Jane said she would only go to sleep if she could get room service.
So I obliged, bringing a cup of tea and biscuits to her bed and reminding her what time breakfast would be served.
But this wasn’t a hotel. Jane had dementia and would often forget that she was in a care home and that I was a carer on a night shift – not a concierge.
This scenario might sound strange, but it was the only way to convince her to go to rest that night – to play along with her imagination and ensure she was happy and was going to get enough sleep.
You see, I’m now a professional stand-up comedian, actor, and writer, but my media degree didn’t allow me to get here immediately. Despite believing that I could just email the BBC upon finishing my degree and they’d jump at the chance to hire me, I graduated in 2013 and I’m still waiting for their reply.
Most of my peers went into retail work and I decided I’d try doing something that seemed more rewarding. That was how I ended up applying for a job at a care home.
Even at the time, the process of getting the job felt a bit too easy. I applied online and got an interview a few days later. It wasn’t anything like those job interviews they do on The Apprentice, more of a nice casual chat, which went well.
Then, after a multiple-choice quiz about dementia and a couple of weeks shadowing another carer, this 21-year-old with a media degree and no real world experience was suddenly responsible for keeping people alive in exchange for £6.50 an hour.
Initially I really enjoyed the work, I liked developing friendships with the residents and earning a real sense of responsibility. I don’t think there’s anything like that kind of job. It’s a pretty unique experience to care for people with dementia who think you’re a guest in their house. You just have to go along with it.
The work itself, the poor pay and the ethics of the home eventually made me fall out of love with it
As well as Jane, one of the residents who became one of my best friends in the home was a man called Barry who was completely blind, going deaf, in a wheelchair, and he had to have an oxygen machine nearby.
When I was first introduced to him, a senior carer (with a northern accent) said, ‘This is Bilal’ and he responded with, ‘Al?’ I corrected him but when he misheard me for the second time, I just shrugged. ‘Yeah, it’s Al.’ And that became Barry’s name for me. If he ever asked for ‘Al’, everyone knew he was talking about me.
Barry was Jewish and would often ask me if I was Jewish too. No matter how many times I told him I wasn’t, he always assumed I was. He once asked me what I would be doing for Yom Kippur and, without blinking, I replied, ‘the usual.’
It was a long night shift on the dementia floor, but it wasn’t boring. Sometimes residents would get anxious, even aggressive.
One Monday morning, I was with six other carers on the early shift. We’d just finished getting everyone out of bed, showered and ready for the day – then it all kicked off.
I walked past some of the home managers huddled in a corridor, having an emergency meeting about a resident who’d thrown a mug at a carer. They were discussing whether they should call the police but then decided not to because it was just a mug.
Then, they spotted me. ‘Bilal, you get along with the male residents, can you go into Ken’s room and calm him down?’ one of them asked. I obliged. It was something a bit different, and I was new and wanted to impress.
But when I entered Ken’s room, I found him standing in his dressing gown, looking furious, holding another mug, half-raised, threateningly. No one had mentioned it was an ‘active shooter’ situation!
My training had covered things like how to get someone into a hoist or how to change a catheter but nothing like this. Luckily, I’d just completed a media degree and spent three years watching films, so I threw myself into negotiating with Ken like he was Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon.
Most of these interactions were moments I’ll remember forever and I became a sort of jack of all trades, working as an activities assistant and in the kitchen to get some extra shifts.
But the work itself, the poor pay and the ethics of the home eventually made me fall out of love with it.
We were told we had to pour any uneaten food down the garbage disposal unit every single day. On a particularly exhausting shift, I went into the kitchen and made myself a sad-looking cheese sandwich.
About an hour later I was called into a manager’s office and given a disciplinary because I hadn’t paid for this sandwich. If I would have known this was coming, I would’ve made myself a gourmet dinner.
I found out that the home I was working in had residents paying up to £10,000 a month to stay there, which made me feel a bit confused about being on £6.50 an hour. The maths didn’t seem quite right, but I got on with it.
The carers were seen as disposable, when they were the hardest working people in the building, the lifeblood of the home and quite often the only people the residents would see or interact with.
I only did this job for a year and went on to get a sales job where I was expected to coerce people into lying about having their hearing damaged at work so they could get compensation, which I think undid the good karma from the care home.
But the point is: Carers deserve more respect, appreciation, and money.
You can catch Bilal Zafar at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 3 – 25 August, visit his website here for more information.
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