Cleaning at DSS

I started my field placement last week and I must say that I think once I can really interact with the clients and get myself involved with everything I am going to have a really great experience. So far I have shadowed on a few client visits and sat in on a team meeting of a very difficult case. (Which, strangely enough was very much like many of the team meeting that I went to when working at the group home and didn't seem that terrible to me.) I have also had the opportunity to meet many people (most of whom I can distinguish on sight but have no idea what their names are) and have been given a desk... Which I can't get to because I don't have an ID badge...or make use of since I don't have a computer log-in yet. but it's to be expected as my site was told that I wasn't going to start until after Ian was born anyway. So I am ahead of the game and they are doing really well to quickly get stuff going for me.

And now more about the desk.
I expect that when you give an intern a desk it will probably be off in a corner and full of unused stuff. So when I was told I was going to be sitting with the processing department, it really didn't phase me. I was also told that I was going to get a desk that was being vacated by a woman who was moving departments. When I finally got to the desk it was filthy. I'm talking several years of built up grime and use that had never been cleaned away. My field adviser took one look at it and said she would get cleaning supplies and she would clean it. (She was clearly embarrassed.) But I am the intern. I am starting a job that will not always be fun or pleasant and so I told her to go back and do the work I know she still had to do and I would clean until she needed me. After three hours of cleaning the desk was no longer a dingy shade of gray, most of the stains had been cleaned enough so you could only see vague outlines, the keyboard no longer had dirt and grime shielding it from the outside world and I had taken a thumb-tack and scraped years of gunk out of crevices on the phone. I discovered several things about the woman who sat at the desk before me. The first being she had sat there for about eight years and never once cleaned it. The second, at some point she had a cherry flavored drink explode all over her desk, computer, phone and walls and she never bothered to clean it up. And the most important part...she picks her nose and wipes the boogers on the bottom of the keyboard tray. That's right boogers. Dried boogers. On the desk. I didn't think people who were over the age of 7 did that, but apparently when you are in your 50s sometimes you have to revert. Did I also mention that while I was cleaning she came back and got all offended that I was cleaning..."I did my best" was her parting words...as she walked away with the trash can and all of the office supplies in the desk.

And here I need to stop and ask...for those of you who have moved jobs in an agency before, did you take your trash can? Seriously?

Anyway when I told my adviser my theory on the origins of the little lumps on the back of the keyboard she was horrified, but not surprised. She also said she would get maintenance to remove the offending keyboard and replace it.

I wonder what will happen this week?