Interview · moment 12 of 19
Becoming a 9/11 Disaster Relief Caseworker
from The Pauper Is Just Working · #113
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
5 minGuest
Yannis explains taking a job as a case worker for Project Life through Lutheran Social Services, helping 9/11 victims get FEMA and charity funding, and his overwhelming first day meeting a grieving Windows on the World pastry chef.
- 46:09Tim remembers his first day as a 9/11 disaster relief caseworker, getting dumped with ten cases immediately.
- 47:03His first client was a pastry chef from Windows on the World who lost all his coworkers in the attacks.
- 47:32The chef broke down crying in the cubicle, and Tim realized he wasn't equipped to handle real trauma.
- 48:16Tim explains that at 26, having PTSD himself, he'd never experienced anything genuinely real before this job.
- 48:35Counter-transference in social work means inexperienced caseworkers bring home their clients' suffering and can't sleep.
- 49:26Tim's coworkers in the program included a pastor, an actor, and career social workers, all essentially unprepared.
- 49:46A lot of fraud happened because in the post-9/11 environment, nobody wanted to turn down someone claiming to be in need.
- 50:10Tim argues that young people romanticize socialism because they don't understand human nature—people are fundamentally selfish and will lie for survival.
- 50:49The fraudsters Tim encountered were manipulative, some clearly professional grifters who made fraud a practice.