So here's my schedule at a glance for this past month. Looks busy enough I guess, but between you and I, we know most of those lavender colored entries, which represent work tasks, are pretty much BS. Well, the meetups with clients are, for the most part, real (more on that later). As you can see, despite my best attempts, I couldn't fill anything in for today. The only realistic duty I have is making my "for show" appearance at the office to quickly sign my time card print out and pop it into the CEO's mailbox. That's how we verify our hours. That's where the Girl from Ipanema comes in.
I'm literally sitting here, at home, with this calendar and my VoIP page behind it, on my right monitor, that represents my personal business. On the left, I have my work intranet type thingy called Therap, my work Gmail, and my clients' work schedule calendar, along with the VR dashboard. These are my work browser pages. So far, I officially have a caseload of four people. Two of which are direct consumers with our agency in stable employment in the community. For them, I schedule "an hour" (really about 10 minutes) per week to meet and observe them at their workplace, then I write a brief note in their file, if you will, detailing a summary of my observations and interactions with them based on their program goals. The other two I just took on, are through VR, and both are in the process of "searching for work" now. It's for these folks that my cohorts would attest to being the "most time consuming." I've only met one of them so far, but let me tell you, they're going to be a challenge to get them placed anywhere, I think. I see the past notes of the two co-workers I currently have and the one that I'm replacing, and it's mostly telephone contacts checking on how they're doing with some minimal assistance like offering leads, offering to help with interviews if they get one set up, resume building and the like. This, for many, goes on almost indefinitely. And, as you can imagine, would be very open to quite minimal output on a job coach's behalf, depending on the client's motivation and availability.
So that "job coach's behalf" also translates to the point I said I'd flesh out earlier: What if a job coach fakes it and just reports a bogus interaction that never really occurred? Maddie and I had a chit-chat sesh last Friday...apparently she's quite aware Mike does this. In fact, I even caught him. Remember that stop at Publix I made last week and the consumer who apparently hadn't seen her job coach that day? Yup, he wrote a note saying he was there just hours before I was. Funny how his client never saw him, yet his note says he spoke with her. Oh naughty naughty, Mike! Snick, snick.
So I got dressed up in a nice shirt and slacks this morning, sipped a couple sips of coffee and thought "What do I have to even go in for?" I undressed, placed my outfit neatly folded on the bed, in case I have to quickly jump into it, and here I sit in my skivvies, staring at my two monitors humming The Girl From Ipanema, like I'm at the slowest call center in the world sitting here waiting for a call that will never come in. But I'm on the clock baby!
So I got dressed up in a nice shirt and slacks this morning, sipped a couple sips of coffee and thought "What do I have to even go in for?" I undressed, placed my outfit neatly folded on the bed, in case I have to quickly jump into it, and here I sit in my skivvies, staring at my two monitors humming The Girl From Ipanema, like I'm at the slowest call center in the world sitting here waiting for a call that will never come in. But I'm on the clock baby!
🎵🎸 Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do.