Not a good week - 1

Since there is a lot I have to tell from last week, this is going to be a 2-parter. Putting everything in 1 blogpost, would've simply been too much. It was even more than my blogpost about England. I didn't want to down-size my blogpost either, since I feel this is too important to leave anything out. In fact, I still feel I come short of words to fully explain what is going on. When I started my conversation with my jobcoach on Monday, she asked "Would the world really end if you lost your job?" and I answered "My world would." Keep this in mind while reading this and the next blogposts.

Hey everyone. Sorry that I’ve been kind of absent on this blog. There’s been a lot going on last week and I had no idea how to voice those feelings while still in the middle of it, without sounding like I would be ready for a mental institution or something. Don’t worry, I’m not ready for a mental institution and I’m not suicidal or anything like that, I’m just really emotional.

Now, what brought all this on? Work did. It all started on Monday. Remember that I told you that my jobcoach stopped by because I was in a very bad place emotionally? Well, before that I have been mostly cleaning my workplace. I was fine with that, since I wasn’t very capable of much else. After I wrote that blogpost, my colleagues asked me to do the dishes. This didn’t go very smoothly, as I couldn’t carry some heavy stuff, I dropped something, I got my thumb crushed, I was very slow and dishes kept piling up. It took me 2 hours to finish. Also, my shirt was very wet. Yes, having wet clothes is bad to me. I am, and have always been, very sensitive to wet clothes. They are cold, they are sticky and they make my skin crawl. When I was still very young (think around age 6 and younger) I even used to come up to my mum crying, asking for clean clothes. I don’t cry anymore over wet clothes of course, but they are still hell to me.

Last Wednesday (I work on Monday, Wednesday and Friday) I was hoping for some more enjoyable work. I know not every day at work is supposed to be fun, but after the mental breakdown and cleaning all day, I was hoping for some cheering up.

No such luck. I was asked to clean the glass plates (I was shown how to do that faster. Got a personal record! Yay me!), the wooden presenting shelves and sweep the floor. Okay. Okay. Things need to be done. Now I was up for getting to my actual job! Nope. I was asked to do the dishes again. This is where I drew my line. I said no and that I was cleaning all Monday and all morning and that I was ready for something else for a change.

Suddenly, mood swing. My colleagues didn’t like that I was protesting. They told me that everyone has to do something that isn’t fun now and then. I told them I knew that, but that I didn’t see them doing less fun stuff ALL. DAY. LONG. (by this time my colleagues were spreading the message that I was unwilling to do something less fun and I got very upset looks my way…) I was told I should simply learn to work faster (later this was explained to me, he meant by doing it more often), so I would be done sooner. That I should’ve been able to do it in about 15 minutes. I told him “I don’t have just your stuff to wash you know!” He said “I know, but even between us and the bread department.” I told him that that wasn’t it. That everyone kept piling up the dishes and I couldn’t work through them. Suddenly he got what was going on and he asked: “Do you mean you also got dishes from the other departments?” Yes, that’s what I meant.

It turned out that that wasn’t supposed to happen. I was just supposed to wash the dishes from our department. I didn’t know this. I simply took the fact that I was also supposed to wash the dishes from my colleagues as having to wash the dishes from ALL my colleagues. Also, nobody corrected me on this one on the day itself. My colleague went off, because he was getting behind on his job. I went off to tell my colleagues what was going on, so that they would know I wasn’t trying to be stubborn, but actually had good reasons to act the way I acted and that it was all based on a misunderstanding. I got told they understood, but they were still very harsh in their tone towards me and still ending sentences in “But still, we all have to do something less fun sometimes.” If someone ends a sentence with “But still, …” and their tone is still harsh, I don’t have the feeling things are resolved, even when they tell me they are. Also, I kept seeing colleagues get together in groups to talk to each other, then turn around and look at me annoyed, then get back to work. This isn’t fair. They’re telling me it’s resolved and then act like totally the opposite is going on. How am I to resolve things with EVERY colleague?