So finally, after about twenty minutes of waiting, a tall, curly blond haired lady came out of the hallway on the left, said my name, and when I stood up, she, of course, smiled at me. I followed her back down the hall and into the first office on the left. It was very clean, a few papers scattered on her desk, and lots of books on the walls. A big window faced the parking lot behind her.
I don't know why I remember all these small details, and remember very little of the actual interview. By now, I knew the basic details of the job and while I had been waiting, I had been thinking of what I could say when she started asking me questions. The only thing I could come up with was that in high school, I had helped the special ed kids as an elective class my senior year. She asked me about working with kids. She asked me about working with adults. She asked me about changing clothes and hygiene care and housekeeping and cooking. It lasted all of fifteen minutes but seemed to last hours. When it was over, she told me she would call me within three days if they wanted me for a second interview. I left with very little hope of actually getting the job.
Within the next three days, I kept job searching. I don't remember if I had any other interviews or not. I also don't remember getting that phone call, or the second interview. All I remember is going to that office for my first day of training. I had four days of training. One day of CPR/first aid training. One day of medication passing training. And then my job was explained to me.
I was a middle man between two places. One was an apartment with three females living in it. The other one was a house with two females living in it. My job was to go to the apartment for four hours and help the one staff member there. I would either help with the house stuff or help by taking a client to a doctor's appointment or on an outing. The same went for when I was at the house later that day.
I arrived at the apartment on my first day of actual working a little bit before 9 a.m. I knocked on the door, and a short, dark haired woman answered the door. She looked up and me with wide eyes and opened the door enough so that I could come in. All she said was, "hi." I walked into a small apartment on the first floor. It was fairly clean with a rectangular table in the dining room on the right and a nice tan couch in the living room on the left. There was a back porch and straight ahead was a hallway with several doors. There was already one new staff member sitting at the table and another staff, who I assumed knew what she was doing, who came walking up the hall from a back room.
A few minutes after I sat down, a tall, skinny blond came rushing in the door, apologizing for being late. She had several binders in her arms. She was pretty and as she started talking to me and the other girl, I liked her almost immediately. She was honest and got straight to the point. The first few hours were spent going over daily living in the apartment, meeting two of the clients(the other was at school), and then going over our job roles. About five minutes into her presentation, she asked if we smoked. I nodded while the other girl shook her head. After that, about every ten minutes, blondie would look at me and ask if I wanted a smoke break. I guess she thought that all the information was so overwhelming. But I didn't see it that way. It didn't seem so bad.
To be continued . . .
