new developments

I've never demanded respect from someone before tonight. It felt pretty super good.

I've been working at this agency for a year now and I've been working with this particular client the entire time. He's been in and out but he always comes back to ask for help. He is a very manipulative person, in general, due to the environment in which he grew up, and he uses that manipulation to his advantage.
Tonight he left the center and came back (NOT ALLOWED) later to get something to eat (ABSOLUTELY NOT ALLOWED EVER) (if you are curious as to why, ask me later). I asked him why he was back and he said and I quote "I went to go see my dad and I'm fucking hungry so I'm eating before I go home."
I let him walk away so I could decide whether or not I would approach that obvious disrespectful attitude, knowing that today was his birthday and it had been a horrible one. I had decided to let the issue slide when he came to the office to ask me for a bus pass to get home (not allowed once again, due to lack of funding for bus passes we can only give them out for service appointments and job leads, etc). I said that I would give him one because it was ridiculously cold tonight (like 2 degrees--no, really) and then I decided that I was still angry about the earlier encounter.
So I said, "In the future, I would prefer that you not ask me for something that I am not supposed to give you (the bus pass). I would also prefer that you not curse at me and treat me disrespectfully as you did earlier." To clarify, since he 'had no idea' what I was talking about, I replayed the earlier scene for him. And I said, "I have been working here and working with you for a year, and I think that I deserve a lot more respect than you have given me tonight."

Saying that felt so freaking good.

I've had a hard time asking for respect at my job due to the fact that many of my clients are older than I am and have had a lot more life experiences than I have had. After a year of that, though, I think I deserve the respect I ask for. I've seen most everything you can imagine and had to deal with a huge myriad of crisis situations in the last twelve months. I've been through the battle and I've come out a veteran.


On another note, I have decided to help a professor of mine with a research project sort of thing that she and the director of the School of Social Work are doing in a smaller town just North of here. It is all about teen mental health (totallyyyyy what I want to do with the rest of my life!) and I will be helping assess youth for appropriateness for the program and working up entry and exit surveys among other things. I'll know a lot more information tomorrow, I think, so I'll post more later.
I'm super excited though, to be able to get some more experience in the field in a different way. It will benefit me more than I can imagine.