Yesterday turned
into a nightmare day.
As you probably
realise by now, Tuesday is our home care day. Our usual lady, Linda, always
arrives about the same time & leaves accordingly. Unfortunately yesterday
she was off sick & another person was sent.
At 10.10am the phone
went. It was N, to let me know she was on her way from Lancaster. I enquired
was this late for being here for 10am or early for 10.30. She assured me it was
the former.
By 10.45 I rang up
the head office. There was no sign of N. Was I now supposed to be paying this
person for 2 hours when she clearly was spending at least one hour just getting
to us? They rang up N, rang me back to say she would be arriving any minute but
I was to have the full 2 hours from when she arrived.
Come 11.45, I concluded
I would give her until noon, then I would ring the office & suggest it was
just cancelled at no charge to us, as we had things to do in the afternoon.
11.50 I get a ring.
N. She was knocking & ringing the bell but no one was answering. I assured
her nobody was knocking or ringing the bell at our door. What was the
address she was at? There are various roads around us with the same first part
of the address – roads, avenues, groves etc. Sure enough she’d gone to the
wrong one. I gave her directions from there to here. She arrived ten minutes
later.
It’s always
stressful having a different person come. Much energy is spent showing them
where things are & what needs doing. This time my morale was not much
boosted by hearing her woes, how she’d got the wrong bus which was why she was
so late. Then her mobile kept ringing – the office, complaining about how long
she’d taken & her 12 noon appointment was already enquiring where her carer
was. To be honest the work was done reasonably well, but by then I was in such
pain, & so tired I sat resting my head on the door jamb while explaining
what needed doing. She duly left around 2pm.
The Fox meanwhile
was itching to get on with the food shop. He was ready to go at 1pm but I wasn’t
prepared to let N go before 1.45pm (with some travel time to her next client).
We finally got to the supermarket. We found wat we needed fairly easily. We got
to the till.
We joined a queue –
we didn’t fancy the self-service ones when we had a full week’s shopping. There
was one queue that seemed fairly short. One person was on the way through &
there was just one other person with about three items. Unfortunately, after
the first customer paid, a member of staff butted in to have something put
through the till as “training”. The cashier had no idea how to do this. The
lady at the next till tried to explain. She still couldn’t do it. Eventually
the member of staff decided to try one of the other tills. The man in front of
us had his goods worked through. Now the till wouldn’t open as it had been set
for “training” purposes. A supervisor had to be called to sort out the till
again & his items of shopping had to be unpacked & passed through
again.
We stood/sat &
looked at each other. This was just not our day.
Eventually we got
through.
We went on to the
butcher to buy some chicken for today’s dinner. Wednesday is early closing day
here so the shop is closed today. We went in. No chicken breasts on display. Lately
there has been a shortage of chicken thighs. Is there now a shortage of breasts?
It was with relief that we heard there was plenty. They were just filling up
the tray.
I’m not sure we
could cope with too many days like yesterday. I rang up the office of the care
provider this morning & told them, if they were so short staffed that this
was the best they could do, would they please ring & give us the option of
cancelling the service that week at no charge. (You usually have to give them
24 hours’ notice of cancellation or you will be charged regardless.) We could manage without a clean for one week.
It is obviously more important that people who need more personal care –
washing, feeding, getting up – get their care, but what happened this week was
more than we can cope with & more than we are prepared to cope with in
future.
