[811] Work Quirk

I'm annoyed. I hope this will be quick, because I feel it is a justified annoyed. I got a new supervisor. She's been with DCS 1 year longer than me. She's never assessed. I've had 2 previous supervisors, with something like 9 and 12 years experience. They loved me. Today, I'm working through the kinks of different asks and expectations and getting things nit-picked. It's tweaks I can make, despite their relative pointlessness, but that's not the problem.

I work for one of the most distrusted and outright hated agencies that doesn't get immediately influenced by the destruction of Trump. We walk an incredibly fine line between compliance, and stoking a spiral of fear and anger that, ultimately, creates a more dangerous environment for the children we allegedly protect. I, as not the police, not your probation officer, not on my moral high horse, and not with a poor person or idiot bias I'm going to let affect how I do my job, want to do everything in my power to make you like me, work with me, and be a part of the changes that may need to happen so your kids maybe don't turn out like society.

If I show up at your door, and you've previously had “history” with us for a marijuana positive baby, and ask, nay insist, that you drug screen because even though I'm here now because your door doesn't close right and your kid got in the yard, do you think that's fair? I've heard, not once, but several times today things like, “Well, she said x, but she could have been high! Oh, she declined to drug screen, that means she's using! I know we don't want to hold people's history over their head, but let me staff her right to refuse with another supervisor about if there's a way we can continue to harass her.” The last one might not be a direct quote, but it's what the sentiment amounted to.

This shit is HORRIFYING. We're supposed to be nosy. We're supposed to try and get a big picture look at your life, and ensure it stays safe enough for your children. We're not your parents. We're not, especially as assessors, your managers. I've been told to drug screen parents who don't live in the home, no evidence was observed or smelled, are already on probation and screening for probation, but because maybe just maybe the ridiculous vindictive horror story is true (that smoke was smelled), we should step in and try to be a pseudo-probation officer for a few weeks as well? This family who's home I was just in a month ago for the exact same nonsense call from the exact same nonsense source needs the extra special attention?

What this amounts to, is that I'm actually going to have to start cutting into how I do my job. I'm going to have to preface much of my interaction with, “Hey, I have an overly-aggressive supervisor who's going to want a record of me being an asshole to you. Let's get that out of the way. Here's my perspective and how I'm going to work, here's how I'm going to guide you through the inappropriate things I'm being asked to do.” That's a problem for me. One, I'm vocal. I'll be able to do this right up until the point I can't. Two, I should never have to be made to do it in the first place. I refuse to turn into the unduly punitive dick because you have some really bad concept of liability.

We get insane stories to try to parse through every day. Some “concerned” asshole or family member drags up years of history or some speculation they heard from someone who heard from someone. My summary was criticized because I didn't include a description of “mom's rotten teeth.” Is rotten teeth illegal? Do almost all of the poor people around the world have shitty teeth? Your teeth description only matters when you're itching to use it as indicative of drug use, no matter the accusations, and in unduly burdening the current assessment with their past. Context is important, but again, we're not your long-term life coach and accountability partner. Many, many, of our people have used or continue to use drugs. If I don't find evidence for it, best of luck to you.

Our legal system as a whole is moving away from child removals. The underlying philosophy is children are better with their parents, or at least family and friends, than they are with The State. As with most things, that's complicated, and there will be kids that die because we loosened the reigns too much and perhaps some families that really beat the odds because we didn't beat them over the head so hard. It's very cynically about the budget and these “case managers’” inability to manage. Most people don't have the kind of leadership and people skills to effectively mold or direct people. Simple math is going to give you the result of throwing cohort after cohort at the wall and seeing who sticks it out for a year more. While the ship is slowly turning, we're still battered by the waves of our misdeeds and current aggression. This job is hard enough for me to swallow conceptually, I'm not going to turn every day into a refutation of my ethic and wisdom that has people happy to work with me when I inevitably show back up at their door a few months later. I'm not going to dismiss their good will because I'm being asked to forgo mine.