Read Holier Than Thou for Free Online

and let’s face it, what Year Eleven boy would leave a group of semi-cool Year Elevens to hang with four distinctly uncool Year Tens – at least I might be able to see the social horizons broaden to include a friendship with him that transcended the hours of 8 a.m. – 9 a.m., and 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. And as the only Year Ten in a principal role, maybe my prospects in general were looking up. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my dad.
    4

    It was, of course, horrifying that the old lady got tasered. I’d had a bad feeling from the get-go that Friday. Tim and I had had a spat before work about how after three months of living together, he had still never made the bed or changed the linen. Our boss,Johanna, decreed that Nick and I should be the ones to oversee bringing the old lady in, seeing as how we’d had the most to do with the family that week.
    What a week. On the Monday I’d been serving my time in the tiny Intake Office and had taken a call from a very distraught woman whose elderly mother, a seventy-year-old Vietnamese lady living in Lachlan Grove, was ‘acting crazy’ and had not eaten or drunk for two days. We were not supposed to use family members as interpreters, and the old lady had only a little English, so it’d been me, Nick and a Vietnamese interpreter who trooped into the fibro house on the Monday afternoon at 4 p.m. It was bloody hot, hot enough to madden anyone, let alone soevemeone who was already mad. I had spent all morning on the phone to the Interpreter Service, where some Priceless Type gave me a line about no Vietnamese interpreters available until some time next week and really I should make my bookings for the suddenly psychotic much more in advance . I kicked it up to Johanna, who entreated them with her best hysteria, to no avail. She kicked it up to Choong, the senior psychiatrist, who entreated further.
    While Choong was upping the ante with ‘high risk’ this, ‘serious concern’ that and how no, he couldn’t certify someone until he had actually attempted to interview them in their own language and actually we don’t call it ‘certifying’ anymore , and Johanna stood over him gesticulating wildly, I picked up another extension and dialled Kim from admin downstairs. I happened to know that Kim was friends with a lady from the Interpreter Service and never had trouble booking them for the community psychiatry clinics. I explained the situation to Kim, gave her the prospective patient’s address and hung up. Thirty seconds later, after making a call to some bat-phone, the details of which were withheld from us mere mortals, Kim rang me back with the news that she had bagged us an interpreter for 4 p.m. that day.
    ‘ Hang up ,’ I mouthed to Choong.
    ‘Unbelievable,’ said Johanna, fanning herself with a manila folder, looking, as she often does, tachycardic.
    ‘You should get Kim a present,’ I advised.
    ‘I shouldn’t have to bribe admin staff to get an interpreter service,’ she blustered.
    ‘That’s very true,’ I agreed, and turned to Choong. ‘Can you come with us? She might have to come in tonight. It would save everyone time.’
    ‘I can’t come that late,’ said Choong.
    He had a point. Heading out to the ’hood at 4 p.m. to start a lengthy assessment was not a recipe for finishing on time at five o’clock. Nick and I would surely not get back to the office before six.
    ‘Can we have overtime if we’re back late?’ I asked Johanna.
    ‘Absolutely not,’ she said. ‘Overtime is not the answer – sound time-management is. If you can’t get your work done within your rostered hours, then we can address that at your next performance review.’
    Oh, so I was the problem with not finishing at five. Me. Nothing to do with the interpreter not being available til 4 p.m., Lachlan Grove being a thirty-minute drive away at best, and the unpredictable nature of assessing a mentally ill person. It was my time-management skills. Thank goodness Johanna