Bad Dreams and Not So Good Days

I find there is little more frustrating than going to bed early, falling asleep and then waking up not much later and being unable to sleep.

That happened to me last night. I went to bed early instead of staying up late to read too much of my current book, the third in George R.R. Martin’s, Game of Thrones series. Then I fell asleep. Less than an hour later I woke up and spent the rest of the night having on-and-off nightmares.

The nightmares were a direct result of my day at work. It wasn’t a good day. One of my consultants hadn’t shown up to work since Wednesday. We tried to reach him and couldn’t. Finally, our branch administrator called the hotel where he was temporarily living and had them check his room. It turned out that he’d passed away several days before.

I feel bad for him. For one thing, it took a few days for anyone to notice he was missing and then, when they did, it was his employer rather than family. Secondly, how sad to die in a hotel room, far away from home. The police are investigating to find out if it was a natural death or self-inflicted but, either way, it’s a sad thing.

It was an unsettling day at work to say the least. My vivid imagination has a horrible habit of picturing things and wondering how often that happens in hotel rooms. It also didn’t help that another consultant that we’ve just hired is going to be temporarily locating to the same town and thus, staying in the hotel. We’ve asked the hotel not to tell our new consultant what happened. My guess is that they won’t. It’s probably not good publicity for a hotel to have someone die.

It’s an unpleasant thought, isn’t it? The hotel said they were calling in a special company to sanitize and thoroughly clean the room. Yet, the twisted part of me can’t help wondering if the next person to stay in that room will have any idea. I’m guessing not. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

So, combined with my sadness regarding the death of our employee, I was also trying to quash these rather dark thoughts as I tried to sleep. Unfortunately, our subconscious is pretty hard to control so I didn’t do very well.

As a result, I woke up groggy and fuzzy-headed. That’s no way to begin a day. A worse way to begin a day is to find out you have to fire someone.

I don’t like firing people, even when they deserve it. Unfortunately, it comes with the territory. I have the power to find people jobs and to take them away. In this case, it was a lady who’d only been working for us for three months. She had been having some issues already. Then, she didn’t show up to work on Monday and no one could reach her. It became my job to try to get hold of her.

I was a little paranoid by this time. Monday was the day we found out about our deceased consultant so, later that day, when you have another consultant who can’t be tracked down, you can’t help but wonder if she, too, might have passed away and no one had found her.
Fortunately, she was fine. She had just had some extremely personal crisis that she couldn’t discuss. She had forgotten her phone so she couldn’t let anyone know she wasn’t going to work.

I think if this had been a one-off occurrence, she would still have a job. However, it wasn’t the first time and so I was told to let her go.

It’s a hard thing to let someone know they won’t be returning to work again. In this case, she wasn’t surprised but she was still upset. She cried. I hate when they cry. I tend to be overly sympathetic by nature, anyway. This is why they tease me in the office for liking the ‘gutter puppies’- the down-and-out people who haven’t been able to find a job and need something, anything to pay the bills. I just feel sorry for them. I’m a firm believer in that if someone is willing to work and wants to work, they should be allowed to work. There’s far too many people out there who don’t want to work and don’t do so and expect to live on ‘free money’ from the government. I like to help people.

So, this is why I don’t like it when they cry. It makes me feel guilty even when I have nothing to really feel guilty about. I don’t think anyone truly likes being the bearer of bad news and I’m no exception.

I’m hoping that tomorrow, I won’t have anyone die nor do I have to fire anyone. I am meeting with a candidate as a favour to his dad who is another candidate. The son was released from jail last year and has been trying to get back on his feet. His dad wants me to see if we can help him. I might be able to but it’s hard to find jobs for people with felonies on their records. Did I mention I tend to be over-sympathetic. Some people might call me a sucker. I probably am.

Still, tonight, I’m hoping to sleep without nightmares and tomorrow, I’m hoping for a better day. Keep your fingers crossed for me! I’ll keep you posted.

Happy Wednesday!

Strange Happenings in the Office...

It's gloomy out there today. I have been assured, however, that the grey skies are going to clear up and the sun will soon be out...sometime. It might be today, it might be tomorrow but the sun will shine again.

I'm thinking maybe a career change to being a weather woman might be quite easy. I know there's supposed to be some education involved but, really, to us layfolk, it seems awfully easy to sit there and spout things like, "We may see some rain today but it might pass us by," and "The sun will shine again sometime in the next few days!"

I know, I know...there's probably some meteorological school involved or something. I just don't really see how that works when, really, with all the Doppler 5000 technology, it just involves reading the weather off a computer.

Still, for now, the sun is not shining and the greyness of the day is pressing inwards. Our president fired someone yesterday. One minute she was here, the next minute the news is flying around the company, urgently whispered as so to keep it covert. Naturally, we all knew within five minutes although we still don't really know why. She was a fairly new hire and it's likely, we'll never know the reasons she was fired. I know she reminded me of one of my old bosses, someone for whom I had so much trouble working, I finally threw in the towel and found another job. Yet, since I didn't know this woman that well, I can only guess what her crimes were.

Of course, it has sent a fear into all of us. Even the most secure of employees here has to realize that being fired is a simple process: One day you come into work like usual and the next thing you know, you're carrying a banker's box of possessions out the door and being asked to submit your computer passwords. In the days when we worked with the university, it was harder. Being fired from a university is a long, tedious process and it takes months, even years unless there is a good, obvious reason like, say, you kill your manager or something.

I'd like to think that if I were in trouble, I'd at least know ahead of time. I think usually, a firing is preceded by closed door meetings in which bad behaviour is discussed. If the bad behaviour doesn't stop, a firing happens. It's abrupt, it's quick and all we employees ever know is what comes in the standard email: "Effective immediately [Name of fired employeed] no longer works for [our company name] Please direct all questions to [Name of President] or [Name of HR Manager]." That's it. We have the gossip chain, of course. We all have our suspicions, our own anecdotes of how the fired employee misbehaved but we never get anything more official than that email.

The thing I find amusing is that if we have questions, we're supposed to ask the president or HR manager. Yet, if someone asks "Why?", they're told, "I'm afraid we can't discuss it." That pretty much says it all. The only thing we all want to know is "Why"? but that's the one question they won't answer.

I know they can't say why for legal reasons. This is a litigious society we live in. Anything that we're told could be admissible if a lawsuit is filed by the employee if he/she feels it is a wrongful termination.

Yet, the why of the situation would be good for all of us. It would ease some of the self-doubt that is swimming around everyone's minds: What did she do that was so bad and am I doing it too? What sort of thing could we get fired for? Was it because she was always watching videos on her computer at work? I do that too! Am I going to get fired?

You get the idea. Sometimes the cold, hard truth is better than the speculative worry that floods the atmosphere when people's thoughts are left to stew.

So, today, this morning, everyone seems to be walking around, a little stunned. We can't discuss it because our company President is upstairs, ensconced in his office, a deterrent to gossip because he hates gossip. We can exchange surreptitious comments, raised eyebrows but we can't talk about it at work.

It means we're all on our toes, worried about our own job security. I'm not too worried...yet. I haven't been summoned to my boss's office. I do get my work done, even if I don't do it with beams of joy and sunshine flooding off me. I never fail to meet my deadlines. I hope this means I'm safe but...you never know. And I know I'm not the only one thinking this.

I suspect the quiet in the office will last all day while we tiptoe around. It makes for a productive work environment, even if it is a little tense.

As for me, I think I'll keep a low profile, do the odd chair dance and, if things get really bad, do a mental dance around the teapot.

I'll just make sure no one sees. Just in case.

Happy Thursday!