I continue my outreach logs here. This week was a battle and I left that out of the logs, since the logs are written to outline my work days. But I will outline the struggle that I experienced with the CEO and Ezekiel who tried to bully me, and force me to work with Ezekiel, who I promised to never work another day in my life with. Ultimately I won. I stood on my conviction. Ezekiel was remanded to shelter work and I coordinated outreach with other community health providers.
I woke up at my girlfriend’s apartment around 7:00 a.m. and left for work around 8:30 a.m.
I arrived at the shelter at 9am.
I texted my manager who was on vacation, and I told her that I was going to let Ezekiel know that he’s no longer on Outreach. She responded “OK.” Ezekiel had gone out for the morning, this was common for him, to just leave work and disappear for a while. He had taken the outreach work phone with him. When Ezekiel arrived back at the shelter I called him into the front office, I asked for the phone, and I told him that he was no longer on Outreach. He asked why, and I told him he’s just no longer on outreach, and Ezekiel responded that that was fine. After this conversation he must have called the CEO complaining.
I coordinated with the Outreach worker for the methadone clinic to do outreach with me for the day, who wasn’t available until 11:00 a.m. I decided to go to the faith-based homeless day shelter for a while, and at 10:45 a.m. I received a call from the shelter manager to come back to the shelter.
When I arrived at the shelter, The shelter manager was in his car and asked me to sit in the front seat with him. The CEO was on the phone. The CEO said that I had no right to tell Ezekiel that he’s no longer on outreach. I told the CEO that I had talked to my manager, the director, and she had agreed with me that Ezekiel was no longer on outreach. The CEO refused to call the director while she was on vacation, and said that I would have to take an unpaid week off, which I was fine with, right at that moment the outreach worker from the methadone clinic called my work phone to ask about us going out together to do outreach. I handed the phone to the shelter manager, and the CEO heard that I had an appointment and said that if I had appointments that I should continue working for the week, and that I didn’t have to work with Ezekiel. The CEO tried to convince me to work with Ezekiel, but I told the CEO that I was dead set on never working with him ever again. There are points in the call, where I became angry, and expressed my frustration to the fact that Ezekiel tried to get me fired. The words I used were, “he did me dirty.” The CEO gave me reprieve, and allowed me to continue working, while keeping Ezekiel away from outreach, which is what I wanted. One thing I did not like was the CEO putting out an email to me saying that if I did not want to work with Ezekiel, I should resign. It was also mentioned in the call. I’m not one to resign unless I have a really good reason. One thing the CEO will learn, is when I’m in fight mode you got to f****** fire me.
After this stressful call with the CEO, I met up with the outreach worker from the methadone clinic. Him and I stopped by the encampment behind Doyle Street along the river. The encampments closer to the boys and girls club had been cleared. There were more people encamped across from the boathouse on the river. I engaged with five homeless men and I did a coordinated entry onto the housing list with a homeless woman who suffers from severe substance use disorder, mainly fentanyl. We also gave out drinks to everybody that we engaged with.
The outreach worker for the methadone clinic and I left the encampments behind Doyle Street and we went to the faith-based homeless day shelter. There I engaged with four homeless men that I know, and a homeless man I had never met before named Rocky. Rocky wanted to go into treatment. The Recovery Coach at the faith-based homeless day shelter and myself worked on coordinating a detox bed. During the intake Rocky told the intake coordinator that he had suicidal thoughts, so the intake coordinator told me that I would have to coordinate a psych eval for him before he could go in. Rocky then told us that he was going to have his uncle take him to spectrum detox in westborough. I let Rocky know that we would be able to secure a detox bed, but Rocky was adamant that he was going to go to spectrum with his uncle so we let him go on his way. Chances are Rocky changed his mind and had no intention of going into detox.
I took The Outreach worker back to the methadone clinic and picked up the methadone clinic’s intake coordinator to come on the road with me.
I stopped by the harm reduction Center to see if any clients were there. I saw a homeless cisgender couple who are addicts and I gave them some drinks to take on the road with them. I asked the man if he wanted to do a housing intake, but he said he couldn’t at the moment because he had to leave.
From the faith-based homeless day shelter I drove with The intake coordinator from the methadone clinic to do outreach. I met with Pedro and Jess the couple and one of their friends who lives behind Mr. Tux. I did housing intakes with all three.
Next I dropped off The intake coordinator from the methadone clinic at her car, that was parked at The Harm Reduction Center. I drove back to the shelter where I finished doing Vesta files and writing this outreach log.
After work I drove to my campsite and settled in for the rest of the evening.