On-the-job frustration

OK, I will admit it—there are days when my job makes me crazy.

I realize this is merely an initiation into working life in general, but when it’s still a fresh, new feeling you can’t help but vent a little.

I feel badly even mentioning it because, in the immortal words of Drew Carey, “Oh, you hate your job? There’s a group for that. It’s called ‘Everyone’ and they meet at the bar.”

And before you get concerned, no, I do not hate my job. It’s just like any other job with high and low points. Sometimes you just have to vent about your low points.

I feel that this scenario sums up my feelings the best:

My good friend’s aunt wrote a book some years ago called “Six Years of Grace.” It’s about her (the author’s) experience living as her ailing mother’s caregiver during the final six years of her mother’s life. As any person who has ever been involved with caring for elderly people will corroborate, she describes in a couple of scenes how she (naturally enough) sometimes became frustrated with attending to her mother.

At one point, the author hears her mother ring a bell for help with something, and the author walks into the room and, somewhat exasperatedly asks, “What do you want now?”

But before she can even chastise herself for being short with her, her mother smiles and tells her, “Oh, sweetheart. You sound like a new mother.”

While I work primarily with elderly and disabled adults (who are among our society’s most vulnerable), it feels as though I am the new mother of a lot of small children and babies. [Except they don’t smell nearly as nice. ;)]

Let me be clear—children are precious. They are warm, adorably squirmy, sweet-smelling bundles of joy, life and unlimited potential.

But they also have a LOT of needs. And they cry when those needs aren’t met. Even once they’re toddlers (Lord help us, they have the capacity to complain at that point), they will cry, kick, stomp and throw tantrums if something that they believe to be a need (wanting a toy, a cookie, not to go to bed or clean up a mess) is not being fulfilled. And that can wear on the people who are there to serve their legitimate needs.

This is how I feel at times when serving our tenants. Very often someone will come into my office demanding attention now, damn it—which is off-putting to begin with. And so commences a meeting in which the tenant complains about having to pay a bill, follow a rule, or a problem with another tenant.

My office is here for the expressed purpose of advocating for the tenants, so it is understandable that they would come here for someone to back them up in whatever they happen to be feeling. But sometimes, after so many complaints, “repeat offenders” (the same people complaining about the same things at least once, if not several times a day), and a whole host of needy people looking to us to drop everything and hold their hand through something that they are clearly able to do for themselves, you get just a wee bit… annoyed.

Even as I write this, I am reminded of how working with the elderly is so necessary in our culture nowadays. We need people to do jobs like this because it affirms the dignity of the elderly and the physically and/or mentally handicapped. This helps me be well-rounded in my pro-lifeness. We need more people caring for the elderly. Even so, it has its challenges (namely, the ones I have described).

I do not dislike my job. I do not dislike the people that I serve. I do not wish to work with a different population or demographic. But I do get frustrated and, admittedly, annoyed sometimes. That is a natural part of any ministry.

So I suppose I just needed to put these thoughts into words. Giving voice to what I am feeling helps me handle it. We just had a spirituality night last night, and we actually focused on anger (don’t get concerned—we’re not having problems. It was more like preventative maintenance). I can no more tell my occasional anger and frustration to go away than I can tell a stomachache to go away. I need to express it and care for it.