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In reply to the discussion: So my wife gets home from work last night, sees me and bursts into tears [View all]DFW
(54,895 posts)My wife was not a nurse, but a social worker, and that was here in Germany, which has a somewhat more extensive social safety net than the USA, although nowhere near the phony legends spread about it in some circles for (apparently) propaganda purposes.
But even so, her success stories often came from her skirting the system than from her working within it. Some of her "clients" needed to be shepherded through the maze of German bureaucracy, and often around it. But she fought for her unemployed charges like a wounded badger defending her cubs, getting them debt relief, cheap housing, and food, even when they would have preferred liquor. When some of them still preferred to live under a bridge, and the system was perfectly happy to let them, it crushed her, but she kept on until her very last day, when she dragged some Russian immigrant to some office that granted him some money and a job application where he never would have survived the battle himself.
The system is often uncaring. The ones who keep caring despite that are the true heroes of society, even if the burden is so crushing at times as to drive them to tears. My wife shed enough of her own, so I know what it means.