The facility where Mom is at is really understaffed. Not dangerously understaffed but understaffed to the point where there is very little activity at the facility. Makes for a really boring place. Makes the day long for Mom. They are making a concentrated effort to get the facility full so they can hire more staff. They also have no backup employees if someone calls in sick. Which means some days they will have nobody at the front desk and when the maintence man called in sick for a week they had nobody to fix things in residents apartments. What did they do? They depended on my friends and myself. When my friend, Ted, who owns a telephone repair company came out to help with Mom's phone the person in charge basically kidnapped him to fix a couple of other phones within the facility. Bless his heart, he did fix the residents phones and did it for free. Then yesterday when I went to the Fathers' Day Buffet that they put on for the residents before I left the person in charge asked if I would check out a couple of tvs in two of the residents rooms that weren't working. So I did. Now remember these are elderlys and what will often happen is that they will hit the wrong button on the remote control by accident and screw things up. The first lady was a nice lady that just lost her husband two weeks ago. She had accidently shut off the cable box. I got it on and her TV was back to normal. The second lady was in her late 80s and had turned on the vcr by mistake. All she was getting is a blue screen. First of all I don't know why she had a vcr that she never uses nor knows how to run but her family must have thought she needed one. It was an easy fix to get rid of the blue screen. Turn off the vcr that didn't even have a tape in it. I'm not sure how I feel about the facility depending on my friends and me to fix things around their facility. But for know I am fine with it.
Hope this will be a great day for you all.
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4 comments:
Ahh, Bill...you're a good guy. Just hold on to that newfound "self" that you've been discovering and make sure that you really do want to help out, and not that you are being used when you don't want to be.
Hi Bev
I didn't mind helping out last night but I don't want it to be a regular event that keeps them from hiring someone. I was more bothered by them asking my friend Ted to help out since that is how he makes his living and they shouldn't have asked him to do it for free.
As to my new found self, I have to keep improving until July 2nd when an old flame comes to Oregon for a visit.
Bill
Oboy, do I remember that tv problem. I used to get calls all the time, "My tv isn't working", and I'd have to go through the same litany each time: Is the red light on the cable box? Is the tv set to channel 3? Etc. If it got too complicated, I'd have to go over and sort it out. My mom's quite excellent tv was too old to have a cable connection, so she had to have the box and never quite understood what it did and that the actual signal ("what's a signal?") came from the box.
I suspect most such places are understaffed. Where my mom is, there's only one person on the 11pm to 7am shift. If they'd hire a second one, I could probably say goodbye to the agency overnight person. But so far, they won't, and now they're offering a rent credit for a referral that stays 30 days or more, so things are tight. They never let me do anything to help out, except for my own mom, probably because of insurance.
I'm sure you're glad to help, but I'll echo Bev and say be careful they don't grow to depend on you for it.
Hi Pat
We have the same Mom. I had to go through that menu a lot with mom when she was at home and even her caregiver would hit the wrong button sometimes and not know what to do.
In Oregon there is a law that requires nursing homes and assisted living centers have one employee on duty for every 25 residents. C. Springs has two on at night. Weekends they have hardly anyone at anytime.
I'm not going to let them depend on me because I am weining myself from Mom and that would just extend the time it takes me to get her not thinking about me being there so much. I will say I was very happy yesterday when on of the ladies called my my mom's grandson. lol
Bill
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