At my last job, I worked a few different roles working with adults with developmental disabilities, some with extreme behavior problems. I have lots of stories to share.
One such one was a time when someone ran into my office and was telling me about one of our clients getting stabbed. We followed protocol, separated them, provided aid, called cops, etc.
The way I was told it happened was that the two of them got into an argument over basketball. Then one of them grabs a pencil and fucking stabs the other in the thigh with the pencil.
I remember the cops rolling up and one cop had a shotgun and cocked it as he walked into our gates. It really wasn’t that serious. We got it all under control right after it happened.
I’ve been punched, kicked, and even spit on there. I was also sexually assaulted on numerous times by an older skinny guy. I don’t think he was gay, I think he knew I couldn’t do anything about it and got his kicks off that. He’d grab my butt and tried grabbing my groin over top of my pants sometimes.
I do not miss that fucker one bit.
On a more positive note, I remember some of the more happier times I had. I used to take the guys around the city and lots of places they had never gone before. I wasn’t supposed to, but I didn’t care as long as I was doing stuff they enjoyed and made them enjoy their 8 hours with us. That’s all that mattered to me. One of the guys still asks about me to this day, and I haven’t worked with him in over 10 years. But he was really shy when he first came to the program and we welcomed him in our crew and made sure he always felt apart of everything we did. The other guys took note and even defended him on some occasions when someone would make fun of him. That’s probably my highlight of working there.
The agency that oversaw our operations was overly lenient towards them and their behaviors. Their usual go-to was “that behavior is why they’re in your program”.
It was really shitty sometimes the way they just let things slide. And we got paid for each of them being in our program, so higher ups didn’t always want to let go of unruly clients, especially those with really bad behaviors because we’d be paid more to keep them in the program because of those outrageous behaviors.
The most we could do was separate him from me. I couldn’t even suspend him. But I think the bigger thing was him knowing I could never lay a finger on him for the way he would try to touch me. If he had grabbed my groin and I smacked his hand away, I would be the one who would get in trouble. He would just keep going and they would add it to his list of behaviors to work on.
Some clients even had made up stories of abuse and that was enough to let someone go. The only thing that would save the caretaker is if the client had had a history of making similar fabrications and/or the allegation could be proven false like video evidence or something. I remember people being fired purely for accusations that couldn’t be proven or disproven and the person crying innocence. It’s a really shitty thing to happen. You kind of understand and sympathize with the decision, knowing that you don’t want an actual abuser in your midst, but also realizing that some of these people in our care do lie and you’re taking away someone’s ability to feed their family strictly based on hearsay. You’d think people would find better ways of dealing with these situations, but it felt more like they preferred taking the easy route of just terminating someone and being done with the situation.
I can remember another time when a client had accused us of not feeding her. Despite 4 other clients living in the same home and none of them making similar complaints, the overseeing agency sent someone down to investigate. And the woman they sent to investigate had a personal vendetta against me for some reason, always out to get me and I have no idea why. So she opens the refrigerator and freezer and sees it filled with food but writes in her report that the lying client was correct in her accusation. That led to a meeting with one of the executives in the agency overseeing us calling me a liar in front of everyone in the meeting. Someone had taken a picture of the refrigerator but didn’t send me the picture in time so I could use it in defense of myself, so I sat there listening to them berate me about a false accusation. Before this, I had developed a really high reputation in the agency and lots of people knew me as someone who worked hard and treated the clients well and with respect. Now my name had been drug through the mud because of one false accusation.
I was miserable at the end of working there and was eternally glad to be able to escape it all. That agency being a big reason for a lot of the issues I experienced.
At my last job, I worked a few different roles working with adults with developmental disabilities, some with extreme behavior problems. I have lots of stories to share.
One such one was a time when someone ran into my office and was telling me about one of our clients getting stabbed. We followed protocol, separated them, provided aid, called cops, etc.
The way I was told it happened was that the two of them got into an argument over basketball. Then one of them grabs a pencil and fucking stabs the other in the thigh with the pencil.
I remember the cops rolling up and one cop had a shotgun and cocked it as he walked into our gates. It really wasn’t that serious. We got it all under control right after it happened.
I’ve been punched, kicked, and even spit on there. I was also sexually assaulted on numerous times by an older skinny guy. I don’t think he was gay, I think he knew I couldn’t do anything about it and got his kicks off that. He’d grab my butt and tried grabbing my groin over top of my pants sometimes.
I do not miss that fucker one bit.
On a more positive note, I remember some of the more happier times I had. I used to take the guys around the city and lots of places they had never gone before. I wasn’t supposed to, but I didn’t care as long as I was doing stuff they enjoyed and made them enjoy their 8 hours with us. That’s all that mattered to me. One of the guys still asks about me to this day, and I haven’t worked with him in over 10 years. But he was really shy when he first came to the program and we welcomed him in our crew and made sure he always felt apart of everything we did. The other guys took note and even defended him on some occasions when someone would make fun of him. That’s probably my highlight of working there.
Why couldn't you do anything about it? This shit is never ok. Why not just a quick sack-tap?
Awwwwwwww
The agency that oversaw our operations was overly lenient towards them and their behaviors. Their usual go-to was “that behavior is why they’re in your program”.
It was really shitty sometimes the way they just let things slide. And we got paid for each of them being in our program, so higher ups didn’t always want to let go of unruly clients, especially those with really bad behaviors because we’d be paid more to keep them in the program because of those outrageous behaviors.
The most we could do was separate him from me. I couldn’t even suspend him. But I think the bigger thing was him knowing I could never lay a finger on him for the way he would try to touch me. If he had grabbed my groin and I smacked his hand away, I would be the one who would get in trouble. He would just keep going and they would add it to his list of behaviors to work on.
Some clients even had made up stories of abuse and that was enough to let someone go. The only thing that would save the caretaker is if the client had had a history of making similar fabrications and/or the allegation could be proven false like video evidence or something. I remember people being fired purely for accusations that couldn’t be proven or disproven and the person crying innocence. It’s a really shitty thing to happen. You kind of understand and sympathize with the decision, knowing that you don’t want an actual abuser in your midst, but also realizing that some of these people in our care do lie and you’re taking away someone’s ability to feed their family strictly based on hearsay. You’d think people would find better ways of dealing with these situations, but it felt more like they preferred taking the easy route of just terminating someone and being done with the situation.
I can remember another time when a client had accused us of not feeding her. Despite 4 other clients living in the same home and none of them making similar complaints, the overseeing agency sent someone down to investigate. And the woman they sent to investigate had a personal vendetta against me for some reason, always out to get me and I have no idea why. So she opens the refrigerator and freezer and sees it filled with food but writes in her report that the lying client was correct in her accusation. That led to a meeting with one of the executives in the agency overseeing us calling me a liar in front of everyone in the meeting. Someone had taken a picture of the refrigerator but didn’t send me the picture in time so I could use it in defense of myself, so I sat there listening to them berate me about a false accusation. Before this, I had developed a really high reputation in the agency and lots of people knew me as someone who worked hard and treated the clients well and with respect. Now my name had been drug through the mud because of one false accusation.
I was miserable at the end of working there and was eternally glad to be able to escape it all. That agency being a big reason for a lot of the issues I experienced.
Is this you?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0097235/