Mother Job

Much to my chagrin, I am on the hunt for a job. The current economic struggles has hit the Postma family and we are in need of more bucks. Darn it!

Jeff, found an ad on craigslist, and thought it would be a good job for me. The job is one of a "child care worker" at a teenage all girls group home. Okay, I had my doubts from the start, but have an altruistic desire to help people and be a good influence, so I applied.

I got a call the very next day, not even 24 hours later, and the owner of the group home didn't even see my resume yet. This should have told me something. I agreed to an interview the next day at 9:30AM. I'm strange and find interviews interesting and sorta fun. Maybe it is because it is the only time it is totally appropriate to talk about yourself!

So as I'm driving to the interview, I begin to think, is this safe? I'm going to a home in North Stockton (I have a very negative view of Stockton all together)could this be an internet scam, you know the kind where they lure you in with a job interview and then kill you? So I begin to pray and ask God to tell me if this is a bad idea. He says nothing, so I proceed ahead.

At the door of the house, I wait, after I knocked and then ringed the doorbell. A lady answers and looks at me with a look of "Yeah, what are you doing here." For a second I think I'm at the wrong house, then tell her I'm here for an interview. She lets me in. I sit at a dinning room table and start to fill out an application. The owner of he group home comes to the door, enters, and then greets me after talking to the lady I met at the door. Everything is casual and business like and I feel safe and just fine. The interview starts with me asking about the group home and the owner tells me all about how it started, funding of this non-profit organization and the like.

Then the conversations gets good. He starts to talk about the nitty-gritty of the down side of the job. Well over the phone he tells me these are good girls and they are high functioning, they just need a Mom. At the interview he tells me that they will curse me out, his language during the interview is peppered with words I would not teach my children to utter. The girls go on outings to the park, movies and the mall, ect. I would have to make sure they aren't drinking or going into the bathroom with their boyfriends and doing whatever it is that you do with you boyfriend in the bathroom (I'm sure taht my imagination isn't even hitting the tip of the iceberg). Red flags are popping up everywhere at this point.

He asks me a good interview question, "Let's say, your partner(a.k.a other female "Mom" child care worker) has been bitching with another girl all day. It's the end of the day and she is in the back of the house with the girl and they start going at it girl style. I'm in the kitchen washing dishes with another girl and I'm hearing the commotion in the back. The other girls in the house are all congregating in the back of the house to see the show that the other woman and the bitchy girl are putting on. The other woman has lost her professionalism and has "lost it" and is cusing out the girl."

Wow! That is the whooper of all interview questions!!! My answer. I would tell all the girls that are gawking at the verbal cat fight to flee the scene. I would tell my partner to go take a brake and then wait for the girl to cool off. Then I would go to the girl and talk to her to see her side of the story, then go to my partner to hear her side of the story. After hearing both out, I would offer to take over the issues with the girl for the rest of the day and keep them separated.

This all sounds like chaos to me. Part of me was pulled to wanting the job, so that I could be a sane loving person, to help these girls. The other part of me said, "You are not thick skinned enough to deal with that kind of stuff".

I'm grieved that peoples lives are so messed up.

When I was a teenager I wanted to be a nurse, so I thought volunteering as a Candy Striper would be a good way to see what it was like to do something in the hospital. I hated that I couldn't go around and pray over the patients and have God use me to make them well. It seemed to be such a huge responsibility, and it freaked me out.

I would love to be someone to go into a group home and turn around the lives of everyone there, for the better. But change is hard and slow, and I can't even begin to understand the lives of people who have lived in chaos and that is all they know.

So I drove away from the interview wondering if I could actually work in a situation like that. Would I survive, would I be able to make a difference, or would it eat me alive? I wish that I was tougher and thicker skinned, but I'm a Pollyanna who likes to think that all is good in the world and could cure any ills with a warm batch of chocolate chip cookies (I know this isn't true)!

I'm curious, for the people who know me well, what do you think, could I handle a job like that?! This will be interesting if you care to answer!