Appreciation, Volume 2
Apr. 21st, 2004 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
judecorp(These are in no particular order.)
I remember when I started working at the agency I work for now, I was a little taken aback by the lack of a formal training protocol, especially for such important work. It seemed like everyone was so busy and so harried that no one had time to create a training protocol, let alone actually conduct one. So it was with a touch of nerves that I sat at my desk and wondered how I was going to transition from working with homeless adults to working in child protection.
And then I met (Former) Coworker Sarah. She was young, energetic, loud, and obnoxious. But she also was given the gift of insight into this situation, and remembered the time when she started my job, and how she wasn't trained, and how awful that felt. Coworker Sarah made it her personal mission to show me everything.
Every time she went on a visit, she invited me along. Every time she ran some sort of work-related errand, she invited me along. Every time she filled out a form or entered something into the computer, she made me pull up a chair and went through everything: every program, every form, every document. She took me to court, to the hospital, to initial contact, to final contact, to school, to residential treatment.
We spent so much time together that we really got to know each other well. Taking long drives in her little Focus playing question-and-answer revealed a person that was more like me than a lot of the people I'd been sharing time with. She's a transplant from New England, and we joked about the way Midwesterners speak, or what they say, or how things are. Her brother is TEH GAY, and we spent a lot of time talking about queer history and politics. And we goofed off. We were so loud, so crazy, and we got quite a reputation for being stupid at work. Even now, when she's moved on to another job, people stop me in the halls and ask, "How's your buddy?" or "How's Sarah?" as if we're a couple and they're catching up.
We once drove up to a client's home and knocked on her front door. When she opened the door, she told us that she heard us laughing all the way down the street. She once got drunk and splayed herself on my front steps, calling on the phone, "What are you dooooooooing? Come downstaaaaaaairs!" She calls me nearly every day saying, "What up, dawg?" even though she is probably the most Caucasian girl I've ever met. How can you not just love her to death?
I only met her about 7 months ago, but there's something about quality time spent, I guess, or amount of time per day. Because I think out of all of the people I've met in Columbus, Sarah is the girl I will call every day just to be a pain in her lily white ass.
I remember when I started working at the agency I work for now, I was a little taken aback by the lack of a formal training protocol, especially for such important work. It seemed like everyone was so busy and so harried that no one had time to create a training protocol, let alone actually conduct one. So it was with a touch of nerves that I sat at my desk and wondered how I was going to transition from working with homeless adults to working in child protection.
And then I met (Former) Coworker Sarah. She was young, energetic, loud, and obnoxious. But she also was given the gift of insight into this situation, and remembered the time when she started my job, and how she wasn't trained, and how awful that felt. Coworker Sarah made it her personal mission to show me everything.
Every time she went on a visit, she invited me along. Every time she ran some sort of work-related errand, she invited me along. Every time she filled out a form or entered something into the computer, she made me pull up a chair and went through everything: every program, every form, every document. She took me to court, to the hospital, to initial contact, to final contact, to school, to residential treatment.
We spent so much time together that we really got to know each other well. Taking long drives in her little Focus playing question-and-answer revealed a person that was more like me than a lot of the people I'd been sharing time with. She's a transplant from New England, and we joked about the way Midwesterners speak, or what they say, or how things are. Her brother is TEH GAY, and we spent a lot of time talking about queer history and politics. And we goofed off. We were so loud, so crazy, and we got quite a reputation for being stupid at work. Even now, when she's moved on to another job, people stop me in the halls and ask, "How's your buddy?" or "How's Sarah?" as if we're a couple and they're catching up.
We once drove up to a client's home and knocked on her front door. When she opened the door, she told us that she heard us laughing all the way down the street. She once got drunk and splayed herself on my front steps, calling on the phone, "What are you dooooooooing? Come downstaaaaaaairs!" She calls me nearly every day saying, "What up, dawg?" even though she is probably the most Caucasian girl I've ever met. How can you not just love her to death?
I only met her about 7 months ago, but there's something about quality time spent, I guess, or amount of time per day. Because I think out of all of the people I've met in Columbus, Sarah is the girl I will call every day just to be a pain in her lily white ass.
