For the past 6 months or so, I’ve been looking for work in my new profession of medical coding. I have no experience in health care. Volunteering seems like a good way to at least get some experience, so I’ve been applying for volunteer jobs as well. Yesterday I went on an interview for a position at Planned Parenthood.
It was a little intimidating. It took me four tries to find the entrance; I’m assuming for obvious reasons a lot of that was deliberate. Google Maps got me almost to the building, but was zero help once I got within 500 yards of the parking lot. Outside were a bunch of placards sitting in front of shipping containers and horse trailers. I didn’t really notice what they said, but they were written in what looked like fine-tipped permanent markers. No people next to the signs, but the clinic hadn’t opened yet.
There were five of us waiting for a group interview, a pretty diverse bunch. Everyone from current college students to retirees, and two of us who were tired of being at home all day. We lived fairly far from each other, and I wasn’t the one who drove the farthest to get there yesterday.
We were greeted by the volunteer coordinator, who gave us more paperwork to fill out and talked to us about what Planned Parenthood does. It’s a lot more than when I went there for birth control when I was in college a hundred years or so ago. She also told us about a program in the planning stages which sounded interesting, but would have been at the main office and a haul for me to get to for a volunteer job.
We all had different reasons for being there, but one thing was the same: we were supporters of Planned Parenthood and wanted to help/give back. We went around the table introducing ourselves and talking about what we’d like to do as a volunteer. Most of us were wanting to be health center assistants, but one wanted to be an escort.
We filled out our paperwork (most of us took the papers home) and left. On the way out, I got my first taste of what most patients go through now when visiting a clinic. It was awful. One person must have seen me, because she figured out the one thing to say that would make me angry. “Such a shame. It’s a death camp in there.”
A man tried to step in front of my car on the way out, with what looked like a flyer in his hand. I did my best not to make eye contact as I drove away.