Ehhh, depends on what you consider right and wrong. Some folks might say I did do something wrong. They’d be wrong, and assholes, but they might say it ;)

So, I worked in home health as my main job. Started in facilities, but burned out and moved to home health.

There’s extra rules when doing home health because you’re in people’s homes, which can be a lot of complication. Not all of them are good rules.

A case I was working, it was 24/7 coverage for a very wealthy elderly couple. That meant at least two caregivers present all day, every day of the year. Those of us that were regular, steady caregivers on the case got you know the family well. A lot of rich folks are absolute assholes to workers in their home, these folks weren’t. Genuinely nice people, a really perfect case to be on.

So, I tended to work either overnight, or late afternoon to late night, depending on how everyone needed the schedule. Since the clients covered whatever the insurance didn’t, and the family erred on the side of regular, reliable caregivers over set schedules, the office was glad to make things work so that if someone needed to do something with their kids or whatever, we’d all work it out so that the patients were covered and nobody lost hours either.

Enter the other worker that preferred a similar shift to me. She was awesome. She would bust her ass for the patients, was one of those people that’s easy to get along with, even if there’s a disagreement or misunderstanding. Was and is one of the best people I ever worked with. We aren’t close, but we keep in contact, especially since covid, which is a long story in itself.

Anyway, her and one of the patients’ grandsons end up spending a lot of time together over a few months. Enough so that it was pretty obvious it was going somewhere. Now, to the best of my knowledge, she never, ever engaged in any behaviour that would have impacted patient care, and I know for a fact she never did when we were there at the same time. To the contrary, when we’d all be sitting down in the kitchen, chatting and such between checking on the patients, it didn’t matter what they were talking about, she would cut him off mid sentence to go handle things

I heard the same thing happen when they were alone together in other rooms as well. She didn’t mess around with the job at all, in any way.

If they were finding time to canoodle or whatever, they were quite and stopped when it was time for work. In other words, nobody did anything inappropriate while at work.

However, they did go out together eventually. And they got seen by one of the office staff (it isn’t exactly a highly populated area, so you’ll run into everyone eventually).

So it was drama. They called in all of us that worked the case, acting like they were fucking cops investigating a crime. Which set me off hard. I got the call that they wanted me to come into the office “for questioning” after I had pulled a shift with those patients, then gone to work at a second job (and had to physically throw a dude out of the club, which is not exactly refreshing after two long shifts). Woke my ass up, calling five fucking times, leaving increasingly shitty messages.

Now, I was younger. I was a lot nicer, a lot more patient in my youth. Now, I’d tell anyone pulling that shit to go fuck themselves. But back then, I agreed to come in. I had no clue what they were on about, but there had been rumors going around that the administrator who had recently gone on vacation wasn’t coming back at all because money was missing. So I figured it had to be something about that, what with the ever increasing shittiness of the messages.

I get there, and the lady that was nominally “human resources” starts out with a threat. Starts with. Saying that I could be held responsible too, if I don’t tell the truth.

I’m sitting there on about three hours of sleep, so my mouth opens and asks her what the fuck she’s on about. Which turns into her trying to scream and fire me (she didn’t have that ability at all). I walk the fuck out, go to my actual supervisor, and tell her I’m about done. The HR twat comes in behind me telling my supervisor to fire me.

My supe asks me to head to the break room and have some coffee, and she’ll be right with me.

When she gets there, she’s rolling her eyes and apologizing. We sit and have a cup of coffee while she explains what it’s really about, that my co-worker is dating a family member of a client. She asks if I know about it. I reply that even if I had, after the blast of crazy I just caught, my memory would disappear really fast.

She basically says “dude, c’mon”, in polite southern lady. I told her that I had never observed any inappropriate behavior of any kind by my co-worker. She asked if I had anything to add, and my mouth opened again. I said that the next time anyone from the office called me like that, they could go fuck themselves, and I’d find another job in fifteen minutes. Which got a laugh and an eye roll from her. Miss Patty was awesome as a supervisor lol.

So, the HR Lady, and I use the term loosely, did try to fuck with me after that, but I don’t know how it would have shaken out because the company folded. The administrator had run off with pretty much every drop of cash he could pilfer from the company.

The patients ended up following the bulk of us that worked there to a smaller, but way better, company. A few of the regular caregivers just quit the industry entirely, and a few went to the only other company around at the time instead of the smaller one the rest of us went to.

The co-worker and the grandson ended up getting married a few years later. I went, and it was a good match imo. They were happy as pigs in slops, hanging all over each other all night lol. Still married, still happy afaik.

On my end of things, idgaf about those two getting together the way they did. If they’d compromised patient care, it would matter, but it didn’t. If anything, it would have improved it, but my co-worker was already deeply devoted to the job, she couldn’t be a better caregiver, period. It’s one of those rules that makes sense on the surface, but fails utterly when real people are involved.