I have noticed a trend of people who think working with the homeless is gonna look like a hallmark card and are shocked and appalled when they get called slurs by a homeless diabetic amputee. Its easy for them to come to the conclusion that these people are homeless because they’re assholes. They’re right in the sense that most of the more pleasant people never really wind up completely homeless, they can usually find a couch to crash on and a friend’s shower to use until they find a new or better job.

But it’s also this cycle where having your head shoved back under repeatedly eventually makes you unpleasant so yeah eventually once you start factoring all that trauma you do wind up with somebody who’s paranoid, possibly even psychotic related to drug use (tf else are they gonna do with their time? It’s not like they’re gonna join a pickleball league, and nobody is gonna hire somebody who never showers or has clean clothes, and you need a shitton of calories going into your body to work labor and you can’t work labor at all if being unable to afford your metformin got your legs amputated).

So I meet people who volunteer or even come to do paid work in human services and they’re like wow I’m helping these people and they cuss me out and yell racial and gendered slurs at me when we’re out of turkey sandwiches and I’m just like first of all, learn to appreciate ✨️The Art of The Roast✨️; half the shit these people say is a) true and b) funny asF. And second of all, I know damn well nobody told you to come work in this field for high pay and low stress so we can tell people all we want that we deserve more pay and more staffing and more resources but we all know that ain’t coming any time soon so until then if your plan is to sit around complaining then do us all a favor and just leave because you’re stressing the rest of us out and we have work to do.