Termination

I was elected the one to fire the realtor, having the most experience in that area. Totally inappropriately, given my nonexistent relevant background, when I worked for a social services provider that contracted with the local Department of Family and Children Services, I did all the hiring and firing, of which there was a lot, as no competent people could or would stay in that job. I left after just five months or so myself.

I remember interviewing people when the electricity and phone had been shut off (due to nonpayment). And still people accepted the job. Right, if we couldn’t pay for the utilities, we’re definitely going to pay your cut, pocket change though it would be. The whole outfit was just ridiculously mismanaged; it operated out of the back of a super-shabby warehouse. The front half was the owner’s husband’s church, some sort of charismatic variety. The couple’s young kids ran around the office all day. The owner kept hiring people from her church who were just miserably unable to do the job, and I kept having to fire them. And too late I realized that the owner’s argument that I, with just a B.A. at the time, could perform psychological and drug/alcohol dependency assessments as I was being “supervised” by her, as she had a Psy.D. (later this turned out to be entirely not the case, when she told me to write her application to grad school), was flawed.

Lots of things were flawed. Like when I couldn’t get the state to care about finding out whether/how a five-year-old girl had herpes. Or when no resources were available for a family whose kids couldn’t attend school due to lice from living in a home with a mother who was a textbook trash hoarder (if I ever feel attached to some object I need to get rid of, I just need to think of that hovel. Shudder.) I remember the first night I was sent into the field to, it turned out, provide therapy to a family with domestic violence/sexual spousal abuse problems—in Spanish. Boy did I come home crying then. And all the sad, sad kids in foster care I shuffled to and fro doctors’ visits, listening to how they felt about their parents’ rights being terminated, and back to the overstuffed foster homes with “mothers” who thought it was funny to slam the door in our faces when we came back, pretending not to know us, not to let the children in.

Compared to all that, firing the histrionic, deceptive realtor–that was easy.