“I must be America’s worst nightmare.”
He was dressed in jeans and a baggy grey sweatshirt, with shoulder-length hair combed neatly back. A red gym bag covered the tops of his Converse. His voice was steady, good-humored even, but the hands that moved restlessly in his lap belied his anxiety.
The worker turned away from her computer to give him a steady look. “No, you’re not.” She smiled, “You’re gonna be okay. Okay?” He absentmindedly ran his hands through his hair and then smiled back and nodded, looking a little more confident.
Sitting in the back, an observer during this interview, I tried putting myself in his shoes: I was 30-something, going through a divorce, and crashing at my uncle’s apartment while I looked for a job. My unemployment insurance benefits had ended several months ago and with no other income I couldn’t afford to buy food. So here I was, at the welfare office, applying for food stamps. Even though these troubles were not mine, their weight crushed me; I could feel my body begin to slouch in the chair and there was an unusual pressure on my chest. I struggled to sit comfortably.
As an Eligibility Worker in the Public Assistance branch of the county government I find myself in the middle of chaos and hardship. I’m the one responsible for determining whether clients are eligible for a variety of public assistance programs (e.g., CalFresh (food stamps), Medi-Cal, General Assistance, CalWORKs, etc) and despite the laws and policies and regulations–or because of them–it’s almost always a “grey area” kind of job where confusion has a free reign.
During my interview for the position I was asked what I thought would be challenging given the nature of the work. At the time I came up with two concerns:
- I was afraid of miscalculating budgets, especially ones that would result in an eligible/ineligible client being deemed ineligible/eligible.
- I was not looking forward to having to turn clients away when I knew they needed help but who were legally ineligible for public assistance (this happens for a variety of reasons, such as being undocumented or making even a few dollars more than the income cutoff).
After a week of shadowing seasoned Eligibility Workers, I realized there was a third very real challenge: learning how to do my job without becoming emotionally involved.
I know it sounds horrible, but hear me out. Eligibility work is incredibly draining. Each case worker has about 500-700 clients and is constantly seeing people shuffle in and out their office. Most of these clients have very compelling reasons for being on welfare, and those reasons are never pleasant. Imagine interviewing hundreds of clients and listening to all their stories…it’s enough to make anybody go crazy; and yet there are so many amazing individuals who do that job every day.
I’m not saying that I wish I didn’t care or that I wish I wasn’t capable of caring…I very much want to care! The whole reason I’m venturing into this field instead of going to medical school like I had planned (mom if you’re reading this…sorry, but I don’t regret it) is because I want to better understand the social and environmental roots of disease and poverty in order to alleviate problems down the road. Being an Eligibility Worker gives me the opportunity to interact with those most affected by these social and environmental factors, and I find it hard to believe that anybody who spends time with these clients doesn’t care about their well-being.
So it’s hard for me not to feel for a guy who thinks he’s “America’s worst nightmare” (I have other issues concerning the implications of that statement, but that’s a post for another time). Anyway, what I want is to be able to empathize with my clients while at the same time maintaining a degree of objectivity.
I’m sure if the Eligibility Workers could read this they would roll their eyes at my wishful thinking and say wryly, “Good luck with that.” So, I’m going to say something now that I may or may not change my mind about down the line (the cool thing about desires and hopes and dreams is that they’re constantly in flux since they represent a “you” that is invariably changing over time). I want to document it now (and what better way than to post it on the interwebs for everyone to see…) so I can look back days (weeks? months? years?) from now and see how much (or how little) I’ve changed. So here goes: I know this makes me sound naive, but I’m determined to find that balance between empathy and aloofness.
And if I can’t, I’m okay with erring in favor of the emotional drain. When it comes down to it, I chose this field because it excites me; the people I work with inspire me; the people that need me motivate me. As long as that holds true, it’s worth it. So I’ll keep checking back to see where I stand. Maybe I’ll still have the same passion for this job; if I don’t, I hope I will have learned from it and be able to find something else that kindles that same passion. Either way, I’m gonna be okay. Okay?
