Thursday, September 18, 2008

More on Human Services

I'm not going to tell you where I work. If I did, I'd have to kill you.

Well okay, it's not top secret, my place of employ, but I still choose, nonetheless, not to tell you . Though from this last blog you could gather(and perhaps not incorrectly so)that it's in the human services. Do you remember on the Flintstones where Fred worked for Slate Construction Company but Barney had an unspecified occupation and workplace? Okay, that's where I work. Same place as Barney.

So yes, in the human services, public or private sectors, you do endeavor to help socio-economically disadvantaged folks. Low-income, often uneducated people whom, among their other troubles, sometimes give their kids names like Gumdrop or Tree Wheezle. These amuse some of the staff(well, okay, me), and along with paid vacation, constitutes one of the "perks" of the job. . But we laugh, not so much at them(well okay maybe a little)as at the tragedy of such great ignorance. We laugh to keep from crying.

One other thing you notice working a job in human services is that you have your one-time visitors and your million-time visitors. Those folks you see over and over. And over. And over(aaugh!)To borrow Fred and Barney again for a minute(particularly since Barney and I work at the same place-- let's say, Xenocorp. actually scratch that--it sounds more Jetsons), working a job in human services is like perambulating through a Flintstones cartoon in that you see the same scenery over and over and over again.The same people, in the same pickle again and again. Depending on the length of time they'd been working with us, we called them our Gold or Platinum members. A dubious distinction, but still some notice..

Like most any sizeable body of people, there are some among our precious metal memberships we're fond of personally.Good folks who are for whatever reason just stuck behind that 8-ball. And some we loathe- this exacerbated by the fact that they've come in over and over and over. The new employees usually get to deal with them, ones who don't yet know better. They come back cussing us out, but then there's always that next newbie.

I don't know where I was going with all this, but it's a little bit about what it's like to work at - Paleocorp(sounds a little more Flintstones, eh what?). Not always a yabbadabbado experience, but at least you ease human suffering in some way in what you do. And they always need people to work in those places. (Gee I wonder why?)





1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This one hit it on the nose. Although I do not have daily exposure to the lower economic level of people that you do, I have been going back to school to further my engineering education. Some of the requirements are electives of course. This semester, I signed up for a Greek mythology class. I love this class...I am enthralled by the lectures and theories of Jung, Freud, and Joseph Campbell, and this class full of people couldn't care less. It is so disheartening to witness the lack of culture and imagination in 18-25 year olds. Granted, I am only 27, but I feel as though I have really experienced so much more than these kids. They are so immersed in the technology that they hold in their hand.....they are missing the beautiful things that have happened in our world, as well as the things that are happening right under their nose. Will it all be lost in the generations to come?

-Todd

7:33 PM  

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