Posted by Bob on October 8, 1999, at 23:58:55
In reply to Re: Thanks!!, posted by dove on October 8, 1999, at 14:53:23
Pardon me if this gets verbose ... it just turned 11:11 (the Cosmic Hour), and it's a Friday night so I can stay up past my bedtime (tho I do have to teach tomorrow at 9:30 ...). Besides, I started this thread because I think I have a cautionary tale for all y'all. No point waiting till the story is finished, tho ... need to create some suspense, and it'd be so long I'd prolly crash Dr. Bob's server.
A quick aside on Arlo, tho. I first saw him opening for Harry Chapin, just a year before Harry died. It was the middle of Reagan's first term, and Selective Service had made it's return. So, Arlo made this speech about how he had happily retired this song of his, thinking he'd never have to sing about the Alice's Restaurant Thanksgiving Massacree again ... but he had to pull it out so he could do his part. That was the only show I've been to where the audience didn't want the warm-up band to leave. (Of course, Harry was fabulous as well). I don't know if this is a yearly event, but twice I've noticed Arlo playing Carnegie Hall on Thanksgiving Day since I moved to NYC ... haven't caught him there yet, tho. Anyway ...
A brief synopsis for those who don't want to thrash through old posts to discover our soap opera up till now:
June 98.
I've been on the job 1 yr, my project is doing great (I teach middle school teachers more hands-on ways of teaching science), I get a 4 out of 5 overall on my evaluation and a $2k raise. I also come off of paxil and onto wellbutrin, and what was a downhill slide for me wrt medications turns into a nasty rollercoaster. The wellbutrin made me psychotic (uncontrollable rage). Adding perphenazine (my first psychopharm cocktail! Ah!) removes the rage, but deflates me while (half) awake and severely aggravates my apnea. Enter prozac (July 98) to help the wellbutrin. But the prozac blocks an enzyme that removes the perphenazine from my system (a known interaction, I was told, but for doses of perphenazine 20x and greater than theminiscule dose I was getting). Over the next two months, my panic attacks return with a vengeance (couldn't take the subway when one hit, so I paid for several $20 cab rides from Midtown to Brooklyn to escape back home in the middle of the day). Extreme anxiety that came, it seemed, simply from being awake and grew throughout the day, only becoming reasonable when I was at home in bed. I'd give my girlfriend a hug in the morning before heading off to work, and I wouldn't be able to let go. Greater and greater cogwheeling (muscle rigidity), walking about as stiff and stooped as a warped board. After two months, my therapist dragged me to the ER (God bless you, Carol!) and stayed with me for hours (my girlfriend was halfway out on Long Island, evening classes). Ativan and Cogentin, followed by a week of zyprexa (from the hospital) and then a switch from wellbutrin/prozac/perphenazine to prozac/clonazepam (the later fit into my life like a piece of the puzzle I had never known I was missing). Prozac wasn't enough, so in came lithium. Then zoloft/lithium/clonazepam. Intolerance to anything more than 150mg of lithium led me to zoloft/nortriptylene/clonazepam. That's where I've been with meds since March or April. It keeps me stable, focused, assertive, and confident. Does nothing for my mood, aggravates my apnea, shoots my weight up 40 lbs and my cholesterol 80 points (so now I'm also on a steroid inhalent for the apnea and Lipitor for the chol). But it does help me cope with my boss, and just in the nick of time.So, reading that, you'd think that maybe, perhaps, I might have had some performance problems at work, right? Right. But over that year, I increased the number of teachers we were working with from 8 to 40, developed better science fairs for three of four project schools and the first one in twelve years for the fourth, and secured $90,000 in additional funding for our work. That's just to name a few things. So, ignoring the psych stuff for a moment and focusing on demonstrable results, answer me this: If I received a 4 of 5 on my comprehensive rating with a $2k raise LAST year, what should those figures be THIS year?
Well, from my boss' attitude in that year from June 98 to May 99, I knew it wasn't going to be reasonable. I kept her informed of every change in medication. She had been informed from day 1 about my disorders and the general nature of my on-going treatment.
June 9, 99
Performance review time. She rates me a 2.9 of 5 overall, with several 1's in some categories. She ignores the demonstrable facts of my successful performance, even while admitting that the project has improved, and provides as a rationale that I am, among other things, a procrastinator, unmotivated, not a team player, and (this is the one I truly love) "essentially undependable." In doing so she ignores the standards set up by our company for conducting these reviews -- standards that are based on observable behaviors.Do those terms sound familiar to anyone out there? Are they the sorts of things you fear to hear at work? I'm a white male from a midwest working class family. I could intellectually grasp how prejudice, how stigma could be degrading and/or maddening. Now I know from first-hand experience. Thanks to my cocktail at the time, it was rage that I felt ... just what I needed to feel. A year earlier or so, and this all would have turned me into a quiverring mess.
Well, in case you've missed this before as well, my highest level of training is as a research psychologist. I focus on how people learn. One of my primary areas of expertise is motivation. Motivation, procrastination, dependability -- these are all internal mental states that need to be operationally defined, or stated in terms of observable behaviors. None of any consequence were given.
Knowing beforehand that I was probably going to get railroaded, I read up a little (but nowhere near enough) on the Americans with Disabilities Act. About all I came out with from it was "reasonable accommodations". So I threw that out as my only protection against my boss' unjustifiable behavior. The previous year, my boss had a biological condition that affected her job performance, and for which my company gave her a (rather generous) reasonable accommodation -- she gave birth to her third child. In fact, the accommodation continues ... even tho she has a nanny, she works from home at least once a week. Anyway, I told her flat out -- I have a biological condition affecting my performance, I deserve that reasonable accommodations be made as well. She agreed. The problem was, neither of us knew what those accommodations should be (like I said, not enough research). We finished the meeting agreeing that we would watch my performance for problems and working out what those accommodations would be.
So, thinking it came to a reasonable end, I relaxed and went about my job. I forgot that a part of that meeting was supposed to be a discussion of any pay increase. Not only did I not get one, she didn't even have the courtesy to tell me and to offer a reason.
July 15.
My boss' last day before a month on vacation, and what does she do? She "serves" me with two letters. One requires me to obtain statements from my doctors stating, with respect to the attached copy of my job description, what reasonable accommodations were required. The other set a schedule for a second review process, starting when she got back and covering two months, during which my performance would be evaluated. If I did not improve my performance to satifactory or above in all twelve areas of the instrument, that would be grounds for dismissal.I would like to point out a few matters of fact relevant to this action:
1-nowhere in our written company policy is such a procedure described, nor are allowances made for creating them.
2-Our written company policy specifically refers to our "performance rating", in the singular, as the sole measure of our evaluation in terms of reasons for dismissal.
3-The only thing in the whole letter that WAS from our written company policy was that unsatisfactory performance would be grounds for dismissal.if you haven't noticed yet, this is the kicker:
4-This whole process was invented and imposed upon me **after** I had asked that reasonable accommodations be made for my disorder.
So, I had a month to stew over this. Her mistake. When I'm hot-angry, all my social graces fly out the window. I stutter. I stammer. I can't keep a straight line of reasoning in my head when I get that mad. But she gave me enough time to turn that anger ice cold, and she gave me time to do the research I should have done in the first place.
I won't drag out the intervening months. I met with our HR director one week before boss returned. HR's reaction to my concerns was completely discouraging ... she said that "we don't do any hand-holding for our employees." Very comforting. Very reassuring that I will get an impartial review from her. What just about slayed me was her condescending "Oh, I've been on zoloft, too" speech. So, once in her life, she felt down and her GP gave her a month or two of zoloft -- and she thinks she feels my pain.
I know a few good gestures in Italian that would eloquently convey my opinion on that. (Like I said, Janice ... I'm no Puritan ;^)
We have the first review meeting on 8/15. I state my objection to the process. It gets brushed aside. I come prepared with statements from my therapist and my psychopharmer about "reasonable accommodations." HR decides that five of seven are "covered by company policy anyway" (but can we see if policy is being followed here? helloooooo?) One of those was "access to an understanding and supportive supervisor". Boss objected to it. I snorted under my breath. HR acted as if she heard nothing. HR and Boss agree on two accommodations which basically say "give Bob more frequent, supportive feedback." And how do we agree that this should be done? HR decides that a suggestion I had made on JUNE 9!!! should be put in place. The meeting ends with me giving them both a folder of educational information from www.nami.org and www.mentalhealth.com on my meds, my disorders, the ADA, and NAMI's suggestions to supervisors of people with depression.
Okay, I have to cut my boss a tiny slice of slack here. Over the next week, she read the material. She admits that my suggestion would be the best course of action. She even is supportive in meetings, when the verge of some apnea-induced sleep attack has me wobbling in my chair like a top.
HR has never given the slightest indication that she read anything I have ever handed her. Including the written response I am allowed by policy to file against my review. Which, I am proud to say, NEVER REFERS ONCE to my disability -- so much had been ignored, so much had been done wrong, that I had an eight page single-spaced response that dealt only in fact and policy. By the fourth edit, I even managed to remove all the invective and inflammatory statements. I never referred to my condition, I never asked for some mistake to be forgiven, I never mentioned the word "discrimination". I just wanted the facts of the past year recognized and accounted for.
So, what do you think happens with those written responses?
Today, 10 AM
The meeting can be summed up in one brief statement: My boss is right and I am wrong, because she is the boss. As for the statements of fact illustrating how my boss violated company standards and policy, HR says its not her job to second guess my boss. We have a small company. One HR person. One person above her, the CEO. I suppose its his job, then. It's clear by the end of the meeting that not only am I getting railroaded, there are now two locomotives on the train.You know, I spent the better part of 20 years telling myself that my problems were all "in my mind" (HAH! ain't it the truth!) All I needed to do was pull myself together. There was nothing seriously wrong with me. I was being a baby. I was wallowing in self-pity.
By the end of that meeting, those two had just about knocked me back 20 years. I came out doubting myself, thinking that I was making this all up. I was spittin' nails mad, but I was shaken as well (figuratively and literally -- they had me so upset that my left leg started bouncing uncontrollably, and my hands grabbed a pen and I couldn't stop uncapping and recapping it ... if it had gone on any longer, I bet I would have started rocking back and forth, hitting my head on the table).
Luckily the mad part of me remembered Arlo and the Alice's Restaurant Thanksgiving Massacree, and I made it down from 60th and Madison (the location of the NEW! DKNY store!!) to the World Trade Center. I almost turned back. I did stop to phone my therapist to warn her I might miss my appointment. Which reminds me ...
My therapist has been out of town the last two weeks. I would not have made it through this time without your support, without knowing that all I had to do was get on-line and I would find you here waiting with open arms. May God bless every one of you (even dj! =^P)
Anyway, that's enough for this post. That's all the bad news. I'm going to enter all the good news and the moral of the story in a separate post, so you don't have to scroll through all the crap to get to what may help you most. After the EEOC and therapy and coming back home to share this with you and getting some big wet kisses from my dogs, it turns out that this was a pretty good day afterall. But I've been typing for 2 hours and I gotta teach web graphic design to Photoshop newbies in a little over eight hours....
Cheers,
Bob
To be continued ...
Don't you just HATE that? ...
poster:Bob
thread:12703
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991001/msgs/12859.html