This is getting quite scary... (warning: long)
Dear DS diary,
This is difficult for me to talk about because it involves situations that I don't feel anywhere near safe enough to face. But this is pretty much the only place I have where I can talk about it to the extent that I need to.
It requires some background. At the pharmacy where I work, most of my job entails packing medications for group home residents. I can't go into specifics much because of privacy regulations, but we mostly use a cassette system where you can just pop a lid off and then retrieve your dose. You may have seen a variation of this in a pharmacy near you except the doors for residential home use swing instead of completely pop off.
These homes are part of agencies within the state...that's all I really know about that part. And sometimes the people who work in the group homes are dumber than dirt. That's where the problems are kicking in for purposes of this journal.
A couple of the homes in one of these agencies that we service around 20 homes for -- it's nearly a third of our group home business -- have been awful with taking care of their residents lately. We're talking emergency room visits because residents aren't getting their medications. Nobody within the agency wants to take responsibility for the stupidity of the caretakers in this particular set of group homes. So the director lowered the boom on the entire network within this agency in question and has mandated a change from our cassette system to blister packs where you poke your doses through foil backing.
It's no secret in the pharmacy that we feel firing the staff of the homes in question -- because only a couple are really responsible for this mess -- would have been faster and easier because blister packs aren't any more error-free than cassettes. But we have no control over that.
We're willing to do these, but it's time consuming and we don't have the staff to manage that. So while the agency director in question isn't flat out saying that the 20 homes in this set go find another pharmacy, two already have; we got a call for transfers this morning. A third has pledged allegiance to us. We have no idea yet what's going to happen with the other 17 because they have to decide for themselves, but it could add up to a significant loss of business. Even my most immediate supervisor has no idea what to do...he's done everything in his power to keep these homes on the straight and narrow.
I have the least experience there, so if the workload drops in a fashion that they have to let somebody go, the odds are pretty good that my proverbial head is going to roll first. This is leading to problems of its own because I told a friend through e-mail earlier, I've had enough retriggers over the last few months that I've reached the point where I have no faith in humanity anymore, don't care much anymore. It isn't suicidal feelings but outside of training for my 5K and recording some gameplays for YouTube, my fire is pretty much gone because my sense of safety is gone. Not to mention I can count the number of allies I have on one hand.
I'm going to need to get my resume ready in case something happens as I am sure it will, but the odds are much better that I'm going to be unemployed before I find something. I'm in a place where giving people a chance has become a pipe dream and I really don't know how to bring that back into neutral. Panic attacks about being stabbed or shot from behind while perusing the galleries at my youngest brother's wedding last month screams that much. And therapy has been absolutely no help at all. I need a new shrink in the worst way but...ugh, I could go on. You see the pattern and how it's been developing.
I had a bad feeling about this a week ago. Now it's real and I know I'm not prepared...and that's the worst place to be.
This is difficult for me to talk about because it involves situations that I don't feel anywhere near safe enough to face. But this is pretty much the only place I have where I can talk about it to the extent that I need to.
It requires some background. At the pharmacy where I work, most of my job entails packing medications for group home residents. I can't go into specifics much because of privacy regulations, but we mostly use a cassette system where you can just pop a lid off and then retrieve your dose. You may have seen a variation of this in a pharmacy near you except the doors for residential home use swing instead of completely pop off.
These homes are part of agencies within the state...that's all I really know about that part. And sometimes the people who work in the group homes are dumber than dirt. That's where the problems are kicking in for purposes of this journal.
A couple of the homes in one of these agencies that we service around 20 homes for -- it's nearly a third of our group home business -- have been awful with taking care of their residents lately. We're talking emergency room visits because residents aren't getting their medications. Nobody within the agency wants to take responsibility for the stupidity of the caretakers in this particular set of group homes. So the director lowered the boom on the entire network within this agency in question and has mandated a change from our cassette system to blister packs where you poke your doses through foil backing.
It's no secret in the pharmacy that we feel firing the staff of the homes in question -- because only a couple are really responsible for this mess -- would have been faster and easier because blister packs aren't any more error-free than cassettes. But we have no control over that.
We're willing to do these, but it's time consuming and we don't have the staff to manage that. So while the agency director in question isn't flat out saying that the 20 homes in this set go find another pharmacy, two already have; we got a call for transfers this morning. A third has pledged allegiance to us. We have no idea yet what's going to happen with the other 17 because they have to decide for themselves, but it could add up to a significant loss of business. Even my most immediate supervisor has no idea what to do...he's done everything in his power to keep these homes on the straight and narrow.
I have the least experience there, so if the workload drops in a fashion that they have to let somebody go, the odds are pretty good that my proverbial head is going to roll first. This is leading to problems of its own because I told a friend through e-mail earlier, I've had enough retriggers over the last few months that I've reached the point where I have no faith in humanity anymore, don't care much anymore. It isn't suicidal feelings but outside of training for my 5K and recording some gameplays for YouTube, my fire is pretty much gone because my sense of safety is gone. Not to mention I can count the number of allies I have on one hand.
I'm going to need to get my resume ready in case something happens as I am sure it will, but the odds are much better that I'm going to be unemployed before I find something. I'm in a place where giving people a chance has become a pipe dream and I really don't know how to bring that back into neutral. Panic attacks about being stabbed or shot from behind while perusing the galleries at my youngest brother's wedding last month screams that much. And therapy has been absolutely no help at all. I need a new shrink in the worst way but...ugh, I could go on. You see the pattern and how it's been developing.
I had a bad feeling about this a week ago. Now it's real and I know I'm not prepared...and that's the worst place to be.
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