A Big Busy Day (Very long, sorry)

Mornin! How’s everyone? We’re feelin pretty good. We’re just finishing leftovers from last night’s Mexican dinner out with our friend. Just love being taken out and having leftovers is an important plus! We woke up this morning at a decent time too. Feelin happy in general.

We talked of mostly work stuff last night, which was pretty good, cuz we were wound up a bit. We thought we’d done pretty good through the day, but there was some extra thought processing that was nice to get through with someone else. Our friend is really pretty smart as far as figurin things out. Especially work stuff when he puts his mind to it. I think sometimes, between the two of us we can get crabby at each other then there is like more complaining. But, he was tired and mellow and we’d had time to think through the part where we weren’t going to be grouchy. It was a good night!

There was a lot of work stuff on our mind, cuz all day we kept being interrupted by one thing or another. I know the interruptions our actually a part of our work too, but it wasn’t the kind of stuff that we had scheduled out.

We got to work a little late, cuz we’d forgotten to put gas in the car. It’s like $2.13 a gallon now we noticed and 10 cents more expensive if we forget and have to fill up in the city. It’ll be a real test to see if I can remember what was happening. I think we got the first 15 minutes to be taking care of the organizing part of the day. That was good luck, because we had to keep going back to the schedule to update for changes.

The first one that I remembered talking to was my bestest work girlfriend. She’s the job coach right now and after those hours are done, she does cleaning work around the center. She was having a couple of problems. One was that she was coming up to her job evaluation too and there was some unsettled hourly business. She’d let go of her side job and Sister wanted her to go from 30 hours to 40 hours, but our friend wanted to be able to choose when she comes and goes. She wanted variable scheduling instead of set. So, we encouraged her to tell Sister what her needs are instead of carrying over her anger.

The next thing was that she was upset for having gotten yelled at the day before. Hehe ... with Sister Theresa there’s always a good chance of that happening, but she kind of messed up and wasn’t understanding the situation. We helped her figure it out. Basically, she’d come back from a field trip with the clients at 10 to 2 instead of at 1:30, but the transportation for the client’s rides start to come in at quarter too. She wasn’t seeing the problem of the risks she was taking by thinking the client cabs could wait. We talked about planning how much time was needed, then giving herself 15 minutes more.

Hmm, forgot ... there was a client problem before that. We helped one of the client’s figure out that if she took responsibility over watching over her taking of her medications and getting her own change for rides that she’d feel much more independent and not be causing so much worrying problems for her mother. Hmm, have to make her a calendar in the next couple of days so she can be recording the times she takes the medicine.

It seemed like each problem we were having was kinda stacked onto the next, so I was trying to be careful with the time. Basically, we have a client who’s not been watched carefully by her DSP, so the secretary felt she had to step in when she found one of the DSP’s clients (one of ours) to be loitering in the food prep room waiting for her sweetie to come in so she could say hello.

At our work, it’s important for everyone to be where they are supposed to be so and doing what they’re supposed to be doing ... clients aren’t supposed to roam and be unaccountable for and they aren’t supposed to be interrupting other groups to be passing off love letters or such. Eh, it’s in the rules.

The secretary was the first to say something to us. She was upset because the DSP had kind of laid up for the client that she didn’t really care, but that the secretary had said something. She put it to the client as "well, I don’t know who was telling the truth, but..." That set up a lousy co-worker situation and in the process the client was encouraged to take the matters in her own hand, so she went and blew-up at the secretary.

We thanked the secretary for being efficient and having tried to do the right thing in relaying to staff a problem and in having recognized the client’s problem. Then we told her we’d look into it further. We told her we’d clarify with the DSP her situation, then talk to the client. This DSP gets kind of defensive when you talk to her. So we were brief. We asked her what the rules were in the morning for the client being out of the room, then we told her we were going to talk to the client about "roaming and loitering." That seemed ok with her, though I knew that would mean the DSP would be in our office in the afternoon to check things out.

So at 1 pm, the client came to our office. That turned out to be longer than we expected, but this client happens to be one of our higher functioning and we’re trying to help her to think through the issues. It’s not a normal thing for us to yell or lecture. Together, we figured out that she was having problems in that, she wanted to say, "Good morning, how are you?" to her friend, so had taken the role of being sneaky.

We worked through a schedule with her that she’d arrange to have 10 extra moments in the morning to be giving him a call before work. In reality this will take some extra work, because neither of the clients involved do a super job at reading clocks. Hehe, but we didn’t let her get by with that. We figure this one works, she can buy a $7-8 kitchen timer. And, we made sure she wasn’t going to be dumping her problems on the secretary for her own irresponsibility in following the Center’s rules.

The DSP was the trickiest one. She had started off the conversation by saying that she doesn’t trust the secretary and that sometimes what she says isn’t true. This DSP is pretty smart, as they go, but only has been around almost a year and is still with some faulty thinking.

The secretary is very conscientious. We figured there were boundary issues though if the secretary was stepping into problems due to DSP neglect. We told her that she could get a better handle on the situation if she could become someone the secretary could trust in handling the problems she had to present. As it were the DSPs been telling her clients mixed messages of trusting other staff members, including us.

Of course, it would have also been good for the DSP to have known the client was out of the room excessively. This we were also hearing from one of the other DSPs who runs the group where the male half of this "love situation" resides. So in that respect we talked of setting the timer. The client shouldn’t take more than 5-10 minutes away. Also, the client had to be readdressed as to job responsibilities. She’d created in her mind it was ok to be out of the room waiting for the lunches to come in, where actually its not she’s to return after bringing the bulk of the lunches to the fridge. The stragglers are to put away their own lunches.

We also addressed with the DSP that while she could think it "fair" to be hearing both sides of the story in talking to both DSP and secretary that it wasn’t really an equal situation where one was right and the other was wrong with herself deciding. We conveyed that when she talked to the secretary, she was professionally "consulting" not just hearing a "side" to the story. We asked her to listen to whatever information the secretary was trying to relay, then take up the corrections with the client.

As far as having issues with the secretary, we reminded her (as the other Q had not) that staff to staff issues were always handled directly with Sister Tess. The last thing we tried to teach her was that when another staff member intervened (as we had done), that she was to consider the situation "progressed" and to precede from that point, rather than at the beginning.

Basically, if I’d spent 45 minutes with a client and had sent a note saying, "This is what was resolved." Then she should not be "re-working" the previous issue with the client. It confuses the client if between us we’ve put issues to bed, to have the DSP come back and be jumping on the bed. Instead she should be asking the client what was resolved and can I help you? It’s perfectly legitimate to progress our progression. It would be like reclaiming her own responsibilities to be serving the client.

Man ... that was a long problem to resolve... It took the course of a whole day to "take care" of things properly.

During the day we also furthered the issues of the Annual Report that Sister feels it is now time for me to work on. But, the redeeming part is that she is giving me the secretary to help! Yay for secretaries!! The Center’s secretary happens to be very good at formatting on MS Publisher, so we’re thinking that it will be in pretty good hands.

We went through it with her. We handed her the format Sr. wanted to use this year. Then ran down the list of who would be responsible for each of the parts. Hehe - much easier to do just some of the work than all the publishing, it really took up too much time last year.

So, I get front/back covers, and the next two pages to list out our 5 programs, Sr. gets a page for an Administrative letter, we get the next page for a CARF summary, we get the next page for demographics, the secretary has the next two pages for contributors and committee volunteers, Sr. and Sr. Gets the next page for financial summary. She also gets to pick out and work through with the secretary the pictures. We’ll try to let Sr. handle any extra lay-out questions with the secretary. It’s just fussidy "feel-good" work that Sr. likes and we can do with out.

Feeling pretty sweet to me! Sister will want it done before her vacation around June 19th. Possible, yes possible. Along with the model Annual Report handed the secretary, we gave her Sr.’s letter and the demographics (already done through CARF work). We gave about a half hour work toward the Cover pages and Sr.’s already working on the financial. We figured and it was acceptable to Sister to use our new flowchart for the front back cover.  But we told her we needed time to make it a little more simple and "game board" like.  We'd already tested the first version on the secretary and feel the flow chart is of high merit, but needs to be easier to interpret.  The secretary will have to choose between starting layout or pulling together her two pages. Figure this is all very good and how a "team" should work.

There’s still a matter of priorities. I’ve still got the backed up Qnotes and trying to finish up on the Performance analysis before the CARF request comes in, and then we were given the news that a State inspector is coming in to look at 9 of my client files for new financing rules. Today!! Sheese! We think he may be here as early as this afternoon ... so it’ll will take some real fast and fancy footwork this morning!

The other issues of Intake and Annuals and Program Development and Staff Training all came up as well in minor ways, but for the bulk returned to back burners. Basically, it was due to Sr. deciding to do the other Q’s, the job coach and my half year evaluation all in the same day. She surprised me that she got to us so fast this round.

Lots of stuff discussed and we came out pretty good. We got a 91 out of 100 on one preset evaluation and 76-100 on the other. It’s our fault really. She gives us the forms ourselves to fill in first, then she "corrects." We scored ourselves real pretty well with the first gave ourselves high marks for quality of work, initiation, and self-education, but scored terrible in appearance :). She agreed. *Sigh* The second one, she gave me 6 more points than I had. I thought I was way too behind in many things to say I was excellent. I just scored ourselves in above average. She agreed.

There was only one complaint she’s recorded. She says, I can’t start any new projects without finishing the first. I could have guessed that one was coming, because it was the same problem last evaluation. Hehe, I figure I’m real lucky, because she says that she gave the other Q, two pages of corrections and she said a couple more staff wouldn’t get raises.

The next part was evaluating the survey I had turned in. She went one by one over all the issues including not saying, "Thank you" or "Good work," and her being angry so much. They kind of merged into one. She wrote and stated clearly that she was overwhelmed and I was thinking so much and so fast that she wasn’t able to catch up. She also thought I was too demanding of her to be looking over all my projects with what she already had on the table.

So, I agreed that I would be satisfied if she just accepted the paperwork I always hand her with my "work issues" and that it would go on her stack to be decided in her own time frame. She said, she would try to be more conscientious with the complimentary things. We stated, nothing big, just enough to let us know we were going in the right direction.

We talked about my memory problems as being the chief culprit of a lot of "her anger" issues. If its not written down, some of the parts aren’t able to remember. She gets very frustrated with me not being able to always respond quickly from the top of our head. We need written cues. We agreed that neither she nor our friend would have to look at our new scheduler, but that it was ok for me to keep one, so I felt on track.

She also, as I was saying, arranged and prioritized some of the other issues, particularly Staff Training. She had talked to the other Q., so it is now known officially out there that I will pick it up July 1rst (our new year). That’s pretty good, because things will have to get done. I’ll let her or the other Q tell the DSPs. Sr. still has to hire another staff, but there will be 7 people in the training sessions. We’ve been doing a lot of "head work" on that issue on a day-to-day basis and are feeling pretty comfortable.

Yesterday, she prefaced that she wants to have me do the first meeting on a program development issue of the DSPs scheduling. As soon as she said that, we knew what to do, because we’d just worked out that objective in the Performance Analysis work the day before. She agreed to our "presentation idea." Pshwew!!

Hmm, think we’re coming to an end in the day ... with the exception it took me a half an hour to fix the DSP’s printer. Yeeks! What a day... Whoops, forgot one part ... the money! Hehe. Pretty much she carried through her inan "expected" manner. She’d been cluing us in all along. The deal with NOT working "at the office" on Saturdays is a done deal. We’ve pretty much accepted that this is going to be our "professional reading day." So it’s ok. On the other hand, she understood the money issues and CARF issues about "Salary work."

So from nowon, I’ll be able to work late, or not ... and be getting added to my "salary" FOR the extra 38 Saturdays I would have worked. So my salary includes as if I’d been paid hourly for 48 hours work. Pretty sweet, Hmm!?? And, on top of that, we got a 3% raise!! My poor friend grumbled. He knows he’s not to expected to get a raise or sparkly review. He also says, I’m most likely one of the highest paid Q’s in the city. Hehe, I’m almost thinking he’s right! When Sister added it up for us, then broke down what it meant "hourly," I was very pleased. Even though ... I knew I wouldn’t really be taking home that much more. The big number is before taxes and health insurance is withdrawn. *Sigh*

Think mostly ... the nicest thing that happened yesterday was that Sr. apologized for any part that she may have contributed to the thinking that I wasn’t a good employee. She said, "I don’t know what I’d do without you, you are my right arm." That made us feel ... pretty d*mn good!!