Mindfrosting

:(  Today is Worker’s Memorial Day. It is to honor those who have died working. Here is my take on a way of dying on the job without physically dying.
In all the jobs I’ve held in my life so far - about a dozen or so only the last three got me dying by slow soul death. What I have encountered is the workplace bully. Has this gotten worse in the world I wonder? In my scope of experience in the past 13 years I have encounted and suffered from bullying on the job. From having an angry shift boss leaving gun catalogs on the break room table to intimidate, to the present situation of a new supervisor going to extremes to firmly establish his thronedom and maledom.

It just feels like lately I have been forced to work with and for hurtful, dangerous, abusive, “children”.
There’s the one who because he cannot state his dislike of a female on his crew without breaking policy, instead uses “subtle” ways of making his dislike hit me. The eyes avert, pretends not to hear my questions or answers, takes what is said and translates into something negative, jumps to putdowns, balks at praise, raises his voice beyond what is necessary, commands rather than directs… It all seems to be coming up again with this new job as classic bully symptoms in this new supervisor. Maybe I am just sensitized and maybe he won’t get worse? Am I maybe just noticing low grade bullying symptoms that might just not escalte as he settles more into his position of authority?

In the first job experience with a bully, I stayed my ground, but at the cost of severe soul bruising. Can I survive this again? Stay tuned…

Yesterday there was some sort of huge (unannounced, unadvertised) endurance bike race where they went around a route that circled past our house. This went on all day. It was pretty cool and they would go by in large packs with pilot cars following…or leading…kind of hard to tell who was leading and who might be bringing up the end. I was trying to get someone to go out and get pictures, but surprisingly no-one seemed interested.

I tried to go out to cross and get the mail (in my flannels..ha ha ha), but you know what happened, don’t you? Yep…there they came, a long line of cyclists. I hid behind a tree untill they were gone. Didn’t want to distract them from their killer racing instincts with the hilarious sight of those baggy jammies!

I wonder if these folks know that when they speak to each other that every word is clear as a bell to anyone along the side of the road? And I wonder why people simply walking by and talking cannot usually be heard that clearly? Maybe the bike riders are speaking louder..or does it have to do with the rate of speed? is this a physics thing like the doppler effect? Just asking. I am ignorant, but have lots of strange questions like this all the time.