Greetings from a babysitting stint! The kids are asleep (correction: Older Child just announced she can’t sleep and is now watching an astronomy-themed documentary with me) and it’s time to reflect on my first week of work.
In a word: amazing!
I work with three full-time employees (Executive Director, Deputy Executive Director, and Office Manager), and an intern. As I mentioned in my last post, we all eat lunch together every day. It’s a great opportunity to talk about things other than work. Although honestly working for a health care nonprofit there’s a lot of work-related stuff to talk about, on micro and macro levels. It’s always interesting and frequently passionate, yet still professional (notwithstanding the extended discussion of jello shots from Tuesday or Wednesday) and respectful.
Oh, and Friday we all got fed thanks to a meeting with an auditor (bonus: I didn’t go to the meeting!).
The work itself so far is not terrifically difficult. I’ve been digging through old files, reorganizing some and reading the rest. In between I do other minor administrative tasks like update spreadsheets and get the mail. My two big jobs are answering the phones and creating The Map. These are related.
The Map is a project I conceived within about an hour of starting on Monday. Essentially it’s a Google map of every free clinic, community health center, and similar organization in Virginia (this also includes a handful in West Virginia, Tennessee, Maryland, and even one in Pennsylvania). I doubt I’ll ever be “done” with it, since not only do I have information for every clinic I know about now, but there are many more I don’t know about yet. Still, I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from coworkers and friends, and I’m pleased with what I’ve done so far.
With The Map in hand (and eventually embedded into the website), it becomes much easier to handle phone calls. At least two or three times a day someone calls looking for a clinic nearby. Sometimes it’s for a physical or a lab test. Sometimes it’s for one or several chronic conditions, or for a dentist. Once it was a mental health emergency, I’m pretty sure, and I hope and pray the person who called me took my advice and called an ambulance. Unfortunately there’s no way to know for sure. And even if this person did go to a hospital there’s no guarantee they got adequate treatment. It’s hard to get emergency psychiatric treatment in the best of times; in some hospitals it’s not even an option.
There was one call that almost made me cry. On Thursday, right at the end of my day, I took a call from an older gentleman who was completely tapped out. No money, no unemployment, no savings, no options. He and his wife both had a chronic condition and could barely get enough help to pay their next month’s rent. We talked for 20 minutes, even though I was late for an appointment, because it was clear he just needed someone to listen to him. So he talked, and I listened, and a few times I had to swallow pretty hard. If you’re out there, sir, I hope I was able to help you in some small way.
I knew going into the job that I would give referrals. I knew from personal experience that many people who go to free clinics are at the end of their ropes. For whatever reason I never put two and two together and realized how draining these conversations can be emotionally. Which is why I’m really, really glad my coworkers are supportive, compassionate, and dedicated themselves.
So all in all, things are going really well. I’m picking up new responsibilities almost hourly, and I feel like I’ve already made an impact on the office (hopefully for the better!).
Things I’m looking forward to next week: working on a presentation for the state legislature; digging through more files; The Map; dinner with an old friend; networking at Social Media Club of Richmond, VA; cooler weather.
