06-20-2016, 12:22 PM
(06-20-2016, 11:03 AM)TnT Wrote: An observation on nursing homes:
In my experience hauling hundreds of people to and from nursing homes: the vast majority, especially in urban areas, are $#!tholes.
Commercial, large corporate organizations that exploit poorly educated, badly paid, unprofessional and non-professional employees.
I have however noticed that in small towns, relatively far from big urban centers, the folks that work in nursing homes are locals. These locals have little or no other opportunities for jobs because there simply are no jobs. These folks have not lost their compassion and some of these places are not elegant, not especially fancy, but the staff actually care. People get pretty good care in these places. Not excellent, but pretty good by comparison.
The workers are OK. For them the nursing home has some vocational stability -- no layoffs based upon slow seasons or credit crunches as in factory, farm, or construction work. The pay is better than in domestic service, fast food, or retail sales. One can get away without having to dress like a professional as might a bank clerk. In many places of employment in small towns, the old Soviet joke "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us" holds except that management cracks the whip.
Staff have no need to put on the cloying, sickeningly-sweet appearance.
If one doesn't have a college degree, a nursing home may be one of the better places to work in town. Management? It's different. It has the responsibility to keep beds filled, whether for a private entity or a public entity, and grab every private asset possible of the inmates' families.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.