Original story
I work at an assisted living facility, I.E.
a nursing home for people who are very elderly and cannot care for themselves. One of the residents in the wing I work at is “Josh”, a 97 year old man who has pretty bad cognitive decay.
Most of the time, he doesn’t remember who I am, who he is, where he is, or what’s going on. However, he’s a former national chess champion, something I only know about because the personal effects in his room include some of his trophies and other awards.
We’ve got a few sets in the common areas, and if you can wake him up long enough to play, he does still remember how, and he’s thrashed most of the staff at one point or another over the board.
Well, it’s not a close friend, but I have a guy I know who is kind of a friend of a friend, let’s call him “Bob”, and he’s the top player at some local chess association. A LONG way down from a pro player, but the sort of guy who is usually the strongest player in the room.
I had mentioned that one of the residents I care for is this former champion, and he asked to come by to visit since Bob’s a huge chess nerd and wanted to meet a national champion, no matter what kind of state he was in. We allow visitors, so I signed him in, and by good luck, it was on one of Josh’s better days.
Long story short, they went into one of the common rooms and played chess for 6 hours straight. I wasn’t able to stick around to watch most of it, but I talked with Bob afterwards, who said that while he’s clearly not the player he was when he won the national championships anymore, Josh is still a ‘mean old buzzard’ over the board, and won a bit over 2/3 of their games.
Josh missed dinner, and I had to get into the canteen after hours and make him some scrambled eggs and toast just so he’d have something to eat. And I was with him for the dinner, and it was the most animated I’d seen him in.
..
. ever, actually.
He was actually talking about his day and definitely remembered what was going on, and how this ‘young punk’ came to challenge him and he had to show the kid how it’s done.
All in all, I thought I did a good thing, brightened up a very old, very sick man’s day. But pretty much all of my co-workers have the opposite take, that disrupting his schedule and agitating him like that was a bad, assholish thing to do, especially if it caused him to miss his regular dinner.
I’m pretty new at this job, so I do value their opinions, but I don’t think what I did was wrong. Am I the asshole here?
Especially if I do it again?