don’t matter how well i do the job, it’s never good enough

there is a someone else at the minimum wage job i’ve been at, the home for developmentally/mentally disabled people, someone who i don’t like working with. she’s bossy, abrupt, inconsiderate… that pretty much sums it up. thankfully i don’t work the same shift with her. i’ve had a few run-ins with her when i started and working training shifts while she was on, her taking the remote control out of my hand, switching the channel on the tv while i was watching it, closing a door i’m standing right next to, getting a breeze, insinuating that the reason a client’s pants are falling down is because i didn’t put them on right, etc. i’ve pretty much just avoided her as a result.

recently, i’ve been working the 7 til 2p shift. this person has been starting her shift at 2, so there’s usually a 5 minute transition in which we’re both there.

from 8 til 1p, my sole duty is one-on-one care of one specific client, it’s written into his management contract. i, and no one else, bathes him, feeds him, changes his diapers, knows where he is at all times, gives him liquid when he indicates he’s thirsty, clean up after the things he throws to the ground, takes him out on driving trips. my one-on-one care of him ends at 1pm, and from 1pm til 2pm, i’m on general duty.

recently, due to weird scheduling decisions, there’ve been as many as 5 people in the home during the 1-2pm time period. the person i work the day shift with, we both work well together; i take care of my client, but also do whatever i can to help her out, keeping the house spotless, helping her with her clients, etc. what’s been happening, due to the weird scheduling decisions, is that the bossy coworker comes in half an hour to an hour early, near the end of my shift. after me and my other coworker have worked our butts off all day, keeping the house spotless, all records up to date, and there’s nothing left to do. my amiable coworker is usually on the couch reading a book, and i’m in the back room reading a book or watching something on t.v.

so, as i mentioned, there’s been, for a 1-2 hour period in the afternoon, too many people on shift. such was the occasion on monday. there are three people in the front room, sitting on the sofas, nothing to do, so they’re chatting, and have been chatting for half an hour, as we all wait for the shift change. they’re not doing anything, just yapping, one’s talking loudly on her telephone to a friend. given there’s nothing to do, i’m in the back room, staring at the t.v., waiting for the end of my shift.

the bossy coworker, 5 minutes til my shift ends (at 2pm), asks me where my 8-1p client is. she says this in an accusatory tone. i don’t know, i say. she frowns at me, asks me why i’m not paying attention to where he is. i don’t like her tone, and i say that i’m dedicated to him til 1pm, but not from 1 til 2p. i’m about to say that from 1 til 2 he’s all our responsibilities, but she instantly lays into me, what am i even doing there, why do i even bother to show up. when people start attacking me i get pretty dismissive. she asks me why i’m even there, i say dismissively, “because i’m on the schedule.” she walks away in a huff.

it turns out that they’d all been in the front room, yapping, not paying attention to any of the clients, and this one specific client had wandered thru three separate doors they’d left open (which are supposed to remain closed, but they continually leave them open while i continually shut them), into the backyard. no harm done, he usually goes into the backyard to walk around, just thru another door. and they were so bussy yapping that they weren’t paying attention.

and she came back and blamed me for them not knowing where he was.

i was pretty annoyed, but the only reason i brought it up to the house supervisor the next day is to cover my own butt. i told her about the incident, explained what happened, she said oh, ok, you didn’t do anything wrong, i’ll explain to the other coworker that you’re only dedicated to that client til 1pm. what i found out when bringing this up that the bossy coworker had filed an incident report saying that i was endangering the client, never did any work, did nothing but watch tv, etc.

i’m pretty pissed at this, but am not going to get into it, i already talked to the supervisor, she said she understood, no harm, and i just resolve to avoid the bossy coworker completely from now on.

3 days later, the program director, a person above my supervisor who runs several homes in the district, is at the house to take care of some work, and at one point my supervisor comes to me, says the program director wants to talk to me, and i am led into a closed door situation with her.

…

she has me sit down, and looking at me starts with social niceties, coming from a weird place, that i never know what to do with. asking me if i’m happy with the job, where i’m at, etc. instantly i’m feeling twilight zone. my instincts are already aware that something bizarre and unstable is coming up. i’ll explain more about this later.

she finally starts in. she’s heard several people complain that i don’t take care of my one-on-one client like i’m supposed to, that i frequently leave him unattended, and that all i do is sit around and watch tv.

which is a bald-faced lie. i ask her what people. she says she can’t tell me that. i think this is grossly unfair, but just say, is this related to the incident with [bossy coworker]? she says yes, that was the only person who’d made a complaint. so i explained to her what’d happened. we’re in there for 5 minutes, and at the end of it she says, oh, ok, overstaffing, the other people weren’t doing their jobs, you didn’t do anything wrong, we’re cool now.

but i walk out pissed, and am instantly out the back door for a cigarette.

the twilight zone feeling? the ground opening up to swallow me whole. black turning to white, parallel dimension opening up, fucking up everything. i get instant dread, paralyzing dread, the kind of feeling other people get when they discover a family member has died, or their house has burned down, or they’re being followed down a dark alley by someone very dangerous. i used to experience something similar as a kid, everytime a family member would go psycho out of nowhere, usually involving beer bottles smashed into walls and held to peoples’ throats, being knocked down in the middle of streets, cops showing up.

now this paralyzing ground falling underneath me happens whenever i get called into a closed meeting with a supervisor. because the closed meeting with the supervisor, i always know when it’s coming the minute they sit me down. i will have been doing a great job at my job, flawless performance, *but*… coworker are talking about me behind my back. i make people feel uncomfortable. some politics ambushing me. they don’t think i’m a good fit to work there, do i truly want the job? always the paralyzing ground opening up, that things had been going well, as far as i knew, but wham, blindsided by job dissapearing, when i had no clue.

i never know. i usually know something’s going down, discomfort i feel, but when it hits, it’s like it ambushes me out of nowhere. people’ve been talking about me behind my back, silent machinations, irrational politics, and apparently everybody knows what’s going on but me. and then i get the call into the closed door meeting, where i’m asked if i really want to work there, it’s really not working out. not because i’m doing a bad job, no, i’m actually incredibly qualified, do good work.

and each time it’s happened i’ve never done anything wrong. each time it happens, the reasons i get singled out is because i’m the quiet one, i’m the unsocial one, i’m the person who doesn’t good with small talk, don’t join my coworkers for kitchen conversations. all my coworkers connect, bonding, trading some sort of balancing political knowledge, that i’m never part of.

and i get pulled into closed door conversations where i’m told “it’s just not working” and the ground open up, swallows me, black turns white, i’ve suddenly lost my job.

which happened today (not the losing the job part, but the beginnings of the end), when i got called into the closed door meeting with the program director. i’m sitting there and on a subconscious paralyzed level of absolute dread, son of a bitch, it’s happening again. HOW did this HAPPEN? why is this always happening?

so i’m out back smoking, processing, venting to myself, afterwards. and i do what i usually try to do, which is step back in my head, get some distance from the situation, look at it objectively. what was i missing, what could i do, etc. and as i’m doing this, wondering how the entire paralyzing ground opening up happened, i realize what’d happened:

there were 4 people on shift. no work to do, house spotless, clients all taken care of. 3 coworkers were in the living room, chatting with each other. not working, mind you, not doing a lick of work. but they were all in the same living room, chatting with each other. for 30 minutes. me? i was in the backroom, in view of the common area, but by myself.

the person who got singled out? me, the person sitting by herself. i can guarantee you that if i’d been in the front room for half an hour talking with them while the client wandered into the backyard, if i’d been up there chatting, socializing, the entire incident wouldn’t have happened.

so i’ve got an official complaint lodged against me, when i didn’t do anything wrong, precisely because i don’t like hanging out & talking, because i just like to show up, do the work i’m supposed to do.

like what happened at my last job. and the job before it. and the job before it… these paralyzing quicksands of dread opening up, one after the other, in a long line.

i had some lofty essay prepared about this, where i tied this incident up into a nifty, well-polished summation of a particular aspie topic, but… i’m unsure what other political machinations are going on behind the scenes at the job now, no longer know what people are saying, what is in play. i naively assume that if i show up, do my job, then i’ll be okay. but i’m always proven wrong in this.

what i now know is that i can show up on time for this job, at my scheduled shift, take care of my client during our one-on-one time, keep the house spotless, work my butt off, but now, because i’m not social, incident reports and official complaints will come at me from unhinged coworkers, going on my record. and i am not deft enough politically to ever see it coming, or know what to do about it, how to stop it.

neurotypicals, yes, so logical, and right, and orderly, and yes the way they go about things makes the most sense. of course.

so now my mind deals with the fact that this minimum wage job which i was going to depend on for the next month or two and figure out how i’m going to make the move back to sf for the sake of my own mental and economic survival… i now might not have this job for much longer, because it’s happening again, what always happens with every job i’ve ever had. and i don’t know why, i quite simply don’t understand WHY.