What Does This Mean? in Book Five: Working Through the Maze 2018

Last night?

Wife called me to keep her company at the phone store while they tried to fix her phone. Then we came home and, upon her request, ordered pizza. While she binge-watched/zombied out on Last of the Summer Wine. (We bought the DVD Collection of the entire show… a show with almost 300 episodes or enough to watch continuously without stop for over 6 days straight.) It has been her “I’ll watch this and not think about anything” show. And that is how she has been “dealing” with her extreme anxiety. By simply… not dealing. :( She said that she forgot to mention medication to her therapist yesterday. She also said that her therapist’s suggestions weren’t going to be effective. Here’s why I agree with Wife but don’t blame Therapist. If Wife didn’t mention medication and wasn’t descriptive in her explanation of what has happened to her this week… the therapist may think we’re dealing with “New Job Stress.” When, in fact, what we’re dealing with is life-crippling anxiety. So of course “Confront your fears. Tell them that they do have a place in your life, but cannot control your life.” isn’t exactly going to work.

Then while I slept, I had a nightmare. A nightmare combining all the worst elements from all of my “recent” jobs. I had the desk/office of Pretrial. I had the expectations w/o support of Tiny Town. I had customer quotas from when I was a telemarketer. But I was still at my current job… so I was dealing with my present firm. The dream was in Juvenile Court where the GAL (attorney for kids) was sleeping through court and after every witness the state brought against my client (who was a good parent, just didn’t have a job and was fighting eviction) would ramble for 10 minutes, be dismissed, then remember something else and request to re-testify. It was rough.

I was rocketed out of sleep by a phone call. Typically, in the early morning, a phone call is an annoyance. But I saw it was Wife calling and immediately answered it. Before I hear anything else, I hear her sobbing. You can almost hear her whole body shake on the other end of the line. I’m thinking the anxiety got too much for her and she’s sitting in the parking lot of her job unable to go in. Luckily, it wasn’t that. Unluckily, it is because she was in a car accident. A 24 year old woman wasn’t paying attention and when Wife stopped at an intersection, the woman behind her ran into her. SO for our two car household… that is 2 car accidents where the other person is 100% liable within the span of 1 month. Where both of our Honda Vehicles took damage. Luckily, it doesn’t look like her car will take much at all. BUT almost all the damage is under the vehicle (somehow the Sedan striking a CRV knocked the muffler/exhaust loose and who knows what else). Of course, this 24 year old has Esurance. So, there is no phone number to call on her insurance card.

Of course, Wife is sobbing the whole time. We hang up the phone after I instruct her to call emergency services. I throw on my clothes and take my pill, hoping I don’t smell too badly for not showering as I have a court hearing today, I drive to the site of the accident where the police and an ambulance are already on site. Wife is still crying. She doesn’t know if she can go in to work because she is so shaken up. And since the thought of “I should just go home” has already infiltrated her mind, she’s already taken it up many notches. To “If I don’t go in to work today, I won’t go in to work tomorrow. If I don’t go in to work for the rest of this week, why go in to work next week? I should just quit.” Which makes her sob all the more. Because once, about a year or two before we met, she tried to leave Wal Mart. She went to go work for a Photo Studio.... actually use her damned College Degree. She worked there for exactly 3 days before having a total panic attack, quitting, and running back to Wal Mart. In the history of her anxiety… this requires an addition. When she was 18 (so, long before I met her… I would have only been 14) she attempted to go to the University of Iowa. She and her folks moved her into her dorm room on Friday… she had dropped out and asked them to help her move out on Monday. So… that is her stress pattern. First Day: Total panic. Second Day: Panic hasn’t gone away. Third Day: Still panicked. So, why live like that, time to leave. The fact that her fourth day also included a car accident was NOT helpful. I encouraged her strongly to go into work. I understand speaking logic to someone in the throes of anxiety isn’t effective but… I am trying to help. The job she has isn’t perfect. No job will be. But it is in the field she wants. She is working with genuinely kind people. She is making more money than she did at Wal Mart and she is getting benefits. There may likely be opportunity for advancement into a job in the field that she will like better. She just has to start somewhere and work towards that. But… again… speaking logic to someone as “gone” as she is could be considered an entirely futile gesture.

She got on the road and I drove to the office. 8:00 am when I got there and I don’t have a key. SO I grabbed some “coffee” (in my case a 44 oz blend of Tea, Juice, and Energy Drink) and came back to the office. And as I write this, it is 9:30 and I’ve seen Dylan and Muse but no Chinese Boss or White Boss. Honestly not surprised about White Boss. He should be in court this morning. But Chinese Boss not being here? Shit, not surprised. Not happy but not surprised. Why require staff to arrive at the office at a certain time if you don’t hold yourself to that standard? It goes back to what Jami said. With a psychological twist.

If you don’t have work/life balance and take phone calls/do work for clients at all hours… then you don’t feel so beholden to an office schedule. After all, if you are taking Client Phone Calls at 7:30 at night, you don’t feel obliged to be at the office at 9 in the morning as you worked “beyond office hours” anyway. But that’s the point and the problem. I get it that we serve China that is 12 hour time difference. But you have to incorporate that into your business model proactively, not re-actively. If you want to do business in both China and the United States; you need to build a company that can handle that. Which is to say, division based labor. International Desk works Noon to 9. That is China’s midnight to 9 am. That way, the beginning of the Chinese Work day is the end of Our Work Day. We can spend the Noon to 6 period working the cases, the 6 to 9 period making the calls. Then have Domestic Desk work 9 to 6. That way it covers court appearances and America clients while also providing sufficient overlap between the Noon to 6 period so that Domestic can help International if need be. But of course that is me thinking something through before just saying “yes” and then figuring out how to do it. Which, as we’ve already discussed, is the primary difference between me and my current bosses.