Workaholic

Hoh!
I worked 7 days in a row this week, 50.5 hrs up to Friday night, and I will end up working 60hrs by Saturday night (3.29).

Last night was the crazy time I ever had in my work history at shelter. My work partner had to take 1 client to hospital, and they left about 6pm, didn't return until midnight. Thus, I had to take care of 10 clients, 2 volunteers from 4-6pm, and one part time came to help me at 6pm.
These 10 clients are very active and hyper, with one of them needs to get special attention, and this doesn't include answering incoming calls from parents who need helps. Next, I had family visited a kid in shelter and needed to check their IDs, monitored kids who played in the living room from office. I kept putting parents on hold because I had to confront kids of what they were doing in the living room, and I was sure that they could hear my voice from the phone.

1 out of 2 volunteers left close before 8pm, so that left me w/ 10 clients, 1 brand-new volunteer, and 1 part time. In between that time, I organized meds, printed the forms,talked w/ parents for placing their kids at shelter, talked w/ my client, dispensed bedtime meds, and called my on-call supervisor for some issues. By 8:35pm, I had my part-time to take all clients for evening snack, explained what kind of snacks they could have, told her clients who were eligible for special snack, and was still stuck w/ phone calls. 8:50pm- I told all kids to go upstairs, got ready for bedtime, told them to be quiet because I had works to do.
9pm-I called 1 parent, told her what my supervisor said, then she decided to place her kid at shelter. She said that she would be in shelter in 15 minutes. My part time then left shelter in a rush including the brand-new volunteer, so I had to take care all clients by myself. The house alarm was already on, but I couldn't do 1st bedcheck until 9:15pm.
9:30pm- New intake came, my work-partner called from hospital, told me that she was still stuck in the hospital, and I ended up telling her that I couldn't talk to her. She then called bunch of PRNs to see if one of them could come to shelter to help me. By 10pm, I took new client to his room, taught him how to make his bed, and another part-time came to help me.

Around 10pm, another phone call from parent who had issues w/ his daughter, so he wanted to place her daughter back to shelter. I tempted to say "We are full now," but I dropped my evil thought. I told him that I still had 1 bed open, but she had to share a room w/ someone else, asked if that's okay. He agreed, so by 10:45pm another intake arrived. I did quick paperwork and had a part-time to take her to bedroom.

After that, I started to finish little things that couldn't be done during evening time. Night Manager arrived at 11 pm, and I updated him, asked him to repeat what he wrote on his notes because my brain was full. I kept working w/ all forms, continued logging, and updated him for info that I forgot to tell him. I then apologized to my co-workers because my sentences were kind of messed up. I was really overwhelmed, lots of things needed to be done, so I talked fast, and I carried accent w/ me, so they needed to customize their listening skills during that time. They laughed when they heard my comments. Anyway, I left shelter at 1 AM, my work-partner arrived around midnight, she updated parent, finished important parts for her report,complained to me that she had a rough night, too.

I feel that I should get paid more than what engineers receive each month. In between my work stress, I admitted that this society is in a wreck condition. Lack of parenting skills, lack of commitment, and one thing that bothered me so much was watching kids with mental disorders. I am really sad to see that reality, don't know what else I can do. I keep asking myself, how are we going to cure or improve our society? Should I cure them? How am I going to fix them? Will I see these patterns in my home country?