Welcome to the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter.
We are glad you are here, but, please don’t bother us while we are working.
We realize that you might be from a background that makes it difficult for you to follow every little rule. In order to make your stay here as short and un-troubling as possible, we have a spate of rules that we show you on paper, another rash of additional rules scotch-taped to the walls and doors, and a flood of decrees that are hidden in the recesses of the shelter director’s mind.
We will make it so difficult and so weird for you to be here that you will want to leave by the time we kick you out, and you will embrace the underside of a bridge or the opportunity to sink unnoticed into the silent, homeless mob.
We fire the staff members who believe you are a miracle, and prefer to consider you somehow involved with drugs.
Those big hugs we give you are just our way of searching for weapons and detecting beer on your breath.
We are really looking for 30 or 40 perfectly behaved, well-groomed, rule-abiding and cowtowing homeless people.
If you are not such a one, don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya.
– Management
Showing posts with label weirdness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weirdness. Show all posts
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Why Leadership Resents The People They Are Supposed To Help
The other day a friend of mine rhetorically asked, “Why is it that you find so many people in the people-helping professions the most cynical and bitter toward the people they are supposed to be helping?”
I don’t know, but he got me to thinking.
In my own experience, I have known a teacher who disliked children, a businesswoman who disliked customers, a welfare worker who resents the poor, a pastor who had no patience with people who had spiritual problems, and, now most certainly, a homeless shelter director who treats homeless veterans and non-veterans as though she despises them for their need.
By comparison, she makes Cinderella’s step-mother seem like Jesus.
By contrast, I know Jesus to be one who will peel away the rotten and base things within us to find in us his image, and dignify us with his love and care. Even laying aside one’s religious views, we have a certain onus upon us to take care of the people who edge into our line of sight. This is the very essence of compassion – strangely absent in a place where compassion would be the most healing, the most helpful, the most human response to individuals suffering from many losses, including a certain perceived disenfranchisement from the norms of society.
I am very disappointed to report that compassion is discouraged at the Volunteers of American Sheridan Homeless Shelter, and that people are routinely questioned, accused, brow-beaten, scolded and kicked out for no reason – all from the director’s office
If there really is such a thing as client resentment disease, the CDC would have a heyday here.
I don’t know, but he got me to thinking.
In my own experience, I have known a teacher who disliked children, a businesswoman who disliked customers, a welfare worker who resents the poor, a pastor who had no patience with people who had spiritual problems, and, now most certainly, a homeless shelter director who treats homeless veterans and non-veterans as though she despises them for their need.
By comparison, she makes Cinderella’s step-mother seem like Jesus.
By contrast, I know Jesus to be one who will peel away the rotten and base things within us to find in us his image, and dignify us with his love and care. Even laying aside one’s religious views, we have a certain onus upon us to take care of the people who edge into our line of sight. This is the very essence of compassion – strangely absent in a place where compassion would be the most healing, the most helpful, the most human response to individuals suffering from many losses, including a certain perceived disenfranchisement from the norms of society.
I am very disappointed to report that compassion is discouraged at the Volunteers of American Sheridan Homeless Shelter, and that people are routinely questioned, accused, brow-beaten, scolded and kicked out for no reason – all from the director’s office
If there really is such a thing as client resentment disease, the CDC would have a heyday here.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Oh My Heavens, There She Is!
It finally happened.
I saw the woman who directs the homeless shelter face-to-face at Wal-mart Saturday.
It was bound to happen sooner or later, as Sheridan is not a vast metropolis where you can get lost in the crowd. Someone in the crowd usually knows your mom, taught you in school, knows your daughter, or just knows your car.
It was she and her husband and maybe an offspring.
She was all smiles and said, “Tim, how AAARRRE you.”
“Fine.”
“We sure miss you at the shelter.”
“Oh, you do not,” I said, smiling (or sneering, I can’t remember).
“Of course we do,” she said.
“Well,” I paused to decide whether to argue, then said, “That’s nice.”
“I really do wish you the best,” she said cheerily.
Since that isn’t a complete sentence, I am supposing she meant “funeral you’ve ever had,” or, “case of some quick and lethal disease.”
At any rate, even a crude, horrible man such as myself can appreciate her civility, even though it was an opaque façade. Even psychos can be nice sometimes. She might have been in a good mood because she just kicked somebody out of the shelter. That really gets her endorphins going.
Had I had the presence of mind (never happens when it needs to) I could have asked:
1. Does this mean you are going to pick up the telephone now, when your caller ID says it’s me?
2. Are going to allow staff to talk to me when I call?
3. Are you going to call the resident to the phone who I want to talk to?
4. Are you going to allow me on the property at the shelter without calling the VA Police to escort me away for trespassing?
5. Are you going to stop grilling residents about whether they have been in contact with Tim Cummings to cause trouble?
Naw, she doesn’t miss me THAT much!
I saw the woman who directs the homeless shelter face-to-face at Wal-mart Saturday.
It was bound to happen sooner or later, as Sheridan is not a vast metropolis where you can get lost in the crowd. Someone in the crowd usually knows your mom, taught you in school, knows your daughter, or just knows your car.
It was she and her husband and maybe an offspring.
She was all smiles and said, “Tim, how AAARRRE you.”
“Fine.”
“We sure miss you at the shelter.”
“Oh, you do not,” I said, smiling (or sneering, I can’t remember).
“Of course we do,” she said.
“Well,” I paused to decide whether to argue, then said, “That’s nice.”
“I really do wish you the best,” she said cheerily.
Since that isn’t a complete sentence, I am supposing she meant “funeral you’ve ever had,” or, “case of some quick and lethal disease.”
At any rate, even a crude, horrible man such as myself can appreciate her civility, even though it was an opaque façade. Even psychos can be nice sometimes. She might have been in a good mood because she just kicked somebody out of the shelter. That really gets her endorphins going.
Had I had the presence of mind (never happens when it needs to) I could have asked:
1. Does this mean you are going to pick up the telephone now, when your caller ID says it’s me?
2. Are going to allow staff to talk to me when I call?
3. Are you going to call the resident to the phone who I want to talk to?
4. Are you going to allow me on the property at the shelter without calling the VA Police to escort me away for trespassing?
5. Are you going to stop grilling residents about whether they have been in contact with Tim Cummings to cause trouble?
Naw, she doesn’t miss me THAT much!
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