above him appears even less. They are limited to appearing during weekly meetings, SOME of the time and that is it.

Now a manager not being present isn't the worst thing in the world, but it just didn't end there. For starters he would always fuck up the scheduling all the time constantly. Just from my personal experience every week they would fail to schedule someone with me for an hour block period. This means that for one hour a day I was alone with all ten kids in the home. This was also while they were still technically transitioning to bed time, so you can imagine how that went sometimes. On top of that he will always schedule me 14 hour shifts two days a week. 8pm until 9:30am, yes that is technically 13 and a half hours but the next staff isn't scheduled to get in until 10:00am...so yeah. On top of even that there will be many times where he would just flatout forget to schedule someone. There were a few times where after I worked an overnight shift and ended up having to stay multiple hours after due to him forgetting to schedule someone in the morning.

On top of all of this is that, until very recently, the schedule would come out the last day of the scheduling period. The schedule runs from Saturday to Friday for two weeks, the schedule for the next week wouldn't come out until the last Friday. This already sounds shitty, but with overnights their schedule for working a night shift appears on the following day. So if I needed to know whether or not I come in at Monday at 10:00pm until 9:00am, I would have to look at Tuesday as that is when that shift will be posted since I technically work more hours Tuesday than Monday even though I technically start my shift on Monday. This means that I wouldn't know for sure if I work Friday night or not until that afternoon I was scheduled. Keep in mind I was an overnight, so when the schedule was posted at 3:00pm, 4:00pm, or even 5:00pm, I was suppose to be sleeping to prepare for my 12 hour shift that I could or could not have. By the way this entire behemoth four paragraph write-up is about just ONE single staff member. We're just getting started!

The no presence just doesn't come from the management, but it comes from staff in general. Particularly staff not associated with working with the boys in the home. For example, the first line of backup you have for the house when there are no other house staff president are the school staff. Makes sense as they work with most of the kids during the day and have experience with how to deal with them. The thing is good luck getting the backup when needed. There have been many times when I worked overnight and one of the staff didn't show up that I had to work alone. When morning came I would radio and call the school staff to have someone come on over to assist me with routine. To this day this has never worked. I have yet to have called the school in the morning when I am alone with ten teenagers to get them ready to school by myself, and get assistance from them.

Just how reluctant are these people to help me when I'm in need? One "shift" particularly stands out to me. I came into work for an overnight shift and it turns out the staff I was suppose to be working with called off. I worked until morning and the program manager forgot that the morning shift was on vacation that day. So I ended up having to work the morning shift as well in order to babysit two teenagers. There was at one point where school staff radioed me telling me how much they respect that I took one for the team by working another shift. Then it turned out that the person who was suppose to relieve me at 2:00pm didn't come in. I radioed the school letting them know my situation and talked with the head school staff. He sounded sympathetic to me and stated that he would send somebody over. Staff by staff dropped off the kids but noone stayed. Eventually it got to the last staff and I explained to him my situation. He seemed a bit irritated stating that "okay that's fine but as soon as the other staff gets here I'll leave." Knowing how the job works I decided to radio other staff to see if anyone could come in. Out of the entire campus hearing the radio call it turns out that only the driver who transports kids from the placement to their homes came in to help. 3:00pm came and noone came in, then 3:15pm came and noone came in. The school staff who stayed back began getting irritated as "he has stuff to do". He eventually left. So a house full of teenagers, most bigger than I, was being supervised by me and a 5 foot woman. Knowing this was a recipe for disaster I took all the kids outside. Obviously I have been calling the program manager the entire time who kept telling me wait for the next shift to get in. This last time he stated that he is on his way, but wouldn't get to the facility until 5:00pm. While the kids were outside the staff from the other house was watching them, I went back in the other house as there was one kid left alone with the staff who didn't come out. The kid was just chilling in his room. The staff however was hysterical and crying, she was on the phone with main office demanding that they send someone, anyone to come watch the kids for us. She had just finished up her eight hour shift an hour and a half ago, while I was working 19 hours. I short time later staff from the main office came outside. They finally relieved me. Just as they did that 5:30pm struck and another 2nd shift staff along with the program manager just pulled in. This is what took to finally have other staff come into help me.

However, even when staff are present you will wish at times that they weren't. Some staff even make things worse. There is one particularly staff who stands out to me of being insufferable to work with. I'll call him Captain because there was a period of time where he would come into work wearing a captain's sailor hate just like Chris in Resident Evil. I can't accurately describe just how dumb he is without someone actually being in the field. In short he riles the kids up constantly. He will argue with nine year old children who are mentally impaired over the idiotic things. This usually revolves around "you said, I said" types of deals that children will argue over. This will result in the kid getting riled up and him having to call someone from the other house, usually me, to deal with it. The reason being is that he can't restrain many of the kids anymore because he did so too much. Now what is the other staff member doing at this time? Well she just sits on the computer all day. She's in such poor shape that she weighs over 300lbs and can barely walk. As a result she is always sitting on a chair where she puts blankets on the seat to cushion her fat ass. During this time she almost never gets up out of the seat and all she does is constantly complain about everything. What's worse is that she too riles up the kids for no reason. But the worst thing about her is that she will always go behind staffs back trying to get them in trouble. An example of this is that when there are only three overnights present, one of us has to be the float. It is often me so I bounce between both houses, one for teenagers and the other for small children. I began to notice that the house for teenagers is usually chaotic at night while the house for small children is calm and quiet as the latter are fast asleep by the time I come in. During the morning things are reverse as the small children wake up much earlier than the teenagers. So I asked this woman if she would be okay if I stayed the night half of the shift at the teenager home and came back to the small child home when the morning came. She said that was all fine and dandy. I then told her to call me if she needed anything what so ever. It turned out that she told the supervisor that I was flatout refusing to work the house with her during the night shift, and thus I wasn't abiding by my responsibilities of being a float. She has done this multiple times with multiple people. Both of these staff are still hired by the company.

There are a few other characters but I just gave a brief summarization of the two I come into most contact with. And believe me those two alone I could type paragraph upon paragraph on. If I were to write about bullshit I encountered with other staff in general I could probably write a whole book on it. This isn't to say that there aren't any good staff because there are many. But I'll get back to that in a later chapter.