Hayley's Comments

Introspection on Healing, Vegetarianism, and Life

Hayley Rose

Hayley Rose
HayleysComments.com, Connecticut, TheVeggieStand.com
December 31
I was born when Halley’s Comet last appeared overhead and named accordingly. Since then, I've become a writer, artist, and columnist. In addition to Open Salon, my work appears frequently in The Huffington Post, All Things Healing, Gender Across Borders: A Global Feminist Blog, and several other publications. I blog daily at my site HayleysComments.com I recently published my first book, "I Know Why They Call a Shell a Shell." The book is about domestic violence, a topic that I am very vocal about. It chronicles my journey away from tumultuous love affairs by weaving stories of her past with stories from literature, music, and visual art of both modern and classical significance. Find me on Twitter @HRoseStudios


Editor’s Pick
APRIL 28, 2011 1:29AM

The People You Meet While Working in a Nursing Home

Rate: 9 Flag

Years ago I worked as a receptionist for slave wages at a local nursing home. For the most part, I had nothing in common with anyone. I made a few friends in the office. They were great people but were all familied and coupled up, much older than me, and we remained nothing more than work friends. The office workers were friendly for the most part but pretty miserable when it came to their jobs. I couldn't blame them. After the billing department wrestled my yearly raise of 35 cents per hour down to 25 cents, and then the following year from 35 cents to 15, I couldn't imagine how they'd been treated over the years.

The nurses at this facility were the best paid on the staff, but were the meanest and nastiest of them all. They used to come to my desk and boss me around, put this away, call this person, look this up in the phone book. Eventually I started to bark back, “What?” I'd say, and they'd repeat their command. I'd raise my eyebrows and stare them down until they put a “please” in front of their sentence, then I'd glare at them as they walked away and mumble obscenities to myself.

The nurses aids were some of the sweetest and nicest people who worked there. They too made slave wages like I did and had to wipe peoples butts!

Then there were the housekeepers, a group of men who took out the trash and otherwise cleaned the facility. They had one dirty job, but were some of the nicest most pleasant people who worked at the nursing home. They seemed happy to be there and everybody loved them, though, I can't imagine that they made much more that I did, this was after all, a tight fisted non-unionized facility.

There was one housekeeper who always exchanged pleasantries with me. He was an older man and a Jamaican immigrant. On Saturdays, when management wasn't around, he'd stand by my desk for prolonged periods of time and tell me stories about his family and about the corrupt Jamaican government.  Sometimes, he'd ask about me and what I wanted to do with my life. I wearily told him about my art and writing. I told him just a little, because I was so used to negative reactions from people. They'd either voice their disapproval of my choices,  look at me like they felt bad for me, or like they thought I was nutsMy friend didn't say anything harsh like the other people, or roll his eyes. In fact, he never seemed to have a bad thing to say about anyone or anything, even though he had a very hard life. I was impressed by his positive attitude and he often recounted the following to me,

“The time to be happy is now,

the place to be happy is here.

The way to be happy is make others happy

and have a little heaven down here.”

The most miserable people that worked in the facility were the dietary aids who worked in the kitchen. For the most part they were back biting older women who lived unhappy lives. One summer, I needed more hours so I elected to work in the kitchen. The women, who seemed otherwise benign when they visited my office, weren't so nice in the kitchen. In fact, one woman had no problem throwing utensils at me when I tried to assist her with washing the dishes. It's not surprising they had no patience for my confusion as I attempted to fill the trays with the correct dietary orders.

That is why one day, when I when I was back working at my desk and a beautiful foreign girl came to my office to get a key, I was shocked to learn that she was worked in that kitchen. Like me, she didn't seem to belong there.

I was aware that I didn't fit in there from the beginning, when I desperately took the job, after dropping out of art school. Unable to find anything else, and grief stricken after losing my grandmother, I didn't know what to do with myself. Sometimes when I worked late, and no one was in the office, I'd stand by the big window and watch the sun go down. I'd think to myself what am I doing here? And more importantly, how am I ever going to get out? 

Soon, I began talking to the new girl, she was likely another person who slaved away in the nursing home for a low wage. Unlike me, she had to wake up at the crack of dawn to get to work, while I got to leisurely stroll in around 7:30. It turns out, my new friend was from a faraway city called Prishtina. The name had a beautiful ring to it, especially when she said it with her Eastern European accent. There was nothing light and airy about the place with a beautiful name. It was the scene of a violent war in Kosovo, where women and children were murdered and raped in their homes, and entire families were killed. She lived through the war and came to this country years later as a refugee.

Before moving to the US, she studied art in a very prestigious university in the city with the beautiful name. She was one of the top artists in her class and specialized in abstract print making. She was about to enroll in their masters program after completing her bachelor's, but in a split decision, came to the US to follow her other dream of living in the States and learning fluent English.

The more she told me, the more I felt like she was the last person on Earth who should be spending their entire day trapped in a kitchen with three nasty old women. She knew it too, but was resolved to the fact that for the time being, it was what she had to do. Each day, she kept herself going through her dream of one day having her own art exhibition.

Sometimes I would go to her apartment for Turkish coffee. Turkish coffee was much different than what I typically drank. It was made by adding finely powdered coffee to boiling water, the grounds would sink to the bottom of the cup, sugar would be added, and then it was ready to drink. She served the coffee in these tiny intricately painted cups with gold leaf trim and matching saucers. The way we chatted and sipped from the delicate china was reminiscent of little girls having a tea party.

The first time she came over my house for lunch, I jumped at the chance to make her coffee, American style. I had just bought a bag of strawberry shortcake flavored Dunkin' Donuts coffee, too. I brewed the coffee, and poured it into an oversized mug, then mixed it with French vanilla creamer. I laughed to myself as I thought about how refined her coffee was and how boisterous mine seemed in comparison. Regardless, it was all part of the cultural experience, and I think she enjoyed my coffee as much as I liked hers.

Towards the end of my tenure as a receptionist at one of the least favorite jobs I've ever had, a coworker came to my desk and invited me to a party. I was tired of the politics of the job and in a really bad mood that day, I just didn't want to be bothered. I lifted my brow in shock when she told me it was a going away party for Mr. Smith.  A going away party? It was a rare occurrence that a resident ever permanently left the building, unless of course, it was with the undertaker.

“A going away party?” I scoffed at my coworker, knowing that people rarely left the facility, “Where is he going?” I demanded with sass.

“He is going to die. He has a brain tumor.” I swallowed hard, and without saying anything else, asked her to watch my desk. I walked over to the dining room where they were having the party. The room was full of balloons. People sat around a long rectangular table eating cake. At the head of the table was the guest of honor, Mr. Smith.  I was still trying to think of something to say to him, as I approached, “What a beautiful party,” was the most innocuous thing I could come up with.

“Why thank-you, “ he said, “Have a piece of cake or two. Have as many as you'd like.” I just smiled and said thank-you.

 To read more articles by Hayley please visit Hayley's Comments.


Your tags:


Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Recipient's email address:
Personal message (optional):

Your email address:


Type your comment below:
Interesting take on the nursing home experience. I was an Activity Director in a small nursing home in Alaska for six years. We had less that twenty residents. We had fun! I helped the Nurses Aides sometimes and the Nurses. I agree that nurses are nasty and the Aides were angels. The maintenance people were jewels and the kitchen was a nightmare. But my job in Activities we perfect for my artistic nature. I decorated that place so much that the fire department couldn't keep up with all the things i did. Like we made a hundred paper daffodils to put in the hallways along the floor. Or we created giant paper palm trees and had Hawaii week in the cold Alaskan winters. If you do get a chance to go into a nursing home again, look for the activity people. There aren't very many of them and yet for me it was one of the best jobs I ever had.
Can you believe it Zanelle- I did work in recreation too- but for some reason didn't think to mention it- maybe because it was more of a neutral experience than something that really stood out in my mind as really good or really bad. One of the jobs I did in recreation was call the bingo letters/numbers. The residents would get steaming mad at me if I didn't call the numbers fast enough
I used to volunteer in one. This is great Hayley adn congrats on the EP!!
rated with hugs
This was personally painful for me to read. Though I haven't worked in a nursing home I've worked in many jobs that had similar heirarchies, especially in the last decade. I have no education so I've resigned myself to being lower level as this is the way many people now get ahead. These types stay at their jobs eternally working their way up the food chain. It seems to be predominantly women but there's no way around it, upper level management doesn't concern itself with the peons. They just get new ones.

Sometimes you get lucky and one will have a husband with a job transfer or they get very ill and never come back to work. At my last job one was so horrible they had to can her in an ugly way, it was actually really fun to see and the rest quieted down for a short time. A month later the second witch in command had a husband nearly die and she was gone for two months. It was a wonderful two months for many of us until he recovered and she returned. For the most part it's best to avoid them, if you piss them off they'll gang up and get you fired. There are just too many of them running wild and they enjoy causing suffering. Idaho is a very Red State so it's really bad here. I try not to think about the next job, but soon I'll be forced to get another one.
While I agree with some of you experiences at "that" nursing home, it's not that way at all of then, at least the one my mother worked in for over 15 years. She worked in the kitchen as a dietary aide and I met all the ladies who worked there. They were all nice and even worked overtime with no pay to get the kitchen clean like it was supposed to be. The pay was crummy and if she got a dime raise on the hour every year she was lucky. Having no education, she had to quit to take care of her siblings, she worked hard all her life and always has and had a smile for everyone. She also didn't like the nurses, who thought they owned the place. But her crew in the kitchen were really good people!
Scanner, It's true that every place is different, and the details of my couldn't possibly be universal.

Linda Thank-you!

l'Heure, it's sad but true huh.
What an odd thing to do. Have a going away party for an elderly man who has brain tumor??? It sounds like quite an experience working there. There are hard people to work with every where you go....
Congratulations on the EP!
It must take a special kind of personality to work in a nursing home - not just being kind, but also being strong. I don't know if I could have done what you did, Hayley. But you learned a lot and widened your world I'm sure. I was surprised too at the end as I never heard of a 'going away party' of that kind.
Fantastic post Hayley. It made me glad I logged on tonight. I hadn't planned on it, but the computer was on, and I just had to check in. What an incredible story. I worked in a nursing home during my nursing training. I did wipe butts, which wasn't as bad as it sounds. Thanks for writing this post with such humanity and grace. Great job!
Fusun- Thank-you so much. It was the first time I'd heard of such a party as well, and I should've mentioned that he was the one who wanted to throw the party! Which just shows what an amazing person he was :)

Rei - Thanks Rei! I really wanted to express the variety of people I met while working there and how amazing some of them were, and how others were just needlessly unkind. I guess it just goes to show that you can choose to have a good attitude or choose to have a bad one.
So ... what happened to the girl from Prishtina ?
I'm glad you found a friend at the nursing home. My mom is in one now and luckily for her and me, the nurses on her floor are wonderful and most of the aides as well--those are the people who really count in her life. I like the nutritionist, social worker and activity director as well. I guess bad apples can be found in every walk of life.