*Cough* *Cough*

Lots of coughers in my immediate surrounding this past week at work. Larger than usual number of folks coughing right in front me without covering their mouths, including clients and staff.

The other day I was talking with an elderly lady during an outreach event and and suddenly she coughed this loud wet cough. Those are the tough ones, the unexpected coughs. I froze for a second and inwardly grimaced. I know she didn't do it on purpose, but -- gah. I could feel her germs invading into my bloodstream. Asking my germs for help in crossing the street.

On another note, it's unfortunate that you can't say something to someone once she has coughed. Saying bless you gets you weird look. There's a few moments of silence as you wait for them to stop coughing. Maybe you offer a drink of water. There should be a word.

We Don’t Offer that Service

Except in those few occasions we do. We don’t help you move, but those one-two OK a few clients yeah I suppose we did help them move. Help with getting a new bed? Not really something we help with, except those couple of times last year.

 

It’s difficult to assess some requests (certainly lack of resources like money and time are a component of this). Rental requests are more straightforward: We find out the reason a person got behind. We do a budget to find out if she be able to pay rent on her own after she receives rental assistance. We also look at whether we have helped the client with rental assistance in the past. These types of questions

Other financial or otherwise large requests are discussed case by case. One increasingly common request is help with moving, i.e. physically help. I know a number of clients who would genuinely not have been able to move without external help, if because of mental/physical health conditions, lack of financial support/friends, lack of time. For these clients some staff members were able to fill in that gap in some capacity. But once an exception is made for one client it's harder to say no the next time when a client seems to be in particular high need. Not to mention that each project like this takes time -- while the inbox of other requests continues steadily fills up.

It's true, I'm not talking about tens of clients calling us about help with moving. But considering that helping one person may take from half a day to 2 days of help (in separate blocks of time) even helping 3 folks is a considerable time commitment if you have a caseload of over 40 folks.

'Something Happened' is Testing My Reading Patience

I've been reading Something Happened by Joseph Heller for the past week and I'm a bit torn. On the one hand it reads fairly smoothly. It follows Bob Slocum, an American middle aged man's stream of consciousness. Initially he's thinking about staff at work (who's afraid of who), the women (young women) he has affairs with, then he turns his focus on his family, his wife, daughter, and two sons (and who's afraid of who). It reads authentic to me. A string of uninhibited (as they tend to be) thoughts as he's going about his day.
 
I like that Bob contradicts himself at times, sometimes in the same passage (I do that too sometimes -- though it's also true that at times a characteristic that bothers me). Though I don't easily particularly identify with him, I understand some of the feelings he shares. Dealing with mundane, drudgery routine (what's so wrong with that?). 

A lot of thoughts have been going through his mind these past 430 pages though. So much that I hope I didn't miss anything happening. What's keeping me going is wanting to find out how it's resolved.