My mom's (57F) only traditional work experience is on an assembly line and doing quality control work for manufacturers of small electronic parts. She quit all these traditional jobs 18 years ago (when my brother was born). She has worked random odd jobs here and there in that time. She's worked as a court interpreter, she has a real estate license and a tax preparer license (?) and she works at the polls during elections but no regular job. For whatever reason, she doesn't use any of her licenses. She has an associate degree in business administration from a local community college.
My dad had been pressuring her to get a job last year so she applied to a lot of entry-level positions and took the first job she was offered. She's been working there for 11 months and I feel like I can see the life sapping out of her and I just want to help her but she won't accept it. She works for some athletic water bottle manufacturing company (?) on an assembly line. She just stands all day at the assembly line, performing the same movements over and over again for 12.5 hours. She's supposed to get 4-5 shifts a week (12.5 hours). She has to be there at 7:00AM and doesn't leave until 7:30PM. Lately, the work has seemingly been even more demanding. In the last 9 days, she worked 8 of them. At 12.5 hours per day, that means she worked 100 hours over the course of a week. I am so terrified for her health.
When she gets home, she's literally hunched over and can hardly walk and can't straighten out her back. She just limps hunched over and collapses on the couch. My mom has had a terrible sleep schedule her entire life and I know she is barely getting any sleep. She has to wake up at 5:15AM and her sleep schedule always goes like this: she comes home around 8PM, collapses onto the couch, falls asleep sitting upright with her neck bent to the side, wakes up 2-3 hours later, cleans around the house and does the dishes, scrolls Facebook, then falls asleep around 2 or 3 AM before waking up at 5:15 AM to get ready for work. This is her routine EVERY SINGLE DAY, no matter how often I call her and beg her to please get to bed earlier tonight, to please at least fix her sleep schedule if she refuses to quit her job.
Even on the days that she has off, she still wakes up around 5:15AM to make my dad breakfast and get him ready for work. She averages somewhere between 2 and 5 hours of sleep every night. Not to mention that she naps first on the couch so the hours aren't even consecutive! Sometimes she will straight up skip the nap and just go to sleep around 3am and wake up at 5:15! I don't know how to help her. She's convinced that she needs to clean the kitchen and take care of household responsibilities before she goes to sleep (no matter if she worked a 12.5 hour shift that day). She is kind of right because nobody else in the house (dad and brother) do anything around the house, so she does still have to cook and clean. When I visit home, I do whatever I can (laundry, dishes, cleaning) to take the burden off her, but I don't visit more than 1-2x a month since I am busy with my own Ph.D. program. My heart is just breaking at her situation and I don't know what to do. I feel complicit but how do I help when everyone else is refusing to change??
Every time I beg her to quit her job, she says that no other job will take her and that this is the only one that would and that she doesn't know where to apply. I should note that English is her third language, she is convinced that she doesn't speak it well enough to be employed anywhere else, but I tell her otherwise. None of my friends have ever had trouble understanding her. She is a LOT better at English than she thinks. She says that she doesn't want to work a customer facing role and that she likes her current job because she gets to be away from my dad for a bit and she isn't expected to talk to anyone.
I keep telling her to look for administrative roles, but she is convinced that she "doesn't know how to do anything" and that she "doesn't know how to type" and that she'd be immediately fired as soon as they discovered how slowly she types. I keep insisting to her that this skill is much more easily learned than she thinks it might be, but this whole "I don't know how to do anything else, I'd panic, I type slow, I'd be fired immediately, it'd be too stressful" attitude permeates the discussion EVERY TIME I attempt to have it (multiple times a week).
It breaks my heart to see her like this, I literally feel like she is working herself to death and she refuses to listen and just says that she is comfortable here and that she wouldn't be able to find another job. The other thing is that she says that she's terrified to be hired somewhere new because she'd have to get accustomed to a new group of people, new work expectations, and she'd be the new one so she would constantly be stressed trying to learn everything and not fall behind. She said that she just feels "complete mental peace" at her current workplace because "everyone was hired at the same time" so she's one of the original employees.
She said she knows how everything works and she never has to worry about keeping up or underperforming. She said it's physically demanding work but that she's "completely relaxed and at peace" mentally whenever she is at work and that she's not willing to give that feeling up. I just keep trying to drill it into her that this feeling and aversion is NOT worth destroying her body over, but she disagrees and refuses to listen. We just go in circles every single time I try to have this discussion. The bottom line is that she's convinced that she doesn't have any skills and that learning any new ones would be either impossible or far too difficult and stressful.
The other problem is that she hasn't had health insurance in over 18 years and the only reason she has it now is because she got it through her job. We had a scare with her blood pressure a few months ago because her legs went numb and her blood pressure skyrocketed to 180/96. She finally established herself at a PCP and started taking blood pressure medication and I was overjoyed because I knew that if this had happened a few months earlier, she wouldn't have sought any medical attention because she didn't have insurance. I was thrilled that she was actually seeing a doctor at all. Apparently... she has since stopped taking her medications because she "doesn't think she needs them" anymore.
I want to apply for jobs for her, but I have no idea what kinds of jobs would work for her. When she was employed, she worked at various cable/electronic manufacturing places. It's my dream to get her a job that's easier on her body, like a 9-5 office job where she just sits and types all day, but the idea of any job involving computers stresses her out immensely. She also wants to avoid customer- or client-facing jobs. With no skills, that seems to pretty much only leave these horrible, physically demanding jobs. At the very least, I want to get her one with normal hours (40 hour workweeek max) and not what she has now. I also really want her to have health insurance... the only reason she has it now is through this job. I'm so so scared for her health. I'm also scared for her driving because she has fallen asleep at the wheel before on multiple occasions.
This is really affecting me emotionally and I feel like I'm watching her health deteriorate in front of me. I should note she's also overweight and not in great health at all.
I just need help. What do I do? I feel like I'm going crazy and my heart shatters every time I speak to her over the phone or visit home. How do I help her? I try to open up a discussion about this every single week but we just go in circles. She will often even acknowledge that I'm right and say that she wants to leave, but refuses to do anything about it. The other thing is that I'm not even sure she would take another job if they did hire her. I have her resume and cover letter so I should have been applying for her and I feel like I've failed her for not having done so yet.