The Part Where S*it Gets Real

Three hours. That's all it took to get hired.

I wrote about it here... the e-meet I joined two minutes late, the absence of credentials, the clean T-shirt standing in for everything I didn't have.

They called by three. Situational awareness, they said. Better answers than people who'd been doing this for years.

I admit... I was proud!

The whole thing moved fast. Interview Monday, offer same afternoon, induction booked for the week after, Thursday. The gap between getting the job and doing the job was about seventy-two hours. Not enough time to get comfortable. Probably by design.

There's a difference between support work and support work.

I'd learned that intellectually before Thursday. I understood it the way you understand cold water before you step into the sea... as a concept, at a safe distance. Pruning gardens. Mopping floors. Dusting blinds. Useful, yes. Meaningful, in its way.

But not this.

Thursday was my induction at the company that's taken me on casual as a disability support worker, the kind that deals in actual human need.

Two hours.

A room with three recruits: a bloke, a woman, and me. The other two had done some of this before. They had the unhurried energy of people who'd already crossed the threshold I was still standing in front of.

I was fresh meat. It was obvious.

We started with the hoisting machine.

A harness. A volunteer. We took turns. The manual dexterity of it is learnable. The weight of what it represents is something else. I stood there absorbing the mechanics while a part of my brain was whirring: this is someone's body. Someone's morning. Someone's whole day.

Then came the rest of it. How the company operates. Emergency procedures. What to watch for. Red flags, escalation paths, incident reports. A two-hour session designed to compress years of institutional knowledge into something a newcomer could carry out the door.

"That's a lot to remember", I blurted.

The nurse who trained us assured me, "You won't remember everything I said. You'll learn better during your buddy shift when you shadow an experienced worker. That's where all the learning happens."

The other two said something that helped.

The first time's always like this. The clients have their routines, the buddy system exists for a reason, it'll be clockwork. You'll do fine.

Because here's what I keep coming back to: this isn't a job where you can afford to over-scrub something and just blow the clock. The stakes are different.

They said they'll stay in touch with me about my first Buddy Shift.

Nervous? Yes.

But the good kind... the kind that means you understand what you've signed up for. And that this will all make a difference.

I'll keep you posted.