That is how I would put it nicely.  I absolutely abhor (or some other synonym which even further demonstrates my hatred) my father’s caregiver.  He had both his legs amputated before I graduated college, so more than 3 years ago now.  He has made no effort to rehab himself to a point where he can… I dunno… take care of himself.  Mom took care of him and my brother and I helped out when we could.  Then Mom died.  So Corey and I had no option but to pay agencies to send caregivers each day so he can be utterly dependent upon them in lieu of us. (Okay, there is the option of sending him to an assisted-living facility… but I can’t do that to my father.  He hadn’t been the greatest male figure in my formative years, but I can’t put him in a “home”)

Anyway, caregivers come through here like we’ve got a revolving front door…. either by their own crappy work ethic (no-showing) or Dad exercising his rights as a well-minded-senior-citizen and firing them because he has a bad day.  After a year of this, I managed to get him on a State program with Medicaid which provides much more care in exchange for a cost share.  It helps since he has no retirement pension of his own (he’s the beneficiary of Mom’s) and is drawing Social Security early as his sole source of income.

The whole point of the caregiver is to provide me and my brother some help so we can work and have a social life… ideally until he can become less dependent on others.  This includes his personal needs, cooking for him and doing a little housework each day.  The girl who has been coming for most of this year has progressively gotten lazier and unprofessional in my eyes.

She makes grocery lists and goes to the store whenever she feels like it even though I buy what we need once a week, that gets expensive when you’re on a budget.  She doesn’t clean-up very well after cooking, I can’t find anything in my own house anymore, she has folded and stored clean-yet-still-damp towels in the bathroom a couple of times, and instead running a Swiffer over our floor occasionally she’ll watch Maury while dinner is cooking or talk to my Dad about the ghetto drama going on in her life.  (I’ve always hated listening to ghetto drama and gossip in my previous jobs… now it’s in my house.  Watching my TV.  On the clock.)

Dad likes her, so I’ve expressed my concerns to him in hopes that he’ll pass the info along.  If he did, she must not have been listening.  I guess she figures that since he’s in bed all day then he doesn’t know what goes on outside of their direct interactions… so she’s can do as much (or as little) as she wants and do it in a manner that she wants.  Because of this, I don’t talk to her anymore… if I did it wouldn’t be pretty.

In a nutshell, instead of helping Corey and me it’s been a big cause of stress because I’m constantly angry at her.  I come home from work in the evening and she’s here doing her thing and I’m immediately struck with a wave of irritability.  So I’ve been very dodgy lately and avoid being in the house at the same time.  I’ll stay late at work or leave early in the morning.  I’ll spend a lot of time at J’s.  Tonight I came home, saw her car in the driveway and turned around and hung out at Wal-Mart for an hour.

I realize that anyone we get in here isn’t going to meet the high standards I expect in the workplace, because quite frankly, if they met those standards they might not be in this line of work.  We haven’t exactly had a lot of winners here as I mentioned earlier.  I just see it as disrespectful to me (and my Mom) that, in an effort to help me, I ask you to do things the way I’d do them (and the way my Mom always did them) and you almost purposefully disregard my requests…. and then wonder why I don’t like you.