To Be Good At This Job, You Just Have To Be...Good

in nursing homes or elderly care is a calling. It's a tough job that makes a huge difference to a population that often feels pushed to the side, and as the elderly have been put at higher risk with COVID nineteen, essential workers continue to be by their sides, helping them live fulfilling lives in old age. This past May, I met up with Josh Wynn for a socially distanced glass of wine on his porch after one of his many twelve hour days. You must be exhausted, right, Yes, the

wine helps. He kind of has a unique position. He over these three residential care facilities here in Vermont, owned by the same company, the Scuttny House the Davis Home in the Brookwood Estate. So my official title is the general manager, which is a fairly vague title for my position. To manage three facilities can be complicated. I wake up earlier than I should and I come home later than I should. But I wouldn't have it any other way. Right now, I just feel more comfortable being as hands

on as I can. Each of the houses has between fourteen to sixteen residents, ranging from ages fifty to a d and the way he describes the residential care facilities is like something between a nursing home where residents get seven care and assisted living communities where older folks live within the gated communities that have amenities but are very independent. So we're smacked ab in the middle. We are three old Vermont farmhouses. We function a lot like a bed

and breakfast, except the guests never leave. These are old Vermont country homes with beauty, full creaky staircases and wide playing floors. There's a lot of charm and character. They definitely offer that home vibe, which is I think why a lot of families gravitate towards us to bring their families, because they walk in and they feel like they're walking

into a friend's house and not into a facility. Josh oversees about thirty staff members between the houses, but He's responsible for making sure that their only running order and the residents have everything they need. My days never look the same. In different days, I have different responsibilities. I'm responsible for placing all of our catering orders for the week's menus. The houses serve three meals a day and snacks that Josh collaborates with the house cooks on designing,

so he essentially oversees an entire catering operation. He helps everyone get their medical supplies like oxygen tanks and certain narcotic medications and stuff that require hard scripts in hand upon delivery. I'm responsible for those. He helps ins with their bills and finances, making sure they don't get behind on anything. He files all their medical records and speaks with their doctors, and then I do all of their

transportation Monday through Friday. Anytime they have a doctor's appointment, I'm driving them home and back. The hospitals he drives them too, are sometimes an hour away, and each of the houses are about fifteen minutes away from each other, and I'm at each house every single day, multiple times a day. Yeah, that's just kind of a cliffs notes version of what happens. So basically, your job is to

cater to the unique needs of about forty five individuals. Um, yeah, it just doesn't seem like there's enough hours in the day. There isn't. There literally isn't, regardless of the workload. Josh says that the characters he gets to spend his waking hours with is something he looks forward to every morning. Oh for sure. So we've got Dolores, who I called Miss Long Island, and you know immediately when you meet her, because she'll never let you forget it, and she commands

that household. And then we have who I call the Princess. I will not mention her by name. During breakfast time, she does this thing that drives me up the wall. She asks for like five different drinks Janet. She's just the sweetest, most loving smile for days. I mean, she's a do you know she wants her warm milk which is in a small cup, not a medium cup, not a large cup, the extra small cup microwaved for thirty seconds, not one note, better be thirty. And she will know

Joanne kind hearted but extremely blunt. She will never eat the breakfast that we have on the menu. She always asks for something completely different that takes an entire afternoon to prepare the night before. Joanne will let her get away with murder because she's Joanne Um, only to not eat it when we finally serve it, and she walks up with her walker and waddles off to her room and sits down and eats a couple of crack in

every single day. And that is the Princess. I'm seeing a lot of love from how you talk about everyone, even the Princess. I'm sure it's impossible not to get really close with everyone. Absolutely, the residents feel like a second family, you know. I look at a lot of them like extra sets of grandparents. I could listen to them all day. I mean, if I didn't have actual work to do, I could just listen to them tell me stories all day because I'm just fascinated by them.

I just love them. Long before he spent the entirety of his days dealing with people, Josh was an introverted kid growing up in southern California. I was very quiet and shy and and secure. Not much has changed and I'm thirty one and I had a very wonderful home life, but a horrible life at school. I was just bullied and picked on and just abused at school like crazy, and I never said anything about it for years for some reason, and I just ended up being a target.

When Josh was in seventh grade, his family moved across the country to New Hampshire. He was hoping his new school life would be different, but he says middle school was the toughest two years of his life. It wasn't until he got to high school that he started making new connections and saw doors open for him. Once high school started to come to an end, I knew that the rest of my life was really going to matter, because I was just extremely optimistic that I would be

a completely different person when I left high school. And it was exactly that. Josh's life pretty quickly started to veer in the direction of elderly care. He said the seeds were kind of planted by his extremely close relationship with his grandparents. My parents, in some ways are probably a little jealous that I have such a close relationship

with my grandparents, but they're my closest friends. I was always told at a young age that I was an old soul and that I was too mature for my age, and at the time I thought that was kind of an insult being a kid. I didn't want to be older than I was, but it actually worked out for me. Anyone who knew Josh knew this was a big part of his personality. So while he took other jobs after high school, like working in a print shop, people would just naturally ask him if he was interested in working

with their older family members. They would say something like, oh, my mother has liver disease and she's living at home, but we can't afford a nursing facility. Would you be open to being a caregiver with the right training or whatever? And it really did happen like that. The first time it happened, I was nineteen. So he started being a caregiver on referral, and he was a natural. He got out of it for a while and started doing wedding

and event planning, which he also loved. They gave him a chance to get really creative in making experiences for people. But I still felt that pole even then, that it wasn't enough. You're getting to know these couples and these families for a certain amount of time, and then this event happens and then you never see them again, And you know, I wanted work to be a little bit more personal than that. So eventually he and his husband Ben moved around while Josh went back to working as

a private caregiver. They'd always wanted to live in Vermont, so when they landed there, Josh connected with the woman that runs these three residential facilities and it was a no brainer. Josh has been working at these three houses for over a year now, and what surprised me talking to him is how accessible of a job it really is. Yeah. Absolutely, and that's kind of the best part about it. You know, we have people that come to us and we are

either their first job. Sometimes we are their job after a retirement, he says. If you're someone that really wants to help people, this is work where you don't need a ton of training to at least get your foot in the door. And there's lots of different jobs within these facilities. You could specialize in one on one care. You could even be a cook for the residents. And

then we have sleepers who do exactly that. They come and they sleep and they get paid a flat rate and it's the best job ever sleepers just to be on call, just to sleep in case of an emergency. Wow, So maybe besides being a sleeper. The precursor of being good at this job is just being good. Yeah. Absolutely, hands down. If we could get good people to apply, they're hired going into it. There's definitely no sugarcoating that it's hard work. You have to be able to think

about someone else for the entirety that you're there. You just have to be compassionate, and these people would be so grateful to have someone with that capability. I just look at them like how I would want to see my family and my grandparents specifically treated if they were

in a facility like that. Josh says that you can learn tons of invaluable hard skills on the job, but the first priority is always making sure that everyone feels deep comfortable in their environment and completely cared for beyond expectations. That's why I say we function a lot like a bed and breakfast, because it really does feel that way. They're living their life as if they were living at

at home. We just happened to feed them. So while the limit to Josh's task has no real boundaries, he's taken pride in his ultimate job of creating a safe place for people to simply be happy in. But In the wake of COVID nineteen, the job confronted a whole new set of challenges. Elderly care professionals around the country, like Josh, began to defend the havens that they've created for their residence as older people became more at risk

than any other population. Absolutely, they are as high risk as you can be, and that really got put into perspective very quick. More on Josh's story after the break. A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done, sweats over the details. This is the kind of person you need. Express employment professionals can help. Finding the best people requires more than sorting through applications. You need to conduct a thorough surge. Express understands what it takes to

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pros dot com to find a location near you. When COVID nineteen hit Josh and his staff, we're dealing with a new normal. Just like the US the world complications and how they operate in their daily lives in an uncertain atmosphere, but the complications with the residents is a different world. That I had to educate myself really quick on how this was all going to pan out, and

I certainly haven't done it alone. The staff have really gone beyond what we've ever required of them, and it's kept us that much more kind of vigilant in how we handle this whole situation. Everyone at the homes Josh Overseas has medical complications that prevent them from living on their own. So it's in the job description that Josh is going to help out with these health issues, but now it's those issues that make them immunocompromised and most

at risk with this new virus. Many of our residents are oxygen dependent, so respiratory illness is an understatement, and a lot of them have existing heart conditions and all sorts of medical conditions that could easily kill them. Josh and his staff took tons of precautions. They followed all the state guidelines as they came out. If a staff member had so much as a cough, they were sent home, leaving them perpetually short staff. Residents were quarantined to their rooms,

where the staff catered to them. If someone is quarantined in the room and you have to serve them lunch, you have to fully regown face mask, face shield gloves, everything. Have two people do so, one in the room and one out of the room to collect the empty tray, to take any laundry. And you're doing this a dozen times or more a day. Each time, they'd be throwing all of this equipment away as a sanitary procedure, and

like many medical facilities, they began to run out. We couldn't get it fast enough, and we were using it quicker than we could receive it. We've had some close calls where we've had residents who presented symptoms of COVID, and the problem in the beginning was that it was taking roughly about a week to get results back. We would go and get them tested and then still have to quarantine them in the house with the other residents still present. They took every precaution they possibly could in

isolating everyone. A handful of facilities within a few miles of them had positive cases between residents and staff. But when I spoke to Josh three months after they first started quarantine, his residencies had not had a single case. When I say that I'm grateful that we have had zero cases, I can't even describe. The hard work has

paid off. And so it goes to show that if you follow really simple guidelines and you keep a sanitary environment, and you really care for these people as if they're your family, you know, you can really be in goochaped for sure. Josh's connection with the residents is what makes him such a good caregiver. He becomes an intimate part of their lives and they become a part of his. I know a lot of the residents very personally. A lot of that is because of the car rides from

their house to a doctor's appointment. You know, you get to know people pretty intimately in the car ride while Dolly Parton is playing on the radio. It's so great and so fun to kind of get to know them and put the puzzle pieces together and how they got to where they are. The other side of the job is that you care a lot for people who are at the end of their lives. A week before I spoke to Josh. A resident he was close with named Abbott,

passed away peacefully in a nearby hospital. He was a Vietnam Vet, and Josh says he never felt more patriotic than when he was listening to Abbot stories. He reminded me so much of my own grandfather. He just had so much pride and being a U. S. Soldier, and did he embart any words of wisdom that stuck with you. Ironically, he told me to find a good wife. I told him I was settled. He told me that coffee ice cream was the best flavor on the planet, and I

kind of agree. The one thing that he and my grandfather have probably the most in common, is their sense of family to otherness, and that was the thing he promoted the most. You know, since I've been there, I think I've seen for residents pass away. I thought for sure it would get harder. It actually has gotten easier. Knowing how well they're cared for and how much the staff cares for them. It's um a sense of closure

almost in a lot of ways. Josh's it's especially comforting knowing that they were in his staff's care because unfortunately, funding for elderly care facilities is often far more scarce than it should be, which makes it hard to give residents all across the country the resources that they need to be happy. These are people who have had an entire lifetime full of stories and experiences, and they have

so much to offer, I feel, to society. But because they can't contribute in other ways to society, people often write them off, and that's just no way to live. Do you think part of your desire to care for people who might not have as many defenses as others goes back to you not having as many defenses when you were a kid. That's probably true. I even now

don't defend myself. I don't stick off for myself, and there is a part of me that I feel definitely shows up more for other people than I do for myself. But I I just feel like we live in a world that already people are in it for themselves, and when you have people that literally can't fight for themselves, you need people who can fight for them. And if someone wants to fight for me, call me. But I'll fight for other people as long as I can. Well.

Josh knew he wanted to work as a caregiver. When he moved to Vermont, his long term plan was to get back into event and wedding planning. It's funny, I you know, my priorities have changed in a year. The more that I immersed myself into this job, the more I want to continue immersing myself into this and expand

it in a lot of ways. He gets to create those same experiences he's always wanted to within these homes, going out of his way to do new things for the residents, like bring musicians in every week to play for them, do animal therapy where he brings in golden

retrievers and baby goats to hang out with him. One of the things that we did during Easter, you know, we had set up in each house a little photo booth, and I had made all these props for a photo booth like you would see at a wedding, except it was all old people wearing bunny ears and fake noses and holding Easter eggs and daffodils, and they ate it up. It was so great, and I love that the families

love that and the staff love doing it. I want to do so much more of that, even though Josh says there really aren't enough hours in the day to do everything he'd like. It's a perfect job for those who want to go above and beyond with the hours that they have, making life better for people who would appreciate it more than anyone. It's the most rewarding work I've ever done. I to this day get emotional thinking of some of the weddings that I've done over the

years as a professional event planner. I cried at every single wedding I ever did. And this is that times a hundred elderly care facilities in America may not be as appreciated as they should. But the byproduct of that is a field of work that is right for innovation and young minds like Josh who want to create truly special experiences for people that more than deserve them. It's not only a job that will always be essential. It's a job where you can work creatively and compassionately while

becoming a huge part of someone's life. And the saying goes that you know, when you reach older years, it's like having a second childhood. And it's exactly like that, and we are the parents and the aunts and uncles and the cousins who watched over them. How can that not be rewarding for On the Job. I'm Otus Gray. Thanks for listening to On the Job, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. This season of On the Job is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures. The episodes

are written and produced by me Otis Gray. Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens. The show is mixed by Matt Noble for Audiation Studios at the Loft in Bronxville, New York. Music by Blue Dost Sessions. Find us on I Heart Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time. For more inspiring stories about making yourself essential as you discover your life's work, audition