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Weekly Update
I'm on time this week! It's been a pretty decent week but there have been a lot of things going on. So, upfront Warning about the contents to follow: mentions of a minor medical injury that turns out fine, union contract stress, and mentions of a miscommunication with a friend that center around differing opinions about management.
On to the main post! Heed the above warnings if any of those might be tender spots for you.
First, the minor(ish) injury: My dad has started putting in a fence for my grandma, and on Tuesday afternoon ... something ... happened. I didn't really get a clear story from either of them -my dad blames himself, my grandma said it was a flukey accident- but the gist I got was that one of the 4x4 support posts my dad was putting in fell and hit my grandma on the forehead. It split the skin and bled like a head wound, but my grandma was telling me she immediately went in side and washed the blood off, got a rag and then a cold pack, and iced it until a friend took her to the hospital. Once there, the doctors gave her a CT scan, then cleaned up the wound and put three staples in it. The scan came back all clear and she is doing fine. I stayed for dinner Tuesday and she was talking and laughing and said her head didn't hurt. She was fine yesterday too when I texted, so everything worked out fine. It was just scary for my dad and I think he's still blaming himself a bit for it.
Second, the miscommunication: Also on Tuesday, I ended up doing a changeover at work, switching from one product set up to another. This was fine, went as well as it ever does, and I finished a lot sooner than the rest of the line because of extenuating circumstances. I went as far as I could with my machine without the others being ready, then went to help out my coworkers who still had things to do. All of this is fine and normal. What bugged me was the fact that my manager was at one point hovering close enough to physically be in my way while I was working, and then kept prompting me for the next thing, even though rushing ahead made no sense, since I was limited by everyone else's progress. I am a competent worker who knows my job, boss man, back off and let me do it.
That in and of itself wasn't too bad, just minorly annoying, but when I talked about it with my friend, who is management level in an auto company, we had a ... conflict of mindsets, I suppose you could call it. The phrase that rubbed me the most wrong was, "Look at it from their perspective. Maybe there is a reason they think you need their extra attention." Now, just pause for a moment and read that. How does that statement come across to you? Because to me, it seemed to imply that my friend thought the reason the manager was hovering was because the manager perceived me to need the extra assistance, with the extra implication that it's because I'm not good enough at my job.
Now, after further discsussion, apparently that's not what he was getting at, and that "needing extra support" isn't the same as being bad at your job, but it still rankled. Kind of a lot, really. And it seems that we have a fundamental disconnect, where neither of us is *capable* of understanding the other's side of things, because I am and always have a been a production employee, and (as far as I know) he is and always has been management. He feels like I'm quick to state my dislike for management and that I don't value the work they do, and I feel like he doesn't understand how much of their behaviour comes across not as helpful or useful, but as babysitting nannyhammers that don't trust us to do what needs to be done - even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
I try my best to keep an open mind, but I am biased, because of my own experiences and I don't always see clearly. It is also harder to give management (both specifically at my plant and in general) the benefit of the doubt when my past experience says they only make my job harder, and when it feels like I don't get any understanding from them how their behaviour affects me; this includes my friend as well as my supervisors. There is nothing wrong with having different perspectives and different cultures (for lack of a better word), but I may need to avoid this topic with my friend in the future because it feels like we always talk at cross-purposes and there is never any real understanding that comes from it.
Third, union business: Yesterday we had a ratification meeting. The contract changes were emailed to us, and then there was a two-hour zoom call where the executive explained it and then answered questions. The short version: it was a hot mess. The chat basically turned into the general union members trashing the contract and the executive; asking questions required using the "raise your hand" feature which was okay but never really gave us a chance for discussion; and there were so many riled up, negative emotions floating around that I was jittery and frazzled for quite awhile after.
On the one hand, in person would have been better for having an actual discussion about our opinions and having a slightly better way and opportunity to ask questions and have our concerns heard. On the other, I'm kind of glad it wasn't in person, what with how quickly the chat devolved and all the emotions that were being bandied about. I can well imagine there would have been a lot of shouting and blaming and talking over each other going on in person, and it would have been much harder for me to walk away from the seething mass of energy, as well as not being able to deal with it in any useful way. At least with the zoom call, I could walk away from the phone and hear less of what was being said, and I could pace and flap and shake my hands to dissipate things a bit if I needed to. It will be interesting to see what happens now, and where we go from here, since it was a vote 79.1% against.
On to the regular stuff: June has not been a great month for getting the daily tasks done. I can usually get most in a day done, but I seem to have a higher number of days where I've missed just one thing. I'm also still rather behind on my temperature blanket, but I'm hoping I can improve on both things in the coming days.
I had therapy again on Saturday, and it went decently. Got some abstract-type homework but nothing exceedingly difficult, so that's not bad. We spent most of the discussion talking about boundaries and setting limits and how it's okay to do that. The homework was to remember that my needs and interests are valid and important, which... that's hard to do but I'm working on it. The second thing to do was to pay attention if I *did* say no to doing something and see how I felt. Did I regret saying no? or Was I glad that I took that time for myself? I have decided to also apply the reverse of this, and see how I feel when I say *yes* to something. I figure tracking both sides of it can only be a good thing. Plus, I'm far more likely to say yes than no. The last bit of homework is easy, and I'm going to do it today when I get home. I use a calendar for tracking my daily tasks, but there are few more things that I just keep putting off and off that might benefit from also going on the calendar. My therapist said adding things was a good idea, but to do it slowly, one at a time, so I don't end up overwhelming myself with a stack of things to do. First to get added will be the weeding I think. I've been bad about staying on top of it, so maybe having it on there will help. And for the other two things I'm considering, perhaps I will simply track them on the calendar; mark down when I do them so I know the last time they got done, but don't put down any expectations for the next time I will do them.
All in all it was an eventful week, though not bad, and I'm looking forward to this weekend because I'll have a chance to see some friends and eat some delicious food, even if I did say yes to working Saturday.
On to the main post! Heed the above warnings if any of those might be tender spots for you.
First, the minor(ish) injury: My dad has started putting in a fence for my grandma, and on Tuesday afternoon ... something ... happened. I didn't really get a clear story from either of them -my dad blames himself, my grandma said it was a flukey accident- but the gist I got was that one of the 4x4 support posts my dad was putting in fell and hit my grandma on the forehead. It split the skin and bled like a head wound, but my grandma was telling me she immediately went in side and washed the blood off, got a rag and then a cold pack, and iced it until a friend took her to the hospital. Once there, the doctors gave her a CT scan, then cleaned up the wound and put three staples in it. The scan came back all clear and she is doing fine. I stayed for dinner Tuesday and she was talking and laughing and said her head didn't hurt. She was fine yesterday too when I texted, so everything worked out fine. It was just scary for my dad and I think he's still blaming himself a bit for it.
Second, the miscommunication: Also on Tuesday, I ended up doing a changeover at work, switching from one product set up to another. This was fine, went as well as it ever does, and I finished a lot sooner than the rest of the line because of extenuating circumstances. I went as far as I could with my machine without the others being ready, then went to help out my coworkers who still had things to do. All of this is fine and normal. What bugged me was the fact that my manager was at one point hovering close enough to physically be in my way while I was working, and then kept prompting me for the next thing, even though rushing ahead made no sense, since I was limited by everyone else's progress. I am a competent worker who knows my job, boss man, back off and let me do it.
That in and of itself wasn't too bad, just minorly annoying, but when I talked about it with my friend, who is management level in an auto company, we had a ... conflict of mindsets, I suppose you could call it. The phrase that rubbed me the most wrong was, "Look at it from their perspective. Maybe there is a reason they think you need their extra attention." Now, just pause for a moment and read that. How does that statement come across to you? Because to me, it seemed to imply that my friend thought the reason the manager was hovering was because the manager perceived me to need the extra assistance, with the extra implication that it's because I'm not good enough at my job.
Now, after further discsussion, apparently that's not what he was getting at, and that "needing extra support" isn't the same as being bad at your job, but it still rankled. Kind of a lot, really. And it seems that we have a fundamental disconnect, where neither of us is *capable* of understanding the other's side of things, because I am and always have a been a production employee, and (as far as I know) he is and always has been management. He feels like I'm quick to state my dislike for management and that I don't value the work they do, and I feel like he doesn't understand how much of their behaviour comes across not as helpful or useful, but as babysitting nannyhammers that don't trust us to do what needs to be done - even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
I try my best to keep an open mind, but I am biased, because of my own experiences and I don't always see clearly. It is also harder to give management (both specifically at my plant and in general) the benefit of the doubt when my past experience says they only make my job harder, and when it feels like I don't get any understanding from them how their behaviour affects me; this includes my friend as well as my supervisors. There is nothing wrong with having different perspectives and different cultures (for lack of a better word), but I may need to avoid this topic with my friend in the future because it feels like we always talk at cross-purposes and there is never any real understanding that comes from it.
Third, union business: Yesterday we had a ratification meeting. The contract changes were emailed to us, and then there was a two-hour zoom call where the executive explained it and then answered questions. The short version: it was a hot mess. The chat basically turned into the general union members trashing the contract and the executive; asking questions required using the "raise your hand" feature which was okay but never really gave us a chance for discussion; and there were so many riled up, negative emotions floating around that I was jittery and frazzled for quite awhile after.
On the one hand, in person would have been better for having an actual discussion about our opinions and having a slightly better way and opportunity to ask questions and have our concerns heard. On the other, I'm kind of glad it wasn't in person, what with how quickly the chat devolved and all the emotions that were being bandied about. I can well imagine there would have been a lot of shouting and blaming and talking over each other going on in person, and it would have been much harder for me to walk away from the seething mass of energy, as well as not being able to deal with it in any useful way. At least with the zoom call, I could walk away from the phone and hear less of what was being said, and I could pace and flap and shake my hands to dissipate things a bit if I needed to. It will be interesting to see what happens now, and where we go from here, since it was a vote 79.1% against.
On to the regular stuff: June has not been a great month for getting the daily tasks done. I can usually get most in a day done, but I seem to have a higher number of days where I've missed just one thing. I'm also still rather behind on my temperature blanket, but I'm hoping I can improve on both things in the coming days.
I had therapy again on Saturday, and it went decently. Got some abstract-type homework but nothing exceedingly difficult, so that's not bad. We spent most of the discussion talking about boundaries and setting limits and how it's okay to do that. The homework was to remember that my needs and interests are valid and important, which... that's hard to do but I'm working on it. The second thing to do was to pay attention if I *did* say no to doing something and see how I felt. Did I regret saying no? or Was I glad that I took that time for myself? I have decided to also apply the reverse of this, and see how I feel when I say *yes* to something. I figure tracking both sides of it can only be a good thing. Plus, I'm far more likely to say yes than no. The last bit of homework is easy, and I'm going to do it today when I get home. I use a calendar for tracking my daily tasks, but there are few more things that I just keep putting off and off that might benefit from also going on the calendar. My therapist said adding things was a good idea, but to do it slowly, one at a time, so I don't end up overwhelming myself with a stack of things to do. First to get added will be the weeding I think. I've been bad about staying on top of it, so maybe having it on there will help. And for the other two things I'm considering, perhaps I will simply track them on the calendar; mark down when I do them so I know the last time they got done, but don't put down any expectations for the next time I will do them.
All in all it was an eventful week, though not bad, and I'm looking forward to this weekend because I'll have a chance to see some friends and eat some delicious food, even if I did say yes to working Saturday.