It’s crazy at my workplace, but not since I’ve been back. I must admit, my job is quite odd. Firstly, it’s not your typical 9-5 Monday to Friday gig. Nope, in my job I do a lot of shift work. After a whole week of resting/recovering from my 6-week vacation, I finally started last Wednesday. Because we do something called 60-24. Therefore, 60 hours one week, and 24 hours the other, I basically started off with the 24. That means, I only worked two overnight shifts. Then I was off again for the weekend. Sometimes, I’m not a fan of the night shifts depending what other things are going on in my life, but considering that I was away from work for so long, I was quite happy to start out with night shifts. That means, I spend only four hours with the youth I work with and then it’s their bedtime. So I get the rest of the night to do administrative work and other things, but mostly I get to do whatever I want to do.

When I thought I would be working the 60 hour week next, turns out I was wrong. There’s one part of the schedule that we get to work eight- hour afternoon shifts and after the Monday through Friday has passed, we get seven days off! Am I not lucky or what?! After a long vacation, I get to take another mini vacay! Dare I say, I love my job! ..No. That would be pushing it. But I’m totally pleased about my new schedule.

Today I worked my first afternoon shift. When the first four hours of the shift passed, that was the easy part. The last part of the shift was a little more of a challenge. There I was- someone who should have been the most experienced on the unit, working with three brand new employees, but yet I felt I knew NOTHING. First, I rarely work on that unit and secondly, I was away for too long. I felt new myself. The only thing that helped was that I knew most of the youth on the unit, and with great relationship skills and rapport I built with them over the years, I was able to avoid chaos and complications. So what could have been a very challenging four hours turned out to be smooth and trouble-free. I take that back, we had minor issues, but what I consider to be trouble would be fights breaking out on the unit, staff assaults, or youth standing off and failing to comply with staff directions. We didn’t have those. Instead what we had were youth that were a little slow to follow a few directions or youth who used the phone a little longer than they should. In the big scheme of things, very minor issues as I said. In essence, you may understand why I wrote ‘trouble-free’. No reports were written, and I left uninjured. So, one day down, four more to go.

I told you my job is a little different, but it’s all part of the Canadian experience since I live here, right?