As Best O' Us and other things
So, first day of Feburary was a bit of a strain. The morning started out with me getting lectured about a case that had turned nightmare on me. It's a long story, but here are the highlights. I am a co-casemanager but the other casemanager actually owns and controls the case and I have a supplemental role that gets more important towards the later stages. A person was off work for unexplained reasons and her doctor, point blank, refused to give a reason other than "she can't work." I mean not even a diagnosis. So, the other case manager denies her and tells her to call me as this is where I come in to help out. Woman, instead, tried to go around me and go back to work and gets turned away. She calls the union, they call my boss, and the next morning I am getting chewed out because if she is not on the rolls by two o'clock that afternoon then she can't collect for the next week as the plant is on partial shutdown. Did any of that lose you? If so, imagine how I feel when I find out the bit during the lecture. No one told us anything of the sort and I figured I had all of Friday to track down this woman's doctor to get this settled. Instead there's me, there's a handbasket, and a really long drop off waiting for me.
Well, after that I had, well, a lot of conference calls to work through and other things to deal with and towards the end of the day someone wanders into our office and slaps a label on a pipe, hangs up a sign, and walks out. I glance at it. The sign tells us the pipe has asbestos and that we had to be out of there by 5:00 for it to be removed. It was 4:00 when we were told. This was also the first notice we had that there was asbestos in our area.
So, everyone else splits and I am last out of the office. Leaving at about 4:45 I lock the door behind me as, well, I am supposed to and I wasn't told not to. We come in Monday and everything looks the same. Complete with pipe with label. We make a few calls to find out if it has been done. We are told it has been. When I asked how they removed the asbestos but left the padding, the 30 year old paint, the 10 years worth of dust, and everything else intact I was told "they used a bag." Oddly enough, that didn't answer my question at all. So we talk to our immediate supervisor in Mephis. She makes some other calls and this means that my boss, as in the woman who manages our contract and is local, is notified. Well, then a conflict breaks out over who we should have called first and we still have no proof that the asbestos was removed. Well, one coworker has a parent who is dying from lung cancer and the other coworker is 9 months pregnant. They are a little concerned on if there is asbestos in the room. Finally a guy from Environmental and Health Safety drops in and tells us they could not remove it because the door was locked and they didn't have a key.
Well, it is noon Monday and my coworkers are upset at this news and my Memphis supervisor is on the phone with us. As they are talking I ask a question that upsets everyone.
"Okay, why does that pipe in the closet have asbestos when the one in that office over there that looks just like it is fine?"
"What pipe?" everyone asks, including the person who is using that office. I show them the pipe and they can see the exposed asbestos. As in someone has disturbed it.
Everyone is upset now and they call in a contractor with an air quality monitor to see if the area is clean but it will take either 1.5 hours or 3 hours to run the test. My supervisor dismisses us for the day.
Well, there is an onsite clinic and one coworker was in such a panic I had to walk her over to the clinic so she could talk to a doctor for reassurance. The other just went home for the day. At the clinic I run into the boss, the contract holder, who has been told nothing about what is going on. This is not well received. She did not know about the asbestos until that day. Did not know that our office had been closed. Did not know about the air testing. She was getting the news from me. Well, I had no good answer why no one told her any of this before and I realized I was off the clock. So, out the door I go to get my kids from daycare.
About three hours later my Memphis boss calls me and tells me that the office will be closed the next day as well even though the test was normal (there is always a background level of asbestos because they were used in brakes for so long and other uses) and they are just accelerating the time line for when we move to our new office elsewhere in the plant.
All right, so I worked half a day monday. Tuesday I was off. Tuesday evening a storm rolls through that keeps me up until two in the morning as we listen to where tornados have been spotted and trying to figure out how close they are to my house. Rain is pelting my house so hard I can hear it rattling off the front door. I glanced out the window during the height of the storm and everything was shrouded in a gray mist. Afterwards, when we came back upstairs with the children and put them in bed, I sat down on my couch, looked out the front window, and stared upon an alien landscape.
Everything was dark. Power was out in the area and a few houses had lights, but not many. The wind was blowing so hard that the branches passed in front of these tiny points of light making them flicker. So I saw a dark hilly shape outside with tiny flicking pinpoints of light. No stars could be seen. The wail of the air raid sirens droned on and on in a pitiful way as they were powered down and then powered up again as a new warning came into play. It sounded almost like an animal, but no animal the Earth had ever seen. It was very strange. I went to bed after that and sometime after I went to bed and after the storm passed, the power went out.
Well, I was late for work the next morning as I had to figure out how to get the cars out of the garage and there were problems getting the kids ready without power. I show up for work in time for the Memphis boss to call us. The phones and the computers were in the new office and we were to move our stuff over there that day. During that call I was put in charge of obtaining a dolly (handtruck for the northerners out there) and boxes for the move. The person I needed to talk to was nowhere to be found and the phones were soon disconnected after I started trying. Also, same conference call, a worker's comp case had been brought to the attention of the local contract holding boss and she wanted someone to work on it. The person who works on all the worker's compensation cases is out of the office that day, due to illness, so they decide I was the best person to do this. Nevermind I have never worked on these sort of cases before and have had no training on what to do with them.
All right, so most of Wednesday was occupied with moving. It also took most of the day before the IT guys came over to set up our computers. So, the day was basically a wash workwise. I did get quite a bit of exercise in, though, as those buildings are roughly about a sixth of a mile long. I had to move our stuff from our old office that at the mid point of building two to building four and, yes, that does mean building three was in between them. I walked back and fourth at least five times and this was also one of the buildings shut down. Imagine walking through a long factory that is completely vacant and lifeless except for the odd conveyor line that someone has neglected to shut off. It felt like walking through a grave. A factory is a place that is supposed to be full of life. Never sleeping. This was just dead except for a few twitches before rigor mortis set in.
Thursday I finshed up the Worker's Compensation case and had to move the errant coworker who called in sick the day before. So, most of Thursday was also lost. It was not until Friday that I got a full day to just work and I had to make a report for a meeting that took up the entire morning that day. So, basically, an uproductive week.
So, now I am in a new office. This new office I have no keys to. Someone has to unlock the door for us so I can get to an inner door which will open with a proximity scanner for my badge. Sound bad? Gets worse. I am in the back of the new location for the clinic. The clinic has not moved over there yet but already has some of their larger equipment, like x-ray machines, over there already. No one in the clinic can get in there as their badges will not open the second set of doors. So someone in my office has to open it for them. This is the clinic and the clinic's equipment but none of them have access to it. Does that make sense to anyone out there.
Anyway, as of Friday afternoon I had completed Tuesday's work. Even then I had to work late and only left because of the daycare closing soon. I sort of felt bad. We have the only coffee pot in the entire area and everyone comes to us for coffee (which I don't drink). My local contract holding boss bought us a percolator which, well, looks nice but is a real pain to clean. I try to help clean it out before I leave, but I was in a hurry friday evening. Still, the office is running more on track and next week I am supposed to be trained on how to assign new cases as one of the people who do this is the one who is nine month pregnant and once she's gone, well, someone has to.
On top of that, there is a fair chance that they may make me a data analyst. I am going to be the Joel of All Trades by the end of this year, I swear I am. I was hired to work as a case manager on Short Term Disability and already I am having to work beyond that scope.
Oh well. At least I'm not bored, right?
Well, after that I had, well, a lot of conference calls to work through and other things to deal with and towards the end of the day someone wanders into our office and slaps a label on a pipe, hangs up a sign, and walks out. I glance at it. The sign tells us the pipe has asbestos and that we had to be out of there by 5:00 for it to be removed. It was 4:00 when we were told. This was also the first notice we had that there was asbestos in our area.
So, everyone else splits and I am last out of the office. Leaving at about 4:45 I lock the door behind me as, well, I am supposed to and I wasn't told not to. We come in Monday and everything looks the same. Complete with pipe with label. We make a few calls to find out if it has been done. We are told it has been. When I asked how they removed the asbestos but left the padding, the 30 year old paint, the 10 years worth of dust, and everything else intact I was told "they used a bag." Oddly enough, that didn't answer my question at all. So we talk to our immediate supervisor in Mephis. She makes some other calls and this means that my boss, as in the woman who manages our contract and is local, is notified. Well, then a conflict breaks out over who we should have called first and we still have no proof that the asbestos was removed. Well, one coworker has a parent who is dying from lung cancer and the other coworker is 9 months pregnant. They are a little concerned on if there is asbestos in the room. Finally a guy from Environmental and Health Safety drops in and tells us they could not remove it because the door was locked and they didn't have a key.
Well, it is noon Monday and my coworkers are upset at this news and my Memphis supervisor is on the phone with us. As they are talking I ask a question that upsets everyone.
"Okay, why does that pipe in the closet have asbestos when the one in that office over there that looks just like it is fine?"
"What pipe?" everyone asks, including the person who is using that office. I show them the pipe and they can see the exposed asbestos. As in someone has disturbed it.
Everyone is upset now and they call in a contractor with an air quality monitor to see if the area is clean but it will take either 1.5 hours or 3 hours to run the test. My supervisor dismisses us for the day.
Well, there is an onsite clinic and one coworker was in such a panic I had to walk her over to the clinic so she could talk to a doctor for reassurance. The other just went home for the day. At the clinic I run into the boss, the contract holder, who has been told nothing about what is going on. This is not well received. She did not know about the asbestos until that day. Did not know that our office had been closed. Did not know about the air testing. She was getting the news from me. Well, I had no good answer why no one told her any of this before and I realized I was off the clock. So, out the door I go to get my kids from daycare.
About three hours later my Memphis boss calls me and tells me that the office will be closed the next day as well even though the test was normal (there is always a background level of asbestos because they were used in brakes for so long and other uses) and they are just accelerating the time line for when we move to our new office elsewhere in the plant.
All right, so I worked half a day monday. Tuesday I was off. Tuesday evening a storm rolls through that keeps me up until two in the morning as we listen to where tornados have been spotted and trying to figure out how close they are to my house. Rain is pelting my house so hard I can hear it rattling off the front door. I glanced out the window during the height of the storm and everything was shrouded in a gray mist. Afterwards, when we came back upstairs with the children and put them in bed, I sat down on my couch, looked out the front window, and stared upon an alien landscape.
Everything was dark. Power was out in the area and a few houses had lights, but not many. The wind was blowing so hard that the branches passed in front of these tiny points of light making them flicker. So I saw a dark hilly shape outside with tiny flicking pinpoints of light. No stars could be seen. The wail of the air raid sirens droned on and on in a pitiful way as they were powered down and then powered up again as a new warning came into play. It sounded almost like an animal, but no animal the Earth had ever seen. It was very strange. I went to bed after that and sometime after I went to bed and after the storm passed, the power went out.
Well, I was late for work the next morning as I had to figure out how to get the cars out of the garage and there were problems getting the kids ready without power. I show up for work in time for the Memphis boss to call us. The phones and the computers were in the new office and we were to move our stuff over there that day. During that call I was put in charge of obtaining a dolly (handtruck for the northerners out there) and boxes for the move. The person I needed to talk to was nowhere to be found and the phones were soon disconnected after I started trying. Also, same conference call, a worker's comp case had been brought to the attention of the local contract holding boss and she wanted someone to work on it. The person who works on all the worker's compensation cases is out of the office that day, due to illness, so they decide I was the best person to do this. Nevermind I have never worked on these sort of cases before and have had no training on what to do with them.
All right, so most of Wednesday was occupied with moving. It also took most of the day before the IT guys came over to set up our computers. So, the day was basically a wash workwise. I did get quite a bit of exercise in, though, as those buildings are roughly about a sixth of a mile long. I had to move our stuff from our old office that at the mid point of building two to building four and, yes, that does mean building three was in between them. I walked back and fourth at least five times and this was also one of the buildings shut down. Imagine walking through a long factory that is completely vacant and lifeless except for the odd conveyor line that someone has neglected to shut off. It felt like walking through a grave. A factory is a place that is supposed to be full of life. Never sleeping. This was just dead except for a few twitches before rigor mortis set in.
Thursday I finshed up the Worker's Compensation case and had to move the errant coworker who called in sick the day before. So, most of Thursday was also lost. It was not until Friday that I got a full day to just work and I had to make a report for a meeting that took up the entire morning that day. So, basically, an uproductive week.
So, now I am in a new office. This new office I have no keys to. Someone has to unlock the door for us so I can get to an inner door which will open with a proximity scanner for my badge. Sound bad? Gets worse. I am in the back of the new location for the clinic. The clinic has not moved over there yet but already has some of their larger equipment, like x-ray machines, over there already. No one in the clinic can get in there as their badges will not open the second set of doors. So someone in my office has to open it for them. This is the clinic and the clinic's equipment but none of them have access to it. Does that make sense to anyone out there.
Anyway, as of Friday afternoon I had completed Tuesday's work. Even then I had to work late and only left because of the daycare closing soon. I sort of felt bad. We have the only coffee pot in the entire area and everyone comes to us for coffee (which I don't drink). My local contract holding boss bought us a percolator which, well, looks nice but is a real pain to clean. I try to help clean it out before I leave, but I was in a hurry friday evening. Still, the office is running more on track and next week I am supposed to be trained on how to assign new cases as one of the people who do this is the one who is nine month pregnant and once she's gone, well, someone has to.
On top of that, there is a fair chance that they may make me a data analyst. I am going to be the Joel of All Trades by the end of this year, I swear I am. I was hired to work as a case manager on Short Term Disability and already I am having to work beyond that scope.
Oh well. At least I'm not bored, right?