23:54 - 17.05.05
See Saw
It started raining about 9:30 last night and went on for about 12 hours. 20 cm/8 inches. Blessed rain. Our climate is very dry so all moisture is welcome. The water rationing that the city was contemplating for this area of Calgary while repairs are undertaken on the major water main are contingent on how much rain we get too. As far as I'm concerned, if it rains for the next six weeks straight that's great. Not very likely, but one can always hope. The upshot of this downpour was that the flora on the way to work today was that luminous green of spring.
Yesterday afternoon I spent two hours in a mandatory workshop for new employees. It was a combination training session to teach one how to be certain their work conditions are ergonomically correct and also to teach staff all the health and safety policies of the company. That is very rare in this industry, but the leader of the workshop said that they found 80% of workplace injuries occurred, not in the field, but in the office towers. In two years of training staff, the injury rate, and subsequent lost productivity, has dropped by over half. That's pretty impressive. We were even asked about our handedness and sleep positions. In both cases I was told I was an anomaly. Doesn't really matter though, because the assessment of your workspace is done so it accommodates your own quirks/body type. How about that, maybe my feet can reach the floor even when my hands are on the keyboard. The only other place that happens is at home.
I walked back in to my work area with about 15 minutes to go in the day. I was supposed to have met with the one supervisor who was scrapping about the project yesterday afternoon. The one who sat one work station over and spent most of her time on personal phone calls. I was told the safety meeting took precedence over anything else. She seemed to have been waiting for me - sitting and chatting with the person I sit a few feet away from in the new set up. She looked up when I walked to my desk and said "You know, you're not special". I didn't respond, because I really didn't know where she was coming from. I had told her about the meeting when I was informaed about it half an hour before it began, and had already verified with my supervisor that it was mandatory. I don't understand the hostility toward me when I was just following the requirements of the company.
The training session was a lifesaver this morning though. We had been told during the training to contact the workshop leader with any health and safety issues, including informing them of any type of illness or physical condition so they could accommodate our needs. I was doing alright, until the woman that the supervisor had been talking with the night before came in to work at about 10 am. She wandered off to do some work in the stacks then returned to her desk at about 11. She must have decided she needed a pick me up, because she doused herself in perfume. Within 15 minutes I was having a major asthma attack from the chemicals in her scent. I tried to deal with it by taking the maximum dose of the various meds I can use for both the asthma and the pneumonia, but I was still in trouble. I didn't feel comfortable asking her to go wash some of it off since she had seemed a bit hostile last night too, but my supervisor wasn't available to ask for an intervention. I emailed the workshop leader just asking for some practical steps to take, so that I could remain at work because I couldn't wait any longer for assistance. My lungs were starting to shut down. I told him I was going to go out for the lunch hour to see if the nice rain washed air would make it possible for me to make it through the afternoon. As soon as I stepped in to the elevator lobby the respiratory distress started to diminish.
By the time I arrived at my chiropractor's office I was able to get a lungful of air in without spasms of coughing. Good thing, since we had a very interesting discussion. At about 10:20 am I needed to take a quick break from the keying I had been doing for three hours. Opened up the internet account I had and checked the news stories on an impulse. Breaking news? A major defection from the federal opposition party to the ruling minority government. This is one of the few elected MPs in Ontario who gave the opposition party some credibility there - they have very little support otherwise. It means that the party not only lost one seat, it could cost them several. My chiropractor and I discussed the reasons and the implications at length. The likely outcome for the non-confidence vote on the budget now is even less likely to cause an election before the fall. That too is a good thing, I think. Apparently the provincial wing of the opposition party - who are the governing party in this province - were extremely angry with the defector. They accused her of being ambitious. Well yes, that is exactly what our premier did when he first came to the provincial legislature from being mayor of our city. Switched from one party to the next influencing the vote enough to get that party elected to government. Something that hadn't been certain beforehand. Wonder where she got the idea.
When I returned from lunch, the workshop leader had already dropped by my workstation and left a note asking me to call him immediately. He was down to see me within five minutes. After discussing the issues arising in the one private meeting room, he went to my supervisor and asked her to put off her next meeting a bit to help him address my health issues. Have I mentioned I really like working for this company? Most other places I would have been fired by now for being sick for so long, even though I caught the illness from a co-worker. Wouldn't matter, and certainly very few companies would go out of their way to address the health issues on-site. The last company I worked at did have a health and safety specialist, and he did help me a lot, but he had to go against the wishes of some of the other staff there to do it. My supervisor was just going in to a meeting with the permanent staff and just asked them to go easy on the perfume for the next few weeks. That is all that I asked. The one staff member sitting just across from my station came back after. She said she had asthma too, so she could understand how I was feeling. The one who had doused herself this morning piped up and said she thought she would still continue wearing scent, because it was only a little dab anyway. She left to work in the stacks, but each time she came back to our work area I would start coughing even though I have my back to her work area. It wasn't a psychological response but a physical one. I'm not certain what will happen tomorrow.
The best part of the afternoon was when I was working through some data and realized I might have found one of the "smoking guns" for the research part of the project that I'd been asked to take on. Emailed the legal secretary I liase with and passed on that little tidbit just before going home. Sometimes the good and bad of a day really do balance each other out. Got home and spent a lot of time talking with some of my election staff about the implications of the news today. By Thursday we'll know for certain and that is good too. Right now I think bed sounds even better. Good night dear diary.
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