Oprah, please acknowledge my worth!

I am jealous of teachers and doctors because Oprah seems to like them more than social workers. For some odd reason, my profession doesn't quite garner the same shine of respect from high profile talk show celebrities. On her show, she's showered gifts to teachers, invited plastic surgeons to discuss life-altering operations, and even had fitness instructors dispense advice. But where are my kudos? Somehow, social work is the forgotten helping profession. Maybe we just have a bad image. When you think social work, you probably think of the state coming in to take away children from bad mothers. Yeah, go ahead and deny it. You know you have that image. And you probably think of social workers as being misinformed helpers of sociopaths, trying to help them get out of prison. Yeah, you saw that episode of Law & Order, too.

The fact is, I do all sorts of amazing things that would confound a cabal of neatly groomed psychoanalysts and fake doctors like Dr. Phil. Here's a list of what I did today:

1. Resolved a fight between two clients over cigarettes, bad debts, and name calling.
2. Helped two clients get PIN numbers so that they can activate their food stamps by dealing with heavily accented, English speaking sub-Indian continent operators (whew!).
3. Tried to convince a hospital social worker to put off a discharge from Friday to Monday.
4. Reminded a couple of folks to take their medications (which they did in front of me).
5. Helped a client to write out a money order so that he could pay off a hospital bill.
6. Knocked a chocolate bar off its perch from a vending machine so that a hungry client could get his Snickers bar and avoid losing 75 cents. How is it that these machines know when to catch the edge of candy wrappers just when you really need a fix and are down to your last nickels?

There you go. Though totally devoid of international conglomerate merger deals and superstar athlete contract negotiating, my job does have its small rewards.

Excelsior!