Monday, 13/8/12.
Somehow I managed to forget to write anything for the last three days so from what I can remember;
Friday I worked .. uh, possibly 8-5pm, and then I have no idea what I did that night. I think Thorpe went to Tom’s so I stayed in. My memory is awful.
Saturday was my usual 11 – 8pm and then we went to Bar Red to watch Vex play (or rather, most people sat outside) so no time for an entry. Dave and Chris both got thrown out, Dave for being too drunk (which he was) and Chris for throwing up on someone. Yes, you read that right. It was a good night though, and no hangover, wahey!
Yesterday we did a big shop at Tesco which came to £130 and then thanks to coupons and discount we got it down to £78, bargain. Considering it included a deep fat fryer for £30 and a game for Thorpe for £32 I don’t think we did too badly!
Then we had Tom over in the afternoon for a roast and we played some Castle Crashers, then Christina and Sarah popped over in the evening as well. All in all, a nice day.
Today I had my first day of training for my new job as a support worker. Well… suffice to say, it was a bit of a shambles I’ll try to summarise.
I got there at 10:15am as instructed and there were 9 other girls who had been taken on as well. They’re all really lovely. As it turned out, some of them had been interviewed as long as two months ago and offered the job then but were only now getting their training which was a bit like … well, why has it taken Caremark so long to get everyone trained? But anyway, we started with the trainer, Bill, talking about manual handling and he informed us we’d be going to Amberly Hall (local care home, and not a very good one) at 1pm to practice using the hoists which was news to us! Even the girls who had been sent letters in the post asking them to attend the training sessions hadn’t been told this.
Anyway, we got there and we were supposed to be using the hoists to get each other out of a bed and all the equipment was meant to be in a room waiting for us, only … it wasn’t. And it was left to one of us, Jayne, to ring Kate at the office and ask her what was going on. Kate got annoyed with Amberly Hall because apparently they’re a big let down and have done this before and eventually they bought us a hoist in. We got one of the other girls, Jodie, into it and Mel (another one of the girls who actually works at Amberly Hal but is desperate to leave) started to show us how to hoist her and the battery started dying so she had to stop. Fucking ridiculous.
By this point us girls had started discussing what we’d been told at our interviews and it seems like we’d all got different information – some had been told we were doing our shadowing at Amberly Hall, some had already had their CRBs done and others hadn’t, we didn’t know about the training, etc. It also seemed like Bill was teaching us the manual handling in relation to a care home setting but of course we’re not going to be working in a care home and I doubt you’ll find many people with a hoist in their own home, plus it takes two people to use it anyway. We had a little group chat afterwards and decided tomorrow morning we’re going to meet at 10am in the car park and come up with some questions that we want answers to before we continue with our training because we’re not happy. There seems to be a lack of communication, nobody knows what hours they’re working or when we start and I said I’m not paying £64 for a CRB if I’m only going to be given 5 hours a week.
So… yeah. A bit disappointed. If it does turn out it was just a communication error and I can be guaranteed full-time hours and get my shadowing done in a client’s house then great, but I think our worry is that there aren’t going to be enough hours for everyone and people are concerned about whether to hand in their notice at their current jobs or not. If I’m only on part time hours at Caremark then I’ll need to stay at Tesco too and that’ll change the hours I’m available. We shall have to see what tomorrow brings, but at least all of the girls I met today were really friendly.