When It's Time To Leave

Change, especially big changes, can be scary.

Change means the unknown or unfamiliar. It means stepping away from the comforting and secure, taking a risk that may or may not pay off. Viewed in that light, it's unsurprising that people would stay in bad relationships, toxic work environments and unideal situations until they can no longer ignore the negative effects.

I hadn't been happy in my relationship for a long time before I actually bit the bullet and ended it. I felt like an afterthought to my partner, like I was putting in all the effort and organization to make the relationship work. We wound up arguing more than we agreed, and they always found something wrong with what I wanted to do. I'd wind up going to movies and theatre productions alone or with friends, and didn't talk to my partner about them because they'd shred everything I enjoyed about it based on what they'd read online. We were stagnating, and any attempts on my part to get out of the rut were brushed aside or ignored.

But it was my first long-term relationship; could I call it a problem when I had nothing to compare it with? I felt happy and in love when we did do things together; maybe this was just a rough patch? I'd been under some stress outside the relationship, was I just making it out to be worse than it was? If I left now, would I ever find anyone else willing to date me again?

When I did break things off, all I felt was relief. As it turns out, I asked a friend out to dinner and a movie a month later, and we've been together for over two years now, in a far healthier relationship than the last one.

It can be hard to leave a job, especially if you've struggled with unemployment in the past.

The employment statistics for Autistic people fluctuate between 15% and 34%. That's any kind of employment, be it casual, part-time or full-time. The COVID-19 Pandemic, and the number of people stood down or let go while businesses closed in Lockdown, the sheer competition for any kind of work, definitely didn't help. I've lived off Social Security Benefits before, and it's soul-crushing. The benefit has not adjusted for inflation since the 70s, so it currently exists well below the Poverty Line, and I don't qualify for many of the supplementary benefits.

I would do a lot to never have to go back to that.

So, you can see why I'd try to "tough it out" at any job I could get, even one where I was underpaid, overworked, and slandered or verbally abused.

I worked in a Disabled Independent Living facility, working primarily with four wheelchair bound people. The role was primarily domestic assistance and personal care, with some social support and transport required. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was the environment. It was shift-work, staff required 24/7/365, and the Rostering staff had a very different idea of what was involved in a Sleepover shift than the Support Workers experienced. It wasn't unusual to be scheduled for an evening shift, a sleepover, and a morning shift; 18 hours on site with two half-hour breaks. The average staff turnover was nine months, and we rarely kept a manager for more than a year.

In addition, one of the residents suffered from Psychosis and Mythomania, and none of the other residents would contradict them for fear of retaliation. Accusations of abuse, of stealing, of neglect and malice and obstruction were a weekly occurrence. They would refuse to go to an appointment and then claim that a care worker had refused to take them. Breaks would be constantly interrupted with something that needed to be done right away, only for it to be a false alarm, followed by complaints to management that staff were exceeding their allotted break time.

You can imagine the kind of stress that caused, especially when staff didn't feel safe being alone with the resident, for fear of a an accusation without witnesses. Working with vulnerable people, all complaints are documented and taken very seriously, as they should be. Too many complaints, and we could find ourselves not just fired, but blacklisted and under investigation by police.

I lasted almost five years before I quit, one of only two of the original staff.

The facility relied heavily on Casual and Agency staff to fill the gaps left by the high staff turnover. When COVID-19 hit, Support Workers - especially Casual Support Workers - had to pick a single site to work at, to minimise the risk of becoming Patient Zero in a superspreader outbreak. (Many of the early outbreaks in Aged Care homes were caused by casual workers attending multiple sites.)

This meant that the permanent staff were put on overtime to take up the slack. For three months, we were barely home except to shower and sleep, before heading straight back in. I was so burned out that when I had flu-like symptoms, I 'forgot' to ask for an expedited test, meaning I was self-isolating for 36 hours waiting for a negative result, and I spent most of those hours asleep.

Stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions made for very bored residents, who took to bullying staff to entertain themselves. My partner, the only person I saw regularly during those months, barely went a day without me venting about something. We begged the manager to hire more permanent staff, to take some of the pressure off.

The reply? "We can't do in-person interviews right now. I suppose we'll see which of you want to keep your jobs."

As it turns out, none of us were that attached to the place, especially since the boost to COVID Unemployment payments actually worked out more than most of us were making in take-home pay. I started looking at other jobs - Aged and Disability Care were Essential jobs that couldn't be done from home, and they were always short on workers - and as soon as I got hired, I got my Doctor to sign off on two weeks of medical leave for stress, and as soon as that was approved, I sent in my two weeks notice.

My co-workers followed me out the door within a month.

Change can be scary. Walking away is a risk. It's hard to step out into the unknown.

But sometimes, it's necessary.

If you liked this story, leave a heart or a tip, and follow me on Vocal and Medium!