The Forge

For any of you who happen to know me personally, you are probably aware that I, for the last 3 or so months, have had quite a few problems with my health. Nevermind the chiropractic issues (such as my ankles and back) which have been worsened by working at a grocery store, these are somewhat manageable and thus I take care not to complain about them. I refer, instead, to the two more pressing issues in my life: the gastrointestinal ones and the sinus ones.
If you have read any of my old blogs (on myspace or th3 crossing) you will recall the episodic trips to the hospital or doctor's office when I, without any real warning, awoke from slumber in excruciating yet entropic pain throughout my entire torso. Since then, I've visited the doctor several times and have been given rigorous testing to figure out exactly what it is that is causing my pain. My last two tests were and Upper GI and a barium swallow test, neither of which were pleasant or amusing. Since neither of those turned up any useful information, I will soon have to take an echocardiogram, but more on that later.
The other ongoing dilemma is my sinus system, which for whatever reason has decided it hates me and has, for about 3 months, never ceased doing everything in its power to make me aware of its distaste. At the onset of the problems, I did what any warm-blooded mucus-producing American would do: I went to the doctor. He did a lot of careful examination of my pulse, eyes, and back before coming to the conclusion that I had already come to: I had a sinus infection. He proscribed a 5-day pill to kill it off, and said "see me in a week." I took the medication, saw him in a week, and we were at about the same place we'd been 7 days previously. Confused, but not one to be daunted by failure, he proscribed a 10-day victual of Augmentin, a drug that is supposed to do exactly what the 5-day pill didn't do, which is kill off infections of the sinus system and make it healthy again.

Well, 10 days later, the Augmentin hadn't done it either, and I quite honestly was beginning to doubt the sanity of my doctor. But I figured perhaps it would die out by itself, and did not return a third time to see what interesting concoctions would be sent down my throat for the next 2-3 weeks. This was all fine and dandy until one of those pain outbreaks came, at which point returning to the doctor was inevitable so I decided to bring up the sinus infection once more. The doctor, after looking at walls of mucus in both my throat and nasal cavities, informed me that I didn't have a sinus infection, and furthermore had no idea what was wrong with my torso. But he valiantly sent me to the hospital to get that Upper GI and Barium Swallow testing done.

Let us progress to grand 'ol 2007. It turns out that, after a holiday break has gone by, the testing came back negative for anything. It turns out there's nothing wrong with me. Oh wait- except for the fact that I have, yet again, woken up in extraordinary pain for no apparent reason. So we schedule an echocardiogram, which will be on a Wednesday, naturally, because that's a day I don't have to work ever. I like it when things don't interfere with work.

Of course, nothing is perfect, and it turns out that the insurance company is rather sick of paying for all of these apparent issues with my body. As far as they are concerned, there's nothing worth paying for at a hospital. They charge my family for the Upper GI and Barium Swallow testing and this makes my mother rather unhappy, as you might imagine. So she does a little research, and finds out that it will cost her 750 dollars to get that echocardiogram done. UNLESS she gets it done at a cardiologist, rather than the hospital. In this case, the same test costs 25 bucks. I'll leave you to realize how absurd that is, and continue with my wonderfully boring story. Now then, she must cancel next Wednesday's echocardiogram and schedule one with a cardiologist. She realizes that I have an orthodontists' appointment on Monday, so she schedules me the echocardiogram for right after that. I now have TWO appointments on a day that I could potentially be scheduled to work, and due to the timing (this is a Tuesday evening) I can no longer request that Monday off from work.

Which brings me to another issue I have: work. I'll not lie: if I were an independent from my parents' scheduling, work would hardly be an issue. Schedules are made on Tuesdays for the next week, and are not posted or available until the Saturday before that week starts (ie if you work on Sunday, you won't know until sometime Saturday morning). This is fine if you are scheduling your own appointments, or at the very least are aware of them. That, however, is not my case. I was not aware of the orthodontist appointment for Monday, and thus never asked off for Monday. With this second test scheduled, I began to realize that the likelihood of me avoiding a conflict between medical testing and work scheduling was almost nonexistent. My mother, ever the understanding, simply told me: Tell work you can't be there Monday. You don't control your transportation, and they have to understand that. If there's one thing I've learned from working at the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (Incorporated!) it's that work NEVER has to understand anything.

Case and point: After laying relatively dormant for the last month, my oh-so-lovely sinus infection decides to remind me it's still around. It chooses Wednesday morning to do this, by waking me up with a pretty terrible sore throat which it has created with Post-Nasal-Drip. I take lozenges galore, and a dayquil, and go to school. That night I drink some citrus tea, which helps a little, so I decide that the following morning I shall take more citrus tea. This would be great if i were sitting in my house all day, but alas the morning I am drinking citrus tea to ease my sinuses and help my breathing is the same day that I have to do gym. I'll not beat around the bush on this one: if you are (like I am) obese, gym is always a chore for the lungs, even without a pound or two of mucus in between the air and the places it needs to go. So the tea did very little, and I spent all of yesterday (Thursday) coughing and blowing my nose and generally being very uncomfortable.

Then we get to this morning. Not one to miss a trend, today decides to make me even worse than Thursday did, and I wake up incapable of feeling my tongue (or really any part of my face) because it has been dried out and coated with, once again, mucus. Naturally I find it difficult to talk in such a state, and after several attempts and a lot of swallowing I get across to my mother that perhaps I shan't be going to school in such a condition. She, in a similar state as it turns out, consents to my staying home, and I sleep for about 5 more hours. When I awake, I feel barely improved, and inform her as I swallow down 2 dayquil pills that unless they work a miracle I don't think I'll be in good shape for work today, and I will call them in an hour if my condition has not improved.

Well, an hour passes, and no change is noticed (after all, dayquil is for colds, not sinus infections) and I call in. "Hello," answers the frontend person. "Hi, it's Adam Bogert. I'm not going to be able to come in today," I say, mustering as much voice as I can over the congestion. "Oh, you have to talk to Rebecca about that." I pause, hack a bit, and then Rebecca gets on the phone: "What's up?" I pause before answering. This reply gives me a bit of hope that today I might get some sympathy. Last time I called in sick (still, in my defense, genuinely ill but not to the same extent) I was greeted immediately with a "you better not be trying to call in sick today." Anyhow, I reply with a simple evaluation of my condition, and indicate that I don't think I'd be doing myself a favor if I come in to work today. I have, already, not gone to school, tried medication that has done nothing, and really I don't think that sneezing, coughing, and hacking are going to be well-received by the people whose food I will inevitable be handling if I come in. These, naturally, are not good excuses. Rebecca responds by informing me that if I do not come in, none of the other employees will get breaks today, and they will "have to work 10 times harder to make up for you not being there." So much for sympathy. Furthermore, she asks me if I've noticed a cut in hours that I've been scheduled for (which I have) and then tells me that this kind of behavior is why my hours are being cut.

Now, if you are me, which of course you're not, but let's just pretend: If you are me right now, you are not really prepared for this attack. My first thought was, somewhat understandably: if you underscheduled to the point where you can't afford a person to get sick, it's not my fault. Further reflection provided a somewhat better reason for the understaffing and cut hours: the recent rise in NYS minimum wage. Despite personal motives, I am forced to put myself in her position, and I understand that with a new requirement to pay employees a minimum of 40 cents more per hour must be pretty stressful. The only possible solutions are laying workers off, or cutting hours. Unfortunately, I imagine both methods will have to be used eventually, since I doubt the A&P Corporation has dramatically increased available employee payroll money already. I combined this notion with a review of my previous work track record. Although I will have to admit that I am usually laid back and lazy in most things, I've tried my hardest to keep these traits out of my work ethic. I've gone to tremendously difficult lengths to secure rides to and from work when everything that could go wrong has, sometimes showing up 30 to 45 minutes early or needing to stay at work for a half-hour afterwards until a ride is available. I've even had to walk from work to a coworker's house to use a phone to call for a ride. There have been times when I was not on the schedule but I've come in (despite inconvenience) to cover for someone who called in sick. When there is a conflict between my schedule and my parents' I do everything in my power to swap shifts with someone else. This has landed me on stocking shelves, pulling carts, and doing various other jobs that I would not generally end up doing. When I was unable to change shifts, I gave up activities such as movies, family outings, and even a Christmas party with relatives. Upon discovering that I was not to be paid extra for working on Thanksgiving Day since I'd not been an employee for at least six months (a week after having worked on that day) I took it in stride. I've only called in sick two or three times, and those times were 1 worst-case scenario where I really just couldn't get there in any way and 2 times where I've (like today) been truly sick and not in good condition to be running a cashier.

Nevertheless, due to my undependable nature and bad track record, my hours have been cut. Okay, so knowing that wasn't true, and knowing about the minimum wage raise, I was willing to let these things slide. But that wasn't going to aid me much in the whole "you better be at work unless you're dying" shtick that my manager gave me before we closed the phone line between us. And here was a conundrum for me. I told her I didn't think I'd be able to make it, and naturally she couldn't force me to. Still, she'd made me feel bad enough about calling in sick (even legitimately) that I was now considering going in just so as to clear my conscience (which is odd because it started off clear anyway). I won't bother trying to rationalize this behavior: when you can be made to feel bad about doing something that isn't wrong, perhaps it's just a sign of weakness.

I could just as easily not go to work today. The only issue with this, of course, is that she'll be angry at me for several days. That wouldn't be an issue normally, because given a few weeks of standard performance on my part she would no longer be upset and all would be well. Unfortunately, less than three days later I will have to find some way to get out of working Monday afternoon (one of the few days I'm almost always scheduled). This will involve stepping out on already thin ice, and I'd be a fool to think that my job would remain out of Jeopardy. Here then, is my problem. I shall be going in to work today, if for no other reason than in the hopes that she will see me and realize that I take my work seriously and don't call in sick for the fun of it. Tomorrow afternoon I will find out if I am working on Monday, and if not (which is my prayer) then perhaps all will be well. However, if I am scheduled for Monday, which is a day I cannot work, then I will be in dire trouble.

I've nothing left to do for the next 24 hours but worry about that. Perhaps you might be so wonderful as to propose a solution. The only one I can think is that my boss, by some miraculous chance, hazards upon this blog and knows the whole truth behind my seemingly horrible 'behavior.' That being the most unlikely of circumstances, I simply pray that things work out here and I bid you good day while I take a shower and prepare myself for work.

Congestedly yours,
Smith