So last week we had a “safety” meeting. You can probably tell by my use of scare quotes that I was not a fan.
Have you ever heard of “blaming the victim?” Please look it up and then please never blame us for our injuries ever again. I appreciate the cycle we're stuck in: We don't have enough workers → The current workers then get overworked → Overwork results in injuries → Repeat. But it is incredibly insulting to look at that third step in the cycle and point the finger at us for being injured. Being injured is unavoidable with overwork. This job in particular is incredibly physical and takes a heavy toll on the body with just normal working hours and we haven't been back down to 8-hour shifts for over 2 years now. The injuries result from overwork, which is a result of management's decision to overwork us, not a decision on our part to get injured. The third step is not an effective point of intervention. You have to stop overworking us. If that results in a financial loss, well you're already suffering that loss in recuperating employees aren't you? Pick which financial loss is the smallest and don't blame us for it or hire more workers. I'm sure whoever's reading this just rolled their eyes at that sentence and had a thought akin to “oh, 'hire more workers' why didn't we think of that?” Well what do you want from us buddy? It's the only long-term point of intervention on the cycle and it involves duties and decisions that are completely out of our hands. Whoever's fault it is that we haven't successfully hired enough people up to now, or whoever's duty or obligation it is to step up and do better to close that gap, it ain't us. We have no ability to effect the one effective solution, so we put in our time by overworking and now you come in to lecture us about the consequences of that failure of leadership?
Speaking of “whoever's duty or obligation it is to step up”, I submit the following vote of no confidence in our safety officer. We were being reassured that Tim The New Guy would turn this whole thing around and fill in the hiring gap. We…were skeptical on this point and one of us, I won't mention who, let slip some version of “we've been hearing that for over two years'' and Officer Safety School told us we needed to be more positive and it wasn't fair to say such things without giving Tim a chance. The upspeaker then tried to convey “we've been hearing the same reassurances for years from multiple different people who no longer even work here and 'the new guy's got it' doesn't sound any meaningfully less like bullshit this time around” only to get finger-wagged for not having a positive attitude again and how being negative was a choice. Not to go on a philosophical tangent here but, If my brother died, processing that would involve going through some very intense negative emotions wouldn't it? And if I tried to bury those feelings and “stay positive because being negative is a choice” as a solution, psychologists are all pretty much in accord that that's now called “toxic positivity,” literally being positive in denial of your true feelings instead of allowing yourself to feel them is literally harmful to your wellbeing. When your employees have genuine concerns or even just a well-earned sense of negativity and the god damned “safety officer” tells us that being negative about our superiors' empty reassurances and lack of transparency is a choice we're making and not a statement about our superior's empty reassurances and lack of transparency…you can see how this reinforces the “blaming the victim'' problem I mentioned earlier. The upspeaker then got up and left the room, and the only reason I didn't get up and immediately follow him was that I already knew I'd be sending this feedback and wanted to see what else there would be to say.
Now Officer Positive Vibes told us that his condescending lecture wasn't aimed at us, we were the “good” shift. Something I'm sure he didn't tell any other shift that got the same lecture. But then he mentioned his suspicion that a lot of the people who were out with injuries were “faking it.” ….Excuse me? Perhaps I'm a bit sensitive to this given how many times I've been out with an overwork-related injury over the years(J** had a similar outburst at the meeting, he also was out with an injury recently) but you cowards have the nerve to overwork us to the point of injury and then shift the blame back onto us for being injured? What exactly do you base this assumption on anyway? That there's no way that demanding your workers do up to 60 hour shifts for two years could possibly result in this many injuries? That is a very concerningly naïve assumption from our upper management and, again, our safety officer to make. You know if you google “32 hour work week” you'd find out that working us less would actually make us more productive. Something about people with rest and recuperation being more focused and engaged in their work and getting less injured, both from not being worked into breaking, and being more focused and present resulting in less accidents. You won't, but my point is until you stop working us to the point of breaking, I don't believe for one second that anyone out with an injury is faking it. Stop shifting the blame.
“The doctors at Clear Choice don't know the difference between being 'hurt' and being 'in pain.'” Officer Safe Search On used this sentence in his above thesis as well. Again, on what basis do you, person without medical training, make that assertion? Second question: “Why am I supposed to be in pain at this job?” Sore I'll accept. I can't imagine doing this job and not being sore afterwards. Stretching while sore can even be oddly gratifying sometimes. But why should I accept “in pain?” Pain is the body telling the brain that something is starting to go wrong. If “the doctors at Clear Choice” have made the determination that your workers are in “pain” and need to be taken off the job so that they don't progress to “hurt,” isn't that a preventative measure? Why is it preferable to work through the pain to the point of injury instead of preventing an injury?
“I get what you guys are going through, I remember having your job and showing up at work at 7am and then not leaving until midnight.” Officer Safety First told us that story when he started talking. I'm sure he thought it made him relatable and hoped to inspire a “these may be hard times but we're all in this together so it's not that bad” kind of vibe, but I couldn't help but notice that that's a 15-hour shift. If working that much brings Officer Safe And Secure fulfillment in life, I can't tell him that it doesn't. I'm glad he has that. Please consider as an alternative perspective though: Fuck. That. Noise. I get one lifetime in all of history and I want more memories in it than “picking bread up and putting it down” and “being too tired to do anything with the rest of my time.” Frankly, now I hope every single one of those injuries actually is fake. Good for them, I'm glad they found a way to steal back the lifetimes that are being stolen from them and get paid for it. I'm glad the system is on the right side for once.
And now for the most ghoulishly fucked up part of the whole lecture. Our safety officer was lamenting that there aren't really any “light duty” tasks at our location. To illustrate his point, he told us a story about an employee at Maine who was injured and was given a task so menial that he went back to work 3 days early. He said the “3 days early” part with a knowing and triumphant smile and a very “we got'im” tone of voice. I'm sure he thought he was telling us a story about an employee who “wasn't really that hurt, you could tell because I got him to came back to work early.”
What I heard was a story about an employee who got injured working for this company and then got tortured into ending his recuperation 3 days prematurely as a thank you. ಠ_ಠ
Why are you assholes so incapable of understanding that internal injuries can be subtle? During the last 4 weeks of my hernia surgery recuperation, I was up and about and to any lay person probably seemed completely healthy. The surgeon even encouraged me to be active to assist in recuperation provided I absolutely did not lift anything over 10 pounds. The day I was cleared to go back to work, he told me “now don't go back and act like you've been there the whole time. Ease back into it. Don't overdo it.” Unfortunately, he gave this as friendly advice instead of any actual directive on actual paperwork and I was immediately put back on 12-hour shifts, then the site of my surgery started to throb and now I've got an appointment to make sure I didn't distort any healing at the site.
After our “”safety”” officer told his tale of victory over an injured man he held control over, he and every other person in the room with any authority over us actually started to trade “jokey” suggestions as to what repetitive and dehumanizing task they could give injured employees to do to cause them as much misery as possible to torture them into ending their “fake” recuperation periods early. I remember “doing the stickers all day”, some counting task that production used to do, “we should make them come in no matter what and just sit in the conference room if there's no work” and “We should just leave them in the conference room with no lights on and no cells phone.” Can I point out that the thing you say you don't like about all the injuries is that people are being paid and not working? Did you notice that the “jokey” suggestions for what to assign to people who are “faking” their injuries all focused on making the employees who got injured doing work for you suffer as much as possible? Assigning busywork or literally no work at all? Why? Why do you think we need to suffer to deserve a living? Why, when you can pay your workers to not work, but also recuperate in comfort, is it preferable to pay us not to work, but we ought to be completely miserable? To teach us a lesson? Because you overworking us can't possibly be the problem? We have to be tortured at no benefit to the company because us costing you money while we recuperate from overworking is the problem? Is your conception of this job that we don't deserve our wages because of what we earn or what the company gains from it, we only deserve to live because you think we've suffered enough for it??! You know, I've always known that the “employee appreciation” spiel you guys feed us is a load of complete horse-shit, but it's still quite a gut-churning sight to actually hear the people directly in charge of us gleefully fantasize about how to make us as miserable as possible with no regard to gaining or improving anything.
But maybe I'm just being negative.( ಠ_ಠ)
Resentfully yours,
Two Rotator Cuff Injuries, Covid 19, And A Hernia So Far