"Coffees bad for me."

So... I might be a little premature in this statement, but I really love my job.

And I really hate HR (but don't HR that I said that, cuz that might come back to bite me in the butt with, well, HR).

Today was a pretty surreal day. My alarm went off at 7 a.m. and all of my casa mates were pretty much all gone already. Their jobs make me feel lazy that I don't have to be at work until 8 a.m. Just as an example, Greg has to be at work by 6:45. Yeah, that's nasty. But that's beside the point. I was talking about surrealism, kinda (that's probably a joke only Art History majors would get). Anyway, it was pretty strange waking up this morning knowing that I was finally going to be heading to the job for which I've basically been preparing myself for the past 7 months. It was all building up to today.

And it didn't disappoint.

I was picked up this morning at 8:30 a.m. (got to sleep in on my first day, epic win!) by a woman that reminded me scarily of Cousin Janice, except a little bit older and looked more like she belonged at the library than at a weight lifting competition. But she was one of the sweetest people I've ever met, who kept getting lost on the way to the main CASS campus. Bless her heart, she also had hearing aids, which I'm convinced were a little too sensitive, because lord knows I couldn't hear what she was whispering to me.

Now, just to set the record straight (not that anybody particularly cares), I'm not working at the downtown main CASS campus, which is a shelter designated for single men and women who are homeless. I'm working at the CASS Vista Colina campus, emergency housing for homeless families with kids, and technically I'm not even there. I'm two blocks away from that in the Sunnyslope (I keep wanting to call it Sunnyside 'cuz it reminds me of Toy Story 3) office building. The other two Case Managers and I are isolated away from everybody in our own little corridor of offices.

But I didn't even get to see my office (yeah, I have my own office, no big deal) until after 1 p.m. today. Instead, I spent the majority of my morning in the downtown CASS campus getting trained by a temporary HR representative who was too similar in appearance and personality to Holly Flax from The Office for my comfort.

Impostor Cousin Janice then drove us back to Vista Colina and I got the abbreviated tour of the emergency shelter and the childcare facilities. Then, finally, I got to see where I was personally going to be working.

Now let me tell you, I had about 5 minutes of down time when I got to the Case Manager offices. I walked in to find a binder with info waiting for me (thanks Eileen, I'm gonna need all the help I can get!) that I even really have time to read and I got my office keys.

Then just like that, I was getting called in to sit in on my first Screening. Lesson 101 in Case Management lingo, a Screening is when a potential client comes in for their first meeting with a Case Manager. The client comes in because spaces are opening up in the shelter and the clients are called in for an initial screening (get it?) to see if they are eligible for the program. The basic rules are that the clients have to be 30 days clean, have children, and not have stayed in any other family shelters within the past year. Basically, the entire meeting helps the Case Mangers get a feel for the client to see if they would be a good fit from the shelter and if they would benefit from being there.

If they qualify, they are placed on the waiting list. The clients have to call in every day to see if there's an actual opening that they can move into — it usually takes about a week for them to go from the list to an actual apartment.

That's all the nuts and bolts — the boring rules.

Most of that stuff, I was minimally briefed on before I arrived in Phoenix.

What I wasn't prepared for was real life.

Without giving out any specifics, I encountered pregnant women, some seeking shelter away from their abusive husbands; a grandmother who was a couple years older than my brother's age, who had a 15-year-old daughter who had a three year old and was expecting her next one any day now; and an alcoholic mother.

It was a lot for the first day.

But it was all made better by the kids. Every Case Manger's office comes equipped with a toy bin (including mine, so you know you wanna come visit), so the kids can hang out while the parents are getting interviewed/screened. The kids were most enthralled with an older-model phone that still had a curly cord and everything. Each kid called a different imaginary friend and was exceptionally disappointed when nobody answered.

However, the cutest kid award goes to a little girl with a rather colorful butterfly backpack, which she refused to take off.

At one point my boss got up from her seat, with paperwork in her hand and said, "Okay, sit tight. I'll be right back — I'm going to go make copies."

To which the little girl announced rather forcibly, "My mom says coffee's bad for me."

Copies. Coffee. It's all bad for us.