I noticed something at work years ago. If I miss time or get off early too often I get punished. When I had my mini breakdown 6 years ago I had to take two months off work. It wasn’t exactly a vacation; I had gone into the psyche ward for two days and then had to go from living independently and renting a room to moving back into a board & care home.
When I finally got back to work I thought I would go back into my routine of vacuuming and emptying trash. But one of the first things they had me do was clean carpets which involved a huge machine and lots of scrubbing. I don’t like doing it. Then, out in back of the building they were going to get rid of the 14 or 15 recycle bins we stored out back for years. They’re the kind of bins you see people putting out on their curbs for the recycle truck to pick up. I was helping the bosses but all they did was empty a couple of feet of recycled stuff out of the bottom while my part was tipping them over on their side and crawling in on my hands and knees and scrubbing them from the inside. It was awkward, hard work. I suspected it was punishment for having all that time off, though they never said so.
And I thought it was just a coincidence. But too many times over the years if I’m out sick for a week, coincidentally they’ll have me do some hard task that gets done once a year when I get back. Or if I miss two days because of car trouble they’ll smile and say it’s OK but give me some hard task like scrubbing the showers. It’s happened too many times to be a coincidence but they never say it’s punishment or act differently.
And just last week I had a flat tire so they let me off two hours early to wait for my roadside service to change it(I have a bad back). The next day I had to ask if I could get off 45 minutes early to go to an appointment to have four new tires installed. They smiled and said ‘no problem’ but when I came back to work two days later they had me clean three break rooms. I haven’t cleaned break rooms in a year.
I guess my point is it’s great to get a break–but it sucks to get punished for it.
Then my last pdoc appointment I chose to tell him what’s really going on with me. And I could tell he didn’t want to know. For the past two years our phone visits have been just me saying how great things are going and how my medications working fine. It’s just a habit we got into and I know that’s what he wants to hear. 5 minutes of me saying things are OK. It’s easy for him. But last week I told him my living situation sucks and I’m hitting a rough patch. And I could tell it bugged him; in a way it made him look bad. So I have always seen him every 4 to 5 weeks but as punishment I don’t get to see him for seven weeks.