Occupational Health

At my employment we returned to work in mid-May. I remained on site due to the nature of my job and the fact that we had building projects happening while we were closed and I oversaw these projects. The Director and the rest of the Department heads and some staff returned to work at least part time in mid-May. While we were preparing to re-open our building to the public in a Phase in process it was clear there was tension, differences of opinions, and strong feedback on what we should and should not do. Emotions were high. Employees were tense, uptight and stressed out. To be honest, part of me was a little confused by these feelings since these employees have been working from home, part time, since March. And where as I didn’t mind coming in I have to admit I was slightly confused by their comments of needing a break, wanting a vacation, need to take time off and other comments similar to this. Part of me was thinking “Didn’t you just have that?” But I tried to put these negative thoughts behind me.

Since mid-May we have opened our building and so far things are going pretty well. Outside of a few reminders and clarifications about our safety guidelines, most people are happy we are open and happy to be out and about. And I am genially glad about this. But I wonder about the 2 months of disagreements, people snapping at each other, and what I perceived as me often being the lone logical manager in the building. I believed while working through the details as a group we often overthought issues. We didn’t plan well. Too much was left for the last minute. And our leader was not leading us. I didn’t feel supported. In fact, I felt just the opposite. In heated discussions often the votes would be 6-1 with me being the 1. I felt some of our conversations almost verged on paranoid. I kept asking “if we are this concerned, why are we opening.” This has left me, the one who I felt at least had their priorities straight, now feeling very emotional and stressed out. The rest of the managers are all very happy. But they truly put me through the winger. There was no real right or wrong on what we were discussing. Mostly it was about safety measures. I kept saying “we can do everything we possibly can, but if we open our doors, the COVID is going to get in some way somehow.

I read a blog our director posted last week and I was surprised because my perception of how she lead us is completely different from hers. She talked about how she guided us with self-care activities; how she was anxious to open our building; how we are all doing much better now that we are open; how she gave her best of everything to her staff and to her job, and how she helped us during the times of differences of opinions, disagreements and confusion.

I guess I just didn’t see what she saw and I didn’t experience what she said she did to help us. And again there is no real right or wrong here but I can say that I didn’t feel supported or guided. I didn’t feel she lead us with care and concern. I felt the situation was toxic with managers often being rude and disrespectful and sometimes snapping at each other. I am sure if we come together a few months down the road to discuss this our different perception of the last few months will be apparent. But this I do know, their behavior, her lack of response to what was happening impacted me.

I sought out support through EAP which I can’t say is really helping me. I am using my own tools to try and stay mentally strong and healthy. But I am not sure I can ever feel contentment, happiness or joy at work again. I feel I cannot trust them to handle a crises and to come together as a team to address the needs of our staff and our building. Part of me wants to discuss this with our leader and part of me tells me to let it go. Will my feedback open her eyes? Will she learn from this? Or is this me needing to accept the things I cannot change.

I started this article several different times and each time as I got towards the end I ditched it.  I suspect the reason is that everything for me right now, sounds so negative. I want to write something uplifting, positive, encouraging, and supportive. But every corner I turn, every direction I take, next thing I know I am down a negative road. If writing the article was going to make me feel doom and gloom then any reader will feel doom and gloom as well. 

These are the times we live in right now. Most of us are trying to do positive things in our lives to make us feel better. We are planting gardens, walking our dogs, baking bread, teaching our children crafts, reading books we have been meaning to read for years, cleaning closets, basements, attics and attacking our homes with ideas from Home Depot to Target; anything to give us some feeling of hope and help keep our faith that things will get better. And I truly believe that back last March most of believed that this would be a three month thing. By summer this COVID thing will be gone from our lives and we will be back to normal. I even think those who were saying “it will be months or years” partially wanted to believe that it was only going to be three months. 

So four months later here we are in summer and the summer and the heat didn’t kill it. And while our first two months of isolation, working from home, home deliveries and mostly carry out seemed to have slowed the spreading down, we wanted our normal back and with that came more COVID. But what did not come with this more COVID is those feelings of hope and faith that we had if we continued to isolate, decorate sidewalks, take long walks, bake bread, garden, walk our dogs etc. etc. What came instead is anger, finger pointing, rights vs doing the right thing, feelings of irritation, depression, “cover your nose and your mouth”, “you did what and went where?”, “I can see my family, friends, neighbors because we are all 6 feet apart”, “it’s the protestors fault”, “it’s the Democrats, no it’s the Republican’s” and so on. 

This is happening in my workplace. While my work was closed and I remained at work due to the nature of my job, everyone else worked from home. I say that lightly but ok, they did. But when they returned what they brought to my nice quiet space and building is COVID shaming. And with COVID shaming came arguments on what to do before re-opening. We have discussed and analyzed every single possible scenario we could possibly come up with. Common sense left us in March and has not returned. What has replaced common sense is shaming. I strongly believe in keeping our work place safe and healthy for our staff. But, realistically, based on what we know, no matter what we do, what parameters we put in place, that bugger COVID just might sneak in the back door. Yet if one patron might ask that one question or make that one request we have to be “prepared.” All this has turned me into that person who has lost all patience, kindness, hope, faith and solutions to rise above this. That I am better than this COVID. But it has bested me. 

I walk each day, sometimes twice. I listen to books on my phone and enjoy the early morning sunrise. I started picking up newspapers at the end of folk’s driveway and putting them on their doorstep. Just a little something that might make someone smile. I don’t even know these people and they don’t know me. I am the mystery person who gets their newspaper out of the rain. Last week I was half way through my walk and I yanked out my ear buds and started to pray. While I love to walk, I love to read. And I love my books. It’s hard for me to walk 4-5 miles without listening to anything. But last week, I started to pray. And the next day, I did the same. And now almost every walk I spend at least half my walk in prayer. And while I do yoga I am not much into meditation. Last week I sat in front of my TV and did meditation every day.  I cannot fight COVID and I am so tired of fighting with my co-workers, and I am tired of not sleeping and feeling anxious and stressed. I called our EAP and set up an appointment. I just feel for me, I have to find a way to get through this that is bigger than the garden, the bread, the clean basement and the healthy dog. COVID is not going to win. I will find my way.

COVID is not going to win. I will find my way.

Mary

I work in administration at a public library. My library is in a town of about 18,000 people and we have 25 employees. Since mid-March our library has been closed due to COVID-19.  My responsibilities in the library include finance, human resources and building maintenance and contracts.  When we first began to discuss the COVID-19 virus we talked about what we were going to do in regards to our staff. Of course at the time, we had no idea that almost two months later we would still be closed. We are now beginning to plan re-opening in a phased approached.  During this closure we have paid our employees. The expectation was employees were to work at least half the hours they are normally scheduled to work in a week. This work includes planning and implementing online programs, story times, crafts, collection development, attending training and webinars. I have been in our building working every day Monday-Friday since we closed. Some much needed building projects were addressed. I tackled some long planned records disposal and organizing files.  I have updated essential paper work and created some long needed databases. All this including supervising a window replacement project in one of our buildings, paying bills, paying employees and assisting in updating policies we will have to implement when we open. 

Today the department heads had a long overdue meeting to begin discussing our phased in approach to re-opening the library. This week of each month is my busiest week. I have to coordinate the paying of bills, library reports, paying employees, reconciling bank statements, putting together our board packet and on top of this our fiscal year ended last Thursday. I started suggesting in mid-April to begin these phased in approach conversations, but my suggestions fell on deaf ears. Now here we are, possibly a week away from either accepting checked out materials or doing drive up service, and I am sitting in this 5 hour meeting trying not to be angry, frustrated, or talk myself into walking out of the meeting. 

These are difficult times as we all know and are experiencing. What I am experiencing is nothing compared to those who have lost income and attempting to file unemployment, get loans for their small businesses, or front line health care workers trying to save patients. I am fortunate that I am getting paid, I am healthy and I am still working. But for many reasons I am in search of patience. I have learned that in crises we all respond differently. We all perceive this pandemic in a different manner. We have people who are angry, protesting, and want their lives back. We have businesses who are trying to stay afloat and find innovative ways to sell their goods and services. We have families who are struggling to keep children safe and happy and well educated. We also have couples who are finding their love again. We have dogs who have been walked more in the past two months than in the past year. And it’s so good to see children outside and playing again. The sidewalk chalk art makes me smile.

Yet, during this meeting today I found I was barely holding myself together. I could not understand my feelings of anger and frustration. I sat in this meeting trying to find patience. What was making me feel so anxious, uncomfortable and frustrated? I had my phone and started to search for meditation and phrases that could bring me back. I contributed about how we should all feel fortunate and blessed. But all the while my anxiety level continued to rise. A co-worker saw this and sent me encouraging statements, some pictures of her beautiful children and offered to get me coffee.  I decided during this meeting I needed to do something to turn me around. My goal for the month of April was to do yoga daily. I achieved this goal about 2/3 of the month.  In conversations I have had with others we talk about people we see at the stores and some who are so helpful, friendly and encouraging and others are so angry and rude.  The positive experiences uplift me but the negative bring me down immensely. 

During the meeting today I decided I have to dedicate May to finding patience and serenity. I cannot continue to view the world as I have in the past two months. I want to believe we are better and stronger than this virus. I can try to be part of the solution and I can help myself.  I will let you know in June how I do.

Yes, the title is in reference to Weird Al’s Rye or the Kaiser parody of Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger. Use this information as you will.

One of the things I have struggled most with my entire life is being satisfied with sitting still. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t accomplish everything I set out to do, but my mind is constantly going with “how can I achieve this” or “how can I make this better.” I have an entire archive of inner monologue stored in the depths of my brain of how to end complex problems that affect me, my community, The United States, even the world (and I suppose the universe beyond, thanks Star Trek for making me an idealist.) These conversations are never ending. They have been a million times more active with being out of my normal work environment due to the coronavirus. These are weird times we’re going through. I say we because we are all in this together, in that our worlds have drastically changed. Whether your daily work location has been unchanged, working from home, or out of work, things are different. But, what that different looks like is very unique to each one of us, and that is nothing to ignore. Your experience is your experience, and no one can tell you how you feel about it, how to react to it, or what you should have done two weeks ago.

What has been largely unchanged for me is not acting on things that I want to achieve or that would make my life better. I have lists upon lists of things I could have accomplished during this down time, but they really aren’t any different from the past two years I’ve been out of grad school and wearing my big girl pants. I want a porch on the house. I want a garden. I want flowers that my grandma would have loved to tend around her house that I currently live in. I want to be the best runner I have ever been and crush this next half marathon. I want to read these books that I have an interest in and further my education and well-being. I want to start my next degree. Looking at my list of wants, you’re probably thinking that I’m super high achieving, constantly going, up at the crack of dawn, perfect skin and wardrobe every day, and always on time. I’d be thinking that too, but I rarely get up before the dog, and even then, I hit her snooze/cuddle button. I still get breakouts and I’m closer to 30 than I’d like to admit. I’ve worn jeans 2 days out of the last month, otherwise it’s been sweatpants (and probably the same pair every day for a week). Rarely am I early or on time. My dog doesn’t listen well AND I got her with the purpose to go running with me. It’s been almost a year and I gave up after one run with her 6 weeks ago that I was so concerned about her seeing a dog that I didn’t see a huge crack in the sidewalk and wiped out. This last one is important, because it leads to an important fact: I’m more concerned with the wellbeing of others than myself.

This time of uncertainty has both increased and decreased my stress levels. I don’t have anyone to take care of, but I also don’t have anyone to take care of. It’s a problem. When you don’t have anyone else to focus on, I guess you have to take care of yourself. If anyone else has been in this boat, you know this is probably one of the most daunting tasks you have ever faced. Some days I sit on the couch and flip through social media and only get up to walk the dog and scrounge up some food. Other days I run around the house and clean, do laundry, organize, take the dog for an hour-long walk, do some crafting, read, and still find time for some social media scrolling. There is no in between. The important thing is this: I met my needs for that day. I listened to my body and did nothing if that’s what it told me, and that’s ok. I accomplished a million small tasks because my body said it wasn’t ok if it went undone, and that’s ok.

My employer has come up with a task for those of us who have been without work or not getting their normal number of hours. I am so very grateful for this opportunity, as many others have not been so blessed. My employer has chosen to invest in its people by completing a Lean Six Sigma course. I have only just started, but I wanted to share a piece of it. The Japanese word, Kaizen, means change for the good or continuous improvement. I strive for this on a large scale (see my above wants), but I really struggle with making the changes necessary to achieve those goals on a small scale. It’s something I’ve forced myself to become more aware of in the last 6 months. What they’ve repeated over and over in the videos I’m watching is that making the company better as a whole starts with something small; the butterfly effect, if you will. Something as simple as moving a garbage can or a printer to reduce wasted time walking to either of these can improve company outcomes. Mind blowing stuff, but it doesn’t stop there. Your home routine that gets you to work on time affects company outcomes. I really felt that one, because good things happen when I’m on time. I’m more likely to go running if I have all my stuff laid out the night before. I review notes better when they’re color coded. I keep my laundry detergent in my laundry room. Simple things to make your life better and easier.

One of my dad’s favorite phrases is KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid, or if you prefer, keep it stupid simple. While Kaizen isn’t equivalent, I feel like they’re on the same track. I get so frustrated when someone is doing something and I know of an easier or more efficient way of achieving it. I want to jump in and help them or show them my way. Right now, I have to focus on myself and find different ways of looking at things or achieving tasks. Do you eat more nutritious things when you don’t buy junk food? Do you try new things because you’re on social media and other people are doing them too? Do you thrive in a social media free environment and stick to your lists and lists of accomplishments you haven’t reached yet? We are all experiencing different things day to day, whether we’re in our old normal or the new normal. Some days you’ll dig up a hedge in your backyard solo. Some days you just need to sit on the couch with your dog and binge watch Golden Girls. I encourage you to meditate for a few minutes each day on these thoughts and choose what will bring you toward continuous improvement, whatever that may be.