I really, really love my job.
I’m not sure I can stress that enough. The people here are incredibly supportive and generally just super cool. The atmosphere of the office is fast-paced, always moving, but leaving room for mistakes. The work is incredibly rewarding and makes me feel like I’m really making a difference.
On that note, however, today was really hard.
To recap my job for y’all (mostly because I can’t remember if I wrote down what I actually do yet), I help people with their rent. It’s like, if they come into the office and they owe X amount of money due to reason Y, and they have to pay it or they’ll be evicted, we can typically help them. We have lots of rules and requirements for these people to meet so we know we’re not just dumping money into nothing, but generally we get to say yes.
Generally.
Today I didn’t get to say yes at all. I talked to two separate clients, both of which I had to deny. It makes sense. Like, I understand why I had to turn them away, and they understood why we had to turn them away, but that doesn’t make it suck any less. We can’t just give away money. But to see their faces? God, fuck.
And normally on the days I have to say no, I at least get to say yes to someone else. It’s still sucky but at least I can find that relief, that change, in another client that we can assist. But today it was all No all the time. And that’s exhausting. That literally just sucks so much.
I’d even be okay if they were angry at me, and I’m sure I’ll get angry clients in the future because the threat of eviction is real and scary and makes people react in ways I know have nothing to do with me, but everyone I said no to just kind of accepted it. I could brace myself for frustration or looks of betrayal.
Understanding, though? It just makes everything settle like a stone in your throat.
I think part of what makes it worse is when you get to say yes, and you get to help these people and keep them in their homes, the joy that’s there is immense. You get to share those moments with them of relief, of excitement, of unabashed happiness that things are working out. You get to be part of the story that has a happy ending.
So after a lot of happy endings, the sad endings have blue leeching off of the pages.
On top of that, I fucking cut open my finger on a file. I’m still bleeding. For fuck’s sake.
On these difficult days I find myself looking toward my co-workers for support. For example, I’m cat-sitting for one of them this week. Her name is Shephali and her cat’s name is Karma and Karma is delightfully large and very talkative. After I leave the office, I’ll get to go hang out with that great old boy. While I’m in the office I can look toward the plants that Shephali placed on my shelf because she thought my cubicle needed some more green. And I can go to Ray, who is always encouraging and insistent that it’s no one’s fault that the No’s are as hard as they are. Or if I’m over talking about work, we can talk about anything from aliens to cannibalism (which, yes, I researched today in my free time), or leave the worst pens in the office on each other’s desk and wait for the other to notice. Or I can even go to Amy, my supervisor, who seems so surprised and thankful every time I offer to do some of her work for her. The other day when Amy met my program manager Sophie (which felt a bit like a parent teacher conference) she called me a superstar, and I could feel that in my bones.
Today someone brought me a lid to place under the pot so when I water my plants, the water doesn’t go everywhere. When I put a bandaid over my new cut, someone found me a sewing thimble to cover it so I could still type with ease. Everyone who passes wears a smile.
Today was hard. It won’t be the last hard day, I already know this. I’ve accepted that in this line of work sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.
Either way, we keep going.
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