Saturday, June 13, 2020

Wanting to leave both home and work?

So, I still haven't won mom over.  Not completely.  I'm still home and she's still at my aunt's place.  I really have to start thinking of that house as my cousin's place, but that's a hard habit to break.  Anyway, I talked to her a couple weeks ago and told her about how firm I was on the whole idea of both having her come home and be more comfortable and happy, and at the same time not having her or I live in the same place for the foreseeable future.  I'm not talking about weeks or months... I'm talking about seasons or years. 


I'm not sure if I went over this or not, but it's probably worth putting here.  When will I feel it's safe to live with mom again?  There has to be:


  • A proven strong herd immunity both inside and outside the prison along with a massive reduction in the number of positive cases piling up in the prison system.  It can't just be MY prison as the recovered inmates still filter through our facility.  I don't often visit that unit, but I do occasionally have to go in there.  And even if I didn't, my nurses go in there and I talk to them, supervise them, and manage them.  It can spread to me.    
  • A proven strong immunization that's readily available and safe for both mom and I to get (and hopefully the majority of our inmates).  
  • A proven fairly reliable treatment.  Something akin to Tamiflu for influenza.  

One of those three things has to be true.  I'd obviously really like there to be all three, but if just one of those things are true, I would give strong consideration to moving back in.  Mom was stubbornly still holding out hope that around now this whole situation would just get better.  That it would be safe for us to go back to normal.  She does bring up a very good point, as do my brothers:  She's able to make her own choices and can decide its worth the risk to her health to live a normal life.  And I absolutely can't argue with that.  The more my brothers hit me with it, the more it sunk into my own, admittedly stubborn, head.  She DOES have that right and that ability to make a decision as serious as that.  BUT... so do I.  I won't say she can't come home, I won't say she can't decide to live with me, I won't say she can't decide to live with my brother B (more on that later), but I CAN say that I won't live with her.  I won't be the possible/probably vector for the virus getting to her.  

My brother's situation has changed.  He works as a dealer in a casino and the casino has opened up.  I couldn't imagine it going safely, but they seemed to be making all the right choices.  Temperature checks on anybody entering the building (employees and guests), limited eating options (and the restaurants that are open have 'social distancing' tables), masks are required by everybody that isn't eating or immediately taking a drink (wearing a mask, slip it aside to take a sip/drink, put the mask back until the next sip/drink), and even moving the tables apart in the break room while still requiring employees to wear their masks there unless eating.  Sounds good right?  

Of course it didn't work.  On the very first day there were guests just outright refusing to wear their masks.  Everything from having it worn over the mouse but not over the nose, to wearing it under their chin, to wearing it around their neck like a scarf, to not having one on their person at ALL.  And where the employees were told that management and security would fully enforce the mask wearing rule... they aren't.  And the employees themselves aren't any better.  Most aren't even trying to enforce the mask wearing rule and some are flagrantly violating the rule themselves especially in the break room.  They're pulling tables together, sitting around them in groups, and chatting/eating/drinking/laughing with their masks off.  

The casino my brother works at is a Native American casino so it doesn't have to play by the state's rules.  Casinos in the state are still banned from opening.  That means the three biggest casinos, all in Detroit, are still closed.  By extension, all the people that would like to gamble there, in the hardest hit area of the state, are now traveling to Native American casinos to play at.  It's such a bad mix that I place my brother at nearly the same risk I hold myself at.  

So, where does that leave us.  Mom seems to accept that we won't be living together.  She also has set a week that she's going to move back home by... Independence Day weekend.  I still think she should just bite the bullet and accept that she'd be happier by moving home... but I promised myself I wouldn't push/berate her on this.  With all that acceptance, she naturally had to accept that I had to have a living strategy.  She knew I'd already budgeted out moving to an apartment, but when I went over some of the numbers with her, I think she finally got that I'd done more than glance at my spending habits.  I'd charted out every expenditure and knew what to do if those numbers were off.  Now, mom is a saver.  She'd rather save one dollar and live with food she doesn't like as much rather than spend the extra buck for something she's sure to enjoy.  There is very little she splurges on and she just plainly accepts hardships to save money.  So she pushed for me to move into my aunt's house.  

I'd considered that, but I thought there was one major reason not to and a whole host of reasons not to.  The biggest one was that I thought my cousins would be moving there sooner rather than later.  They live out on the east coast and have planned on moving back to town before having my aunt's house as an option.  Now that they can move back here without any type of rent/house payment, it seems like an obvious time.  Their kid is in a trade school, but that's obviously canceled and he can pick it back up here locally.  But they've told me the earliest they're considering moving here on a long term basis is next summer.  So, the major reason isn't a problem.   That leaves the minor reasons. 

  • Smoking
    • I smoke, my cousins don't.  And while my aunt was a smoker and my mom is a smoker, my aunts house has been a smoke free zone for years now.  I'd have to respect that which means smoking outside.  To put that annoyance level in perspective, as I'm writing this I've been awake for 4 hours.  In that time, all spent 'waking up' in front of my computer, I've smoked six cigarettes and am on my seventh.  This would be a major annoyance that I wouldn't deal with at an apartment.  
  • My cousins coming back
    • They're going to come back in a few weeks to visit with family and friends.  They'll be here for several days and will obviously want the house as their landing zone.  They won't want to live with me during that time, nor would I want to live with them, so I'll be moving out to a hotel when they're in town.  Then they'll be back later in the year when we have my aunt's memorial service.  Then they'll be back during the holidays.  Yeah... every few months I'll be moving out to a hotel.
  • Not my home
    • This isn't quite what it sounds like as obviously an apartment isn't my home either.  But that's the known quantity of an apartment.  They take care of practically everything.  A fuse blows... call maintenance.  Sink stops draining?  Call maintenance.  Windstorm takes out the screens on the window?  Call maintenance.  None of it is my responsibility and they'd be expected to take care of their property.  At home, I can decide now and when to fix things... or at least mom can decide that with my brother's and my help.  But this is my cousins house and whether they want to think of it this way or not, they're going to be my landlord.  A fuse blows?  Well, I have to fix it.  Sink stops draining?  Am I on the hook for that?  I'm no plumber, so I'd call one to fix it... but would I end up paying for it since I obviously clogged it?  Would my cousins pay me back?  Storm damage?  I could simply not open the window if it's screen damage, but what if a branch comes through the window?  Am I out the hundreds of dollars to fix it, or will my cousins pay for it?  It's not my home but I'm going to have to take care of it like it is without any value from actually owning it.  
  • Caring about the place
    • This mostly fits with the above reason, but lemme explain the difference.  I'm not the cleanest person in the world.  I'm not an outright slob and don't leave myself of my place open for rats or bugs, but I might go weeks without vacuuming.  I don't dust until I can't stand the sight of it on the table top (generally months).  I wash the dishes when there are no more clean dishes to be had (or the dishwasher is full).  I know that ultimately that wears dishes and silverware and flooring and table tops and everything down faster.  If it's mine and/or an apartment's then I don't care.  But these aren't mine.  These are my cousin's things.  
So... I do NOT want to live at my aunt's old house.  BUT... my mom currently pays them $300 a month.  That's WAY less than the $700 a month I was looking at.  And my cousins made it clear that they'll pay for electricity, internet, gas, water... more or less I'm paying those bills with the 'rent' money.  They get the advantage of savings on insurance (evidently insuring a house that's lived in is significantly less than insuring one that's empty), and the peace of mind from having to look over the place.  They won't be putting money out on bills they'd have to pay for anyway (gas, electricity, and water for when they eventually come back for a few days plus internet for the security system).  

I don't have to look at a spreadsheet to tell me it's a windfall to live there.  My mom likes the idea of me saving money and it will make her happier if she 'smooths is over' with my cousins for me to live there.  And you know what?  At the end of the day, I'm not living how I want to now.  I've talked about not liking this house or living here, but I do it to help mom.  Living at my aunt's place won't help my mom much, but it WILL help her sense of pride and self worth.  

So, in early July I'm moving in to my aunt's house.  I've told my brother this and he's still making up his mind about what he wants to do.  Since the house comes with everything in it, from furniture and bedding to cookware and dishware, the only things I have to buy are a coffee maker (I've grown addicted to Kurig K-cups), and a new television.  There's a television in the house, but it's HD and not 4K.  If I'm going to use television to relax, I don't want to take a big step back in the quality I'm used to.  I'm not going all out and getting another OLED TV that would cost me closer to two grand, but I can spend about $600 on a 4K UHD HDR Smart TV that will be nice.  

Unless I can convince mom to move back home sooner, I don't even have to do anything for the next three weekends.  July 2nd, after work, I'll pack up my stuff and move into a hotel.  July 3rd we'll clean the house and get the last few things of mine out.  July 4th mom moves back home with the help of my brother R and my brother B if he decides to stay.  Later on July 4th or July 5th, I move into my aunts and unpack.  

And then we wait until COVID is truly under control with prevention and/or treatment.  




I have to update about work as I'm about to lose my mind over it.  We're still down on nurses with six working at a different facility, including one of our supervisors.  Our health unit manger (my boss) is out now for... well I don't know why but I'll get to that in a bit.  The amount of work needed to be done by both the staff and the supervisors is continuing to go up, and I'm getting flack from those administrators 'above' me and from the nurses 'below' me.  I swear, I'm close to just asking to transfer to a different prison.  I'd give it serious consideration if it didn't well and truly fuck those I'm currently working with.  

Let's go over how being so short on nurses is screwing us.  First are the nurses mandated to go to another facility.  Five of our nurses are now not on our staff, but their positions area still technically full so I can't replace them.  With them in the schedule, I only rarely had overtime to fill and it was almost always from people taking vacations or sudden sick leave.  About the only problem I had was with the nurses who wanted overtime as they had to look at other facilities to get their desired overtime.  

With them gone.... the overtime monster reared its ugly head.  All of the nurses are on the afternoon shift, so the first thing I had to do was move three nurses from the day/morning shift to the afternoon shift.  That evened out a lot of the overtime on the weekdays, but weekends are screwed as each of the nurses at the other facility regularly work on the same weekend (the nurses all work every other weekend).  So my staffing is fine on one weekend and short by five nurses on the other weekend.  

That's having the nurses at another facility.  Then I began losing nurses because they didn't think it was safe to work with COVID-19 at all.  Over the period of like four weeks, I lost three nurses.  All of them quit without notice.  I don't want to lose nurses, but I consider quitting without notice just deplorable.  I won't want any of these nurses to come back when this is all over (two of them have said they want to return at a later date).  So that put me down further.  

Midnight's have been particularly hit as we normally have three midnight nurses.  One has moved to the other facility and one quit without notice.  With only one midnight nurse, there's two midnight overtime shifts every week and I only realistically have one nurse that wants to pick up those shifts.  He can pick up a lot of them, but not all of them which means I've had to mandate nurses to work midnight shifts in addition to the other overtime shifts opening up.  

Then I had two nurses quit because they didn't want to work at the other facility.  That's two nurses I was already down, right?  Wrong.  They took two more nurses to keep THEM staffed shorted us another two nurses. 

A quick aside on them taking our nurses.... I get it.  They're staffing was WAY worse then ours and even with all the problems I've mentioned above, we're STILL better staffed.  But as you'll see below, that's changed. 

At that point, I'm so low on nurses that i have critical staffing on almost every afternoon shift.  Our critical staffing is 7 nurses (counting both RNs and LPNs).  But since they opened up our recovery unit, it's better and safer if I have a nurse dedicated to just that unit, otherwise they have to cover one whole side of the facility AND the recovery unit which is outside the secured perimeter.  Imagine being out in the recovery unit and getting a call that someone is down and getting CPR from the officers INSIDE the perimeter.   You're at the very best and fastest way possible a good 8 minutes away from someone that might be dying.  And that's more likely 15 minutes away.  So we all agree we want to have eight nurses on every shift even if I can't mandate to have that 8th position full.  The only way I can accomplish that level of coverage is by switching the 12 hour shift nurses to 8 hour shift nurses.  They do NOT like that as they're used to having the extra days off.  But a 12 hour nurse covers 7 shifts every two weeks.  An 8 hour nurse covers 10 shifts.  Yes, we lose the overlap of 4 hours, but it's the number of shifts covered that I'm looking at as I don't just want 8 nurses for 4 hours a day, I want them for 16 hours a day.  I have eight 12 hour nurses, so switching them all to 8 nurses gains me 24 extra shifts every two weeks.  It's a no brainer, so I made the switch and suddenly had 8 nurses on for almost every weekday shift.  

Then a nurse quit because of the 12 to 8 hour change.  Then another nurse quit.  Another two nurses are talking about it.  I don't think those two nurses WILL quit, but I didn't think the other nurses would either.  Oh, and one of those quitters gave 2 weeks notice, so he'll be welcomed back if he so chooses to return.  Screw the other one.  

Now I've been told that no matter what, I'm switching the nurses back to 12 hour shifts.  But I was at overtime before and will be at much MORE overtime now.  And the 12 hour nurses aren't the ones that pick up the overtime.  So now I'm probably going to be mandating nurses left and right.  I guess we'll see what pisses them off more... working 8 hour shifts or getting mandated all the time.  

I said the staffing at the other facility made sense.... well thankfully now, it doesn't seem to.  My acting boss says that 'they' are going to return some or all of our nurses back.  Two to four weeks.  We'll see as I don't think the numbers add up.  

And yes, you read that right.  My 'acting' boss.  You see the health unit manager got really sick in late April.  We all thought she had COVID so she left early one day to go get tested.  Three days later she was still sick, but we found that she didn't in fact have the infection.  She hasn't returned yet.  I don't keep track of her outside of work as she's not a friend.  We're friendly enough, but still we don't chat or anything, so I don't know whats going on.  She just hasn't been there in almost 6 weeks now.  When they had to pick a replacement, even if it was just temporary, they picked my only remaining counterpart.  Now, on the surface, that's the obvious choice.  She's been a nurse for way longer than me, worked at the department of corrections for way longer than me, and has even been a supervisor at the prison longer than me so long as you count the 2 years she was an acting supervisor.  But there's something major that she's missing... a managerial backbone.  

I've found that in nursing most managers want to be friends with the staff.  They want to be liked and appreciated as a 'good boss' and will make decisions with that in mind.  Like us moving from 12 hour shifts to 8 hour shifts... I had to work at her to convince her to do that as she knew the nurses wouldn't like it.  It doesn't matter that it was temporary and kept us better and more safely staffed... they wouldn't like it.  And when they complained to her about the move?  She was ready to switch back right then and there.  Of COURSE they were going to complain.  Its not like I want them unhappy, but our job as supervisors isn't to just please the nurses, it's to look out for the clinic as a whole and a lot of that has to do with keeping it properly staffed while using as little overtime as possible.  This isn't unique to the current acting HUM.  Our normal HUM is the same way... she's just a bit more jaded as she's been pushed on more than one occasion to do the right thing over the objection of the nurses.  Many HUMs are this way.  Many nursing supervisors (my position) are this way.  So, while my counterpart certainly has the heads up on me by being in that position and by being in the department longer than me.... I've been a manager (or managerial type position) for years and years and decades longer.  And the part that really hurts... I WANT to be a HUM one day while my counterpart does NOT want to be a HUM.  

Whomever my HUM is currently talking to is right and she'll bend over backward to help.  The warden, one of the captains, the deputy warden, one of the director's of nursing (the position above HUM), the healthcare administrator (the position above the directors of nursing), the quartermaster.... anybody.  But you have to understand, the department of corrections, inside correctional facilities is broken up into many bodies with healthcare being separate from the administration and officers.  The healthcare chain of command goes like this:  Nurses report to nursing supervisors who report to HUMs who report to directors of nursing who report to healthcare administrators who report to the director of health care services who reports to the director of the department of corrections.  Please note the distinct lack of officers, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, assistant deputy wardens, deputy wardens, or wardens.  Now that's not to say we ignore the warden.  That's HIS (or HER) facility and we work within it.  But at meetings with the warden we should be working together, not doing as he tells us to do.  That only works when you stand up to him and enforce what medically needs to be done.  

Now, with the HUM in place and three nursing supervisors my job was easily manageable.  I focused on the schedule which took up about half of my time (it used to take up about 80% of my time, but I've gotten better at it).  The rest of the time I could work on projects or maintain daily and weekly tasks in my assigned area.  Take away one of our supervisors and now I have to do their job as well as mine.  It's not like they were full of free time, so I have to get a LOT better at what I do.  Just before our HUM went out sick she moved me to the one area of the prison I hadn't worked at as a supervisor, so I was learning an almost entirely new role with new tasks to keep track of PLUS maintaining the schedule.  It was difficult, but I could lean on my counterpart (the other supervisor) and together we got it done.  Then the HUM leaves and my counterpart becomes the acting HUM.  

Fuck

I tried to tell her that I always look up to and respect my bosses wishes and that she now occupied that role.  That if she wanted to get the best out of me she needed to be direct with what she wanted.  No more "We're all in this together and we'll just pick up what needs to be done and get through this".  No... that doesn't work.  She's my boss and needs to tell me what to do.  Load up my plate and then if I need help I'll ask for it and if I can't get it all done I'll ask what the priority structure needs to be.  But she's not that type of manager and stayed in the "We're all in this together..." bullshit.  

Two tasks ended up on my plate.  Schedule and paroles.  I'm sure you can imagine with only a moment to think about it, paroles are important.  After serving the majority of your sentence, you don't want ANYTHING delaying your release, least of all healthcare.  Most of the time if healthcare drops the ball, it's bad but we don't hold them up.  But with COVID they now have to have two tests before their allowed to leave.  A test to see if they are currently infected (and therefore contagious) and a test to see if they have the antibodies.  There are all manner of rules to go along with these tests (no later than 2 weeks back, a retest if its longer than that, no retest needed if the antibodies came back positive, no letting them leave if the test results aren't back...).  I hadn't done paroles before.  

Fuck

Here's more or less what's involved with a parole on my end.  I have to fill out and complete the parole worksheet in our documentation software.  It's a pain as I have to find out when their last tuberculosis test was and that's not always readily available.  I then have to order a two month supply of meds to send them home with but we can't do that with our software which is died DIRECTLY to our pharmacy.  Instead I have to write out the meds, instructions, and number of pills along with my signature and the name of the prescribing providers on a form and then fax it to them (IT'S 2020 AND I HAVE TO USE A FUCKING FAX MACHINE!!??!!??).  I then have to copy that form and put it into their chart so the nurse, during the exit interview, can have the inmate sign it.  Then I have to fill out an envelope in a specific way, using a specific color of ink, and then fill it.  To fill it I have to include their latest HIV and Hepatitis C results, their last lab tests, and their last visit with a medical provider regarding their chronic conditions.  So I have to go through the two versions of our documenting software (did I mention we switched over our documentation software just a couple months before this whole COVID crisis began?), find all of that, and print it all out.  Then I have to go in and schedule an exit interview for the day before their release, a special COVID assessment on the morning of their release, and their appropriate COVID lab tests for... well its supposed to be 14 days before their release but I'm lucky to get it 4 days before.  Some paroles go fast, some take longer.  On average it takes about 20 minutes per parole.  Each week there are between 10 and 30 paroles.  

On the surface, that doesn't sounds so bad.  But remember, the scheduling takes up 50% of my time.  Realistically, in my view, it's useless to finish the paroles if I don't have nurses scheduled to work in the clinic to do the required lab tests and exit interviews and parole assessments.  I won't go into other tasks I have to do, but if I even halfway keep up on some of it, I have about an hour a day (on a good day) to devote to paroles.  That is NOT enough time.  

A lot of this came to a head a couple weeks ago.  I was remaking the same schedule for like the 4th time between switching them from 12s to 8s and having various nurses quit, and when the records supervisor asked me to medically clear the guys that were paroling the next day (medically clearing them means making sure their tests are done and that they have the results in), I couldn't clear a couple of them.  We were still waiting on the test results from the lab.  The lab results take anywhere from one to six days to come in, and yes that's entirely frustrating to have that wide of a variance.  Well when she called and realized that I couldn't make the test results magically appear and evidently didn't sound scared enough of her, she called the warden.  The warden understands he's not my boss so while he emailed me and asked why it wasn't done, he didn't even try to reprimand me or anything along those lines.  

Instead he called the director of nursing.  In a matter of an hour I was told by the records supervisor that it was completely unacceptable that any parole be delayed by medical clearance.  I was told by the warden that it was completely unacceptable that any parole be delayed by medical clearance.  I was told by the director of nursing that it was completely unacceptable that any parole be delayed by medical clearance.  

Okay.  Good.  It's not like I didn't know that or was blissfully happy about delaying them, but I was moving as fast as I could in a system I was still learning.  But message heard loud and clear and I worked at getting faster and ordering labs out earlier.  

Two days later another inmate's parole got held up by medical clearance.  There was absolutely nothing I could have done between the first delay and this one.  His labs had already been ordered and we were going to be waiting on them regardless of how fast I was ordering labs for later paroles.  But that didn't matter and I got the same responses.  From the record supervisor and warden, it was unacceptable... yadda yadda yadda.  From the director of nursing... well, I think she may have been actually trying to waste my time.  Seriously.  I'm not sure she could have accidentally wasted this much.  I had to stop what I was doing (processing paroles) and explain to her step by step what had happened with this particular inmate and how it lead to his parole being delayed.  Getting all my facts and figures together and laying out the narrative form of getting his parole date, processing his parole, ordering his labs, ordering his meds, and having his labs take to long took me about an hour and a half.  She made it very clear that it was unacceptable for the labs to not be ordered out at least a week in advance and wanted to know why this wasn't fixed after our last exchange.  She didn't seem to get that our last exchange was two days ago and that this parole was processed 5 days ago.  I was happy to admit that 5 days previous to the parole was not far enough in advance, but I couldn't exactly go back in time and change it between our exchange two days earlier and  now.  

Her first fix was to change the hours I work.  I'm the 'late' supervisor in that I come in just before noon and work at the facility until about eight in the evening.  That works perfectly for me as I can get home after work, eat, stay up and relax down, go to bed when I naturally get tired (between 11pm and 1am) and get up at 7am or earlier to have a relaxing energizing morning.  Then I'm ready to get into work bright eyed and bushy tailed working on my natural body clock.  She changed that to three hours earlier in the day.  I now have to work from 8:30am to 5pm.  To get the same morning routine, I have to get up three hours earlier.... at 4am.  My body clock says that's way WAY to early and I end up sleeping until about 5.  An hour before I leave for work is the time I set aside for bathroom duties (shit, shower, shave), packing lunch, and getting dressed for work.  But now that it's three hours earlier, that bumps up against my brother R getting ready for his work.  We only have the one bathroom and he uses it during that period.  So to make that work I have to get into the bathroom much earlier and then have 'extra' time afterward... which feels awkward as all hell.  Short version... this schedule does not work for me.  Now, I'd be happy to go through all these struggles if it was clear in any way WHY the schedule was changed.  But that hasn't been made clear. I'd asked the acting HUM if she wanted me to come in earlier since we were the only supervisors on now, but she specifically said she'd rather have me here later so we had supervisory coverage for more hours of the day.  Coming in earlier does not in any way help me get paroles done.  Coming in earlier does not help in any way get the schedule done.  So it not only makes me less effective as my body clock is adjusting and I'm an asshole until around noon (just ask my nurses who avoid me for those first few hours), but it doesn't help me in any of the tasks assigned to me.  

I guess the director of nursing also decided that by my responses, I needed help on getting faster.  So I had to stop what I was doing again (I had returned to processing paroles) and set up meeting with both the acting HUM and the records supervisor to find out how to do this faster.  Setting up those meetings and having them took the rest of the day (about five hours).  Time I needed to actually process more paroles and work on the schedule and report health information to the legal team so that the department of corrections doesn't get sued (yeah, that's part of my job too).  I had to explain to both the acting HUM (who had taught me how to do paroles) and the records supervisor (who has no idea what medical does to process paroles) what I was doing, how I was going to fix it, and how it was still going to be a problem for the next week or so until I could get ahead.  And that's all it was going to take to fix this... get ahead and start performing the parole paperwork dance a week and a half in advance of the parole and not a few days.  BUT that was going to take time and in the meantime there were inmates that were likely not going to be cleared in the next few says.  

So the next time it happened, as I'd laid out to everybody that it was GOING to happen, this whole thing repeated itself.  At every step of the way it was made abundantly clear that it was unacceptable for medical to delay paroles, and the only bit of advice or help offered was that I had to do my job better.  As we say in gaming, I had to "Get Good".  I had been trying to go into the paroles going out a couple weeks in advance and doing nothing but ordering the labs as that's what was holding everything up, but both the director of nursing and the acting HUM said I couldn't do that as it was wasting time to go into the chart twice.  And that's true... BUT it takes about 120 seconds to go in and order the labs on an inmate if I'm doing nothing else, and 20 minutes to do a full parole.  In a couple days I could get all the labs ordered so that there would be no more delays once that caught up, but instead was told specifically NOT to do that and instead do the entire parole one at a time and "Get Good".  

There will be delays next week.  And these delays will be because I wasn't allowed to go in and order their labs earlier.  But I'm going to get reprimanded for it and told that I'm not good enough and that I need to "Get Good".  

It's hard to try and get better at a job when I don't see a path to get better, am being told by all of my superiors that I need to get better, am having my schedule changed and re-arranged, and am offered no advice or assistance on HOW to get better.  I like a challenge, but this isn't challenging... it's a joke.  It's demotivating and makes me want to do LESS.  Seriously, the thought enters my head a few hours before the normal end of my shift "Why try harder when my best is nowhere near good enough?"  I'm not opposed to working longer hours.  I've done that in jobs past and like stepping up to a challenge, but it's not my default position.  I'm a cog in the machine and working me harder just shows the machine that no help is needed when obviously help is needed.  50% of our supervisory staff is gone and we're approaching 50% of our nursing staff being gone.  We can only 'step up' so much.  And if I increased my work by 50%, adding 20 hours to each workweek.... I still wouldn't have enough time to do what's being asked of me.  The only difference would be the paroles would get done better and they wouldn't see just how far behind this staffing crisis is leaving us.  So again, I have no motivation to work harder or longer and I already can't work faster.

That's where the statement at the beginning of this section comes from.    If it didn't absolutely FUCK the nurses I supervise, the HUM I work for and the acting HUM I currently work for, I'd be done with this job and getting a transfer closer to home.  I already know that the transfer would work as that's how our supervisor got 'transferred' down to our facility.  

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