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I work at a substance abuse rehab. I'm one of the daytime coordinators for the men's section, which involves corraling all 15 or so patients at their shared home when I start my shift at 7am, distributing meds, and driving them in the giant van (which, to be fair, is a fairly nice van) to the main rehab facility where they spend most of their days in groups or meetings (taught by therapists or other staff, including myself). Then, after their day's courses and groups are done, transporting my 15 male patients out to a variety of locations, ranging from the gas station to buy cigarettes/etc (distributing the individual wallets to everyone from our main mobile storage is a complicated process as-is, and dealing wallets out of a big van to a bunch of alcoholics and addicts while parked in a 7-11 parking lot isn't a great look), to the gym, vape store, etc. After that, getting everyone together to go to an AA/NA meeting, supervising all of this to put out fires whenever, ranging from individual needs per person (just needing to talk, needing to take meds that they forgot to take that afternoon, talking down someone so that they don't just straight bolt from the facility that moment, etc) to getting between verbal or physical altercations, and on and on. It's like herding 15 cats, except all of the cats have severe drug or alcohol problems. Each shift is 12 hours but is never actually that short. I've worked many difficult jobs before, ones with profound amounts of stress like making live changes to software that millions of users were publically logged in and active on at that same moment. I've been pressed under the pressure of writing deadlines looming over me, and I've worked at director-level positions for some fairly prominent companies. I've worked "difficult" jobs. This is different. None of them can touch the degree of daily emotional labor that this one requires. And I promise that I'm not saying all of this as some sort of bullshit "oh I'm a savior to these lost souls and the work I do is so great and I change lives every day, thank u everyone" blar blar blar. I'm just trying to honestly frame all of this from my experience and how it's relative to this particular thread. As addiction statistically touches almost all of you in some capacity, ranging from a friend or family member struggling with it to perhaps you yourself directly, I'm sure you can imagine that this industry is full of more funerals per year than I'd like. The success ratio isn't good and the survival odds aren't great. But I have to believe that the work I do at the ground level, being directly involved with these guys each day, matters and makes at least some difference, even if it's just helping one single person stay sober that day. I have to, because the way that the ownership treats personal rehabilitation and programs of recovery as a product is awful. The "dumb poo poo" this job does is being so disconnected from the actual work we do and making addiction an abstraction for money. They continue to allow more and more patients to admit to this rehab every day despite us not having a facility large enough to hold all of them, not hiring more therapists, only having ONE nurse for all of the patients, and certainly not adding more coordinators like myself to help cover the needs of the patients. When at the main facility, between the co-ed groups, it's a total of two people - me and a female equivilant for the women's side - responsible for 40+ total patients at any moment. I'll get chewed out by our clinical director if she so happens to see one patient being outside a classroom for 5 seconds because they had to, say, go to the bathroom quickly, or if they had to step out for a second because the subject matter was getting a bit intense, or if they're still actively detoxing from the drugs that got them in there in the first place. They won't hire more staff at my level, but they'll keep admitting more and more patients. The numbers just aren't feasible. And I promise that my cost to the company is peanuts. I could make more money managing a Sonic fast food restaurant if I were to cap my week at 40 hours. Sorry about all of the words on this; I didn't mean for the post to be this long! I've thought about making a thread about my experiences at this job because, as I'm sure ya'll can imagine, there are stories every single day. However, I don't particularly feel like loving up a dance with HIPPA compliance in some way so I've left it alone. Edit: I want to add that I really don't want to make it sound like the whole place is a sham. It isn't. And possibly minus the top brass, every single staff member, from the therapists to the case manager to myself, care deeply about the work we do. We wouldn't work for the wages we get if we didn't. Our hearts are in it 100% and I work with some really special people. It's just red tape and upper management bullshit and emotional exhaustion that leads to things like me parked in the work van by myself on my bi-weekly Zoom session with my own therapist, crying while parked in a McDonald's parking lot 
Floodixor fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Jan 30, 2021 |
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Jan 30, 2021 11:51
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 02:19 |
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Advice please, dear thread! I work at a rehab and a covid outbreak put all of us at the residential houses. All positive covid cases were put in one of the main 14-people houses - the one I work at as a care coordinator (distributing meds, doing the UAs, etc etc). So I got tested the day the positives came back and was negative. They still sent me to work crazy hours at the house (I worked 67 hours last week). Today, it was confirmed via tests done last Thursday that I do indeed have COVID now. So the job sent me, negative, to a covid cesspool to work at, where I then got it. So what are my options here? Also, the owner is a moneygrubbing rear end hole who would fight any action any step of the way, I'm sure.
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Apr 20, 2021 21:26
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I mean I don't want to sue them or anything, but can't I legally get covid sick days, at least?
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Apr 20, 2021 23:35
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At the rehab I work at, there's one staff member who will happily work 80+ hours, and it sets a really bad precedent for the owner, who tien thinks everyone is up for that bullshit. They asked me to work the day shift, night shift, and then the next day shift and night shift. Literally working for 48 hours straight. It's how casually my boss asked me to do it. Here's another thing for the thread. As a care coordinator, I make 14 dollars an hour. It's miserable. The work we do is insane - transport, leading groups for 50+ clients, dispensing medications (I did get QMAP certified through this, which was nice). But it's beyond that - it's having a client have a seizure and help him, it's talking to crying men who are struggling in early recovery, of which that place is a special hell (I'm an alcoholic in recovery). It's tremendous emotional labor some days. The bottom 25% of people doing the same job make $17.69 / hour, according to the internet. The care coordinator staff size has remained the same whole the client base has almost tripled. Time for a raise, right? Here's my conversation with my boss about a raise. I've known him personally before this job due to the recovery community, so it's why I can talk to him this way: Me: hello I believe for the reasons that I nave stated that I deserve a raise. I have been doing the job of multiple people here. Him: Bubba if you just do, say, transport on a day off, that's all OT, that's good money Me: Bob, I know how overtime works. I know what it is. I'm talking about some dignity. Him: *shakes head sadly* yeah... And the whole thing just sort of disappeared. The main problem is the owner is just awful and is trying to get blood from a stone at any given point. It's just hard. Anyway I have an interview tomorrow with a tech education company. Time to get back into the tech world and make a poo poo load more money and have a lot of the problems that this thread is talking about. Thanks for reading my long bitchy post.
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Apr 23, 2021 00:32
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