As an autist who started my job mid corona where i need to be present in the office in a capital city
Its “More People are coming back to the office”
May not seem like much but the sensory overload can potentially endanger me as i stumble home in an almost drunk fashion.
It more negatively affected the customer I was serving, but when I worked in food services, for all of two weeks, the credit card processing machine was sticky from someone spilling soda on it and the buttons stuck and gave an extra press or two.
So I charged a couple over $2,000.00 for two sandwiches, fries and medium drinks when trying to quickly enter in the charge and hit enter.
The manager spent ~20 minutes on a call with the payment processor and was able to reversed it and all was resolved but I panicked there for a bit.
I have to regularly spend 8 hours there before I can finally go back home to enjoy the other 30% of my life
So, this is a favorite story among my friends, and I enjoy telling it.
Back in 92, I was a freshly graduated high school student and CNA. My first job as a CNA was in a nursing home. For the most part, my pairings e were pretty awesome considering it was a skilled unit with patients in pretty severe conditions.
I'd get groped (and I'm a dude that officially only had male patients), cursed, spit on, hit, etc. But most of them that acted up weren't malicious, just lost you Alzheimer's or other dementia
But there was this one dude. Alzheimer's, but fairly able to do things. He hated me. He called me bill and would flip the fuck out when he'd see me. Bill was his brother. Bill looked nothing like me, I met Bill because his daughter worked in the admin office. Bill fucked my patient's wife. Several times.
Anyway. Part of the job is bathing patients. Bed baths daily, showers at least every third day in most cases.
The shower room had stalls. They were about three to four feet wide and about six feet deep. Why? Fucked if I know, it was the worst layout I ever saw.
To give a patient their shower, you'd wheel them up to the stall, pivot the shower chair, and nudge it into the stall sideways. Not a great plan.
Shower chairs are wheelchairs, but with a padded toilet seat so you can get in there and wash balls n butts.
I think you can see where this is going.
You see, "john", the patient that hated me was Alzheimered out, but sneaky.
One day, he drops a washcloth inside the stall. Can't reach over him because he bited and punches. So it's under the chair or nothing.
It took him a couple of times to get me in position, on a knee, my head partway under the chair.
And he plops a hot, sloppy turd right on my neck.
I come up cussing and screaming.
John is laughing so hard he keeps shitting. He's screaming "I got you Bill, I got you, you piece of shit!"
I damn near quit that day took a 25cent raise and a weekend off to keep me coming back. Shoulda held out for more lol, this is a small town and there weren't any other male CNAs at the time, since the guy before me had moved to Baltimore.
Now, you'd think I wouldn't have had him as a patient after that. Nope. He was too violent, and too strong for the rest of the staff. There was one other CNA that could hang with him, and she worked nights. Dude broke my nose once, caught my eye with a solid left hook, almost poked the same eye, left gouges in my arms many times, and left bruises all over me regularly.
Surprisingly, despite being not yet 19 when I quit that facility, I never lost my shit with him. You'd think some young dude would have flipped and hurt the old fucker. Ngl, I thought about it a few times. And I did have to throw him once to keep us both from getting hurt when he went for my throat, but I threw him on the bed.
But shit, the facility paid every medical bill incurred with no delay, and made sure I had time off when I asked for it. Which was better than a lot of the other staff got. They still got injury related bills covered, but not the time off on demand lol. When you're the only person on staff that can pick up 300+ lb patients, and handle the violent ones without hurting them, you get a little extra perk here and there.
An old supervisor of mine came in really excited one day. I asked him for help with something so he came and sat with me. Before I could start he excitedly explained this his sister was pregnant. He said she wasn’t telling anybody until after 12 weeks in case something happened. I was trying to make him feel better about spilling the beans but what I said was “Don’t worry, something could happen after 12 weeks.”
There was this moment where we just stared at each other in horror. I sort of shrugged to say I don’t know why I did that.
Worse thing: something did happen after 12 weeks.
Cleared a clogged valve below a 2ft diameter auger in a material processing plant. I asked the operator to check that the upper valve was closed 3 times before going to clear the issue. When the clog broke free, the valve was open and caught my left index finger between a wood handle and pipe before pulling the stick in. I only lost the fingernail and tip past the bone. You can't even tell any more. A fingernail goes all the way to the joint though. To make sure the new one can grow back they put the old one back in place and some stitches to hold it. There are a lot of nerves around the area. I've had a lot of very big injuries, but this was one of the more painful just because of the concentration of nerves.
I have to regularly spend 8 hours there before I can finally go back home to enjoy the other 30% of my life
Largely, actually, disillusionment.
In another life, I worked as a clinical research assistant in forensic psychology. Our focus was sex offenders.
I had the silly idea that, through research, I could be a part of building a better world. We could prevent a lot of suffering, discover effective and ethical treatments, and develop and disseminate actionable methods for implementing them.
L.O.L.
I could have told stories of how some of the patients scared me. I was cornered by a giant of a man and threatened on my first week. I was followed around the hospital, and even home once. How awkward it was to explain to innocent controls how we’d be hooking their junk up to measure tumescence while showing them some disturbing images. I was yelled at and called a few names over that.
But honestly the biggest impact was losing the hope I’d had for making a meaningful difference.
It’s just a bunch of big egos vying for more money and status, their biggest concern being how near the front they can get their name on publications.
I became a solopreneur graphic designer and full stack web developer.
Dead inside from so many angles 😂💀