Stuck in the middle

When I started my new job I wondered how I would fill my time all day. It's not like I've ever been an administrator before. The problem with being the highest ranking employee at the facility is there's nobody around to ask what you should be doing. On the other hand, the great thing about being the highest ranking employee is that nobody is around to tell you what you should be doing. Well...at least that's how I thought it would be.

In reality the exact opposite is true. EVERYBODY tells me what I should be doing. John thinks I should be fixing the schedules for the kitchen so that he gets the days off that he wants. Mary thinks my time would be better spent improving the menu while Susan continues to ask me about installing a new boiler. Julie has a full list of things that I should be doing for her mother at no additional cost of course. And my favorite, Ed thinks my highest priority should be purchasing a jukebox for the lobby. That doesn't even factor in the emails & phone calls that I receive from both my boss and corporate with their renditions of what I should be doing.

I'm quickly learning that being at the top is really being in the middle with nowhere to go. I used to be able to say "You'll have to talk to my boss about that." Now my best defense is, "Let me think about it." With so many people trying to tell me what I should be doing I'm reminded of the meeting where it was announced that I would be the new administrator. After the cheers died down a resident approached me, congratulated me, and added, "Right now your approval rating is 100%. It can only go down from here."

With that level of support, it's easy to get discouraged. Menus, schedules, and even jukeboxes were not why I got into gerontology. Is this really the best fit? Is there another job working with seniors where they won't call me on the weekends when a pipe bursts? Probably. But then I have those moments like the one I had yesterday as I was leaving work. For 3 days I had taken the financial statements home with me with the best of intentions of working on them in the evening. I was busy convincing myself that this would finally be the evening that I actually did something about them when a resident stopped me. As I braced myself for a complaint, a problem, or at the very least a suggestion he said, "You're a beautiful person, you know that? Everybody is happier since you came."

It didn't matter if everybody believed it. The fact that he believed it was enough for me that night. For the first time I actually pulled the financial statements out when I got home. While I was at it I made some steps towards a plan that I hope will both improve the menu and fix the scheduling problems in the kitchen. I did not, however, find any extra money for the jukebox. Sorry, Ed. Maybe next time. I'll see if Julie is willing to pay for some of those extra services, but I'm making no promises. After all, I still have to purchase a boiler too.