Brutal honesty ahoy!
I opened at work this morning (and I have to say...it's so funny to see my co-workers sitting around eating cereal at the counter), and discovered that I had not two but three charges today. Considering how busy Fridays are, it's not really a bad thing to have that many hostesses, but I knew it would be even more frantic today since three of them are still being trained. Allison and Whitney are great, so I wasn't too worried about them, just a bit stressed that I would be helping all three of them while trying to keep the customers happy. (Another off topic note...Whitney and I were both training at Champion for like, 6 years. Small world.) Sarah, on the other hand, doesn't really seem cut out for the job. Right as people began filing in for lunch, Sarah shares with us that she's feeling really sick, and that she took diet pills. MAJOR warning lights began going off immediately. Her heart was racing, but she insisted she was fine. I was interrogating her in between getting my other girls to their tables, and she seemed to be okay for a bit. I know better than anyone what those things do to you, so as long as she didn't get worse, I knew it would be okay to just keep her up at the hostess stand with me.
Of course, she did get worse. She was really starting to be in pain, and she described it just as I suspected. I was trying really hard not to be mad (which would be totally hypocritical), but I was at WORK...this is my JOB, and I'm getting paid to do this. The minute she told me she'd taken diet pills, my priorities HAD to shift; it was a moral obligation. So now, I've got two frazzled and confused hostesses relying on me to help them out, and at the same time, a girl to take care of who could possibly be in real danger. I wanted her out of there. I was going to send her home, but when I asked if anyone was there, she said no. So that definitely ruled that option out right away. No way was I going to send her back to an empty house. I just kept asking her who could come pick her up and take her somewhere, and she said her friend could do it. She said she would call, but that quickly seemed out of the question, so I made her get out her cell phone so I could call. By then, she was sweating and near tears, so I made an executive decision. Out of some (misguided) sense of loyalty, I really have a problem ratting people out. But as much as I hated it, this was just one of those situations where I don't care about privacy. So I got my managers, and I told them what was going on.
They took her back to the office to deal with the situation, so I was incredibly relieved to be free of that obligation. Is that a cop out? I am so glad that we were busy and I had work to do, because I could literally feel my whole body shaking. If I wasn't devoting my full attention to my job, I would have just broken down, because 1.)Too many memories, and 2.) I've seen firsthand what those pills can do. I just kept remembering those nights that seemed to last forever, when I would spend hour after hour either talking online or on the phone to someone that guided me through it, telling me what to do and keeping me as calm as possible. As I've begun writing what I hope will be my memoir, I've re-discovered some of that terror, and I'm still only able to handle it in small doses. If the ends didn't justify the means, I probably wouldn't work through it, and choose instead to try to forget.
I truly believe diet pills should not be over-the-counter drugs. First of all, there's no reason for them. If you have a medical need to lose weight, by all means, do. But there's a healthy way to do it, and it does not involve any kind of medication. I see these ads on TV about how their miracle pills curb your appetite, and it makes me sick. Are we THAT lazy? To the point that we're not going to do what it takes to get healthy if there's any kind of sacrifice involved? And beyond just that basic principle, there is an even bigger reason those drugs should be taken off the market. There are very sick people out there, and they are slaves to a disease that demands diet pills and starvation. Those people have enough to deal with without being constantly bombarded by diet ads and easy access to all sorts of pills. I don't care how safe they claim they are. Maybe they are safe for people who don't have a disease, but they are instant cardiac arrest for those who do. It's against the law to use illicit drugs like cocaine and heroin, but here are these people using drugs that are equally dangerous without any kind of restriction or repercussion. The fact that these pills are legal is one of the things that makes me disparaging of the world we live in.
I can't say there are many times in my life I've felt proud of myself, but I don't mind saying that I was today. The situation was not fair at all, and I shouldn't have had to deal with it. I told Whitney and Allison that I will outright refuse to work with her if she EVER pulls a stunt like that again. If you want to do stupid and destructive things (yeah, i know...pot meet kettle, but at least I'm aware!), there's probably not a whole lot I can do to stop you. But you do it on your own time. Now, if this had happened somewhere else, or if she called me when we weren't at work, I would not hesitate to help in any way possible. But she's getting paid to do her job, and she can't do it if she's sick. By default, I can then no longer do MY job.
Now that I've ranted, I'm getting off my soapbox. But the moral of the story, kids? Diet pills are dangerous, and they are never okay. I bet you all wish I had just left it at that!
Of course, she did get worse. She was really starting to be in pain, and she described it just as I suspected. I was trying really hard not to be mad (which would be totally hypocritical), but I was at WORK...this is my JOB, and I'm getting paid to do this. The minute she told me she'd taken diet pills, my priorities HAD to shift; it was a moral obligation. So now, I've got two frazzled and confused hostesses relying on me to help them out, and at the same time, a girl to take care of who could possibly be in real danger. I wanted her out of there. I was going to send her home, but when I asked if anyone was there, she said no. So that definitely ruled that option out right away. No way was I going to send her back to an empty house. I just kept asking her who could come pick her up and take her somewhere, and she said her friend could do it. She said she would call, but that quickly seemed out of the question, so I made her get out her cell phone so I could call. By then, she was sweating and near tears, so I made an executive decision. Out of some (misguided) sense of loyalty, I really have a problem ratting people out. But as much as I hated it, this was just one of those situations where I don't care about privacy. So I got my managers, and I told them what was going on.
They took her back to the office to deal with the situation, so I was incredibly relieved to be free of that obligation. Is that a cop out? I am so glad that we were busy and I had work to do, because I could literally feel my whole body shaking. If I wasn't devoting my full attention to my job, I would have just broken down, because 1.)Too many memories, and 2.) I've seen firsthand what those pills can do. I just kept remembering those nights that seemed to last forever, when I would spend hour after hour either talking online or on the phone to someone that guided me through it, telling me what to do and keeping me as calm as possible. As I've begun writing what I hope will be my memoir, I've re-discovered some of that terror, and I'm still only able to handle it in small doses. If the ends didn't justify the means, I probably wouldn't work through it, and choose instead to try to forget.
I truly believe diet pills should not be over-the-counter drugs. First of all, there's no reason for them. If you have a medical need to lose weight, by all means, do. But there's a healthy way to do it, and it does not involve any kind of medication. I see these ads on TV about how their miracle pills curb your appetite, and it makes me sick. Are we THAT lazy? To the point that we're not going to do what it takes to get healthy if there's any kind of sacrifice involved? And beyond just that basic principle, there is an even bigger reason those drugs should be taken off the market. There are very sick people out there, and they are slaves to a disease that demands diet pills and starvation. Those people have enough to deal with without being constantly bombarded by diet ads and easy access to all sorts of pills. I don't care how safe they claim they are. Maybe they are safe for people who don't have a disease, but they are instant cardiac arrest for those who do. It's against the law to use illicit drugs like cocaine and heroin, but here are these people using drugs that are equally dangerous without any kind of restriction or repercussion. The fact that these pills are legal is one of the things that makes me disparaging of the world we live in.
I can't say there are many times in my life I've felt proud of myself, but I don't mind saying that I was today. The situation was not fair at all, and I shouldn't have had to deal with it. I told Whitney and Allison that I will outright refuse to work with her if she EVER pulls a stunt like that again. If you want to do stupid and destructive things (yeah, i know...pot meet kettle, but at least I'm aware!), there's probably not a whole lot I can do to stop you. But you do it on your own time. Now, if this had happened somewhere else, or if she called me when we weren't at work, I would not hesitate to help in any way possible. But she's getting paid to do her job, and she can't do it if she's sick. By default, I can then no longer do MY job.
Now that I've ranted, I'm getting off my soapbox. But the moral of the story, kids? Diet pills are dangerous, and they are never okay. I bet you all wish I had just left it at that!