I started working for a company last week that cares for elderly and disabled people in their homes. I have a lot of experience doing this. They assigned me to a man who uses a hoyer lift, because I have experience using one. On Thursday, I was scheduled 6 hours to shadow his main caregiver so she could train me. She works Monday through Thursday, but he requires 24/7 care. The client and his main caregiver are both Hispanic, not that it matters but it matters in this story.
She asked me if I speak Spanish. I explained that I took Spanish in high school and college but never learned conversational Spanish. I often listen to the Spanish radio station and get frustrated because I literally know all the words but can’t put them together to understand the conversation. She asked me, “well didn’t you speak it in the home?” I told her no, my grandparents were all from Greece. My parents both grew up speaking Greek in the home and I started learning Greek at age 7 and Spanish at age 15. I could see her cringing a little, maybe she thought I was Hispanic and was disappointed that I wasn’t. Later on through the day as she showed me her way of doing things, she complained about other caregivers doing the things a different way. She blatantly called them “black girls.” When showing me how she does laundry, she said “Only put a half a cup of detergent don’t be like these black girls and do a whole cup.” And to scrub things with clorox wipes when the client was sleeping “don’t be just sitting on your phone all day like these black girls.” The third time she mentioned race was when talking about me and saying “I’m just glad they didn’t send a black girl.”
I can’t imagine being so racist that you aren’t afraid to show it to someone you literally just met. I then remembered telling her my ethnicity before I discovered she was a racist and being worried she’d have a problem with me. The next day was yesterday and the first thing that went wrong was that she told me the wrong time to pick him up from dialysis. She was very insistent that I get there at 11:10 am on the dot no earlier and no later. 10:45 rolls around and I get a call saying he’s been waiting for me to pick him up from dialysis. I was supposed to pick him up at 10: I was immediately skeptical that she told me the wrong time on purpose. Throughout the day, I kept discovering little things (minor household things) she told me that were the opposite of true. I was scheduled to work with him graveyard shift tonight and tomorrow night. But I got a call from the office saying that I was not a good fit for this client and that he’s be happy to schedule me with other clients. I told him that I was very uneasy Friday because of the racist comments. He was very apologetic (the boss at the office). But I just feel like- what just happened here?