That’s a weird thought, isn’t it? Makes almost no sense, right? So here’s the deal.
Every spring, I ignore the calendar date for normal spring in March because it usually has NOTHING to do with where I live in Canada. Long after the calendar says “spring has arrived!”, I still have snow to clear and piles of it on my lawn. About ten years ago, I said, “Okay, enough is enough, let’s come up with a REAL date that makes sense.” I wanted a date by which all the snow was guaranteed to be gone from my front lawn, bearing in mind of course that it takes longer to disappear from there since that is where I shovel the snow to during the winter.
I wanted a day when all the snow would be “gone”. Well, at least the snow in my immediate vicinity. Initially, I thought somewhere around April 10-12 would do the job. Then it became the 15th to be sure. Then one year it went all the way to the 22nd with new snow arriving AND accumulating. I’m not willing to go all the way to April 30th, but I settled on April 24th. That’s my “PolySpring” (trademark pending). A day of light at the end of the winter.
Last year, PolySpring came REAL early. Almost the original calendar date. By the end of March, I had barbecued several times already. This year? The last snow melted on my lawn on April 16th. A house around the corner that doesn’t get good sun morning or afternoon still has a huge pile on their lawn, which nobody else in the neighbourhood has left. A few malls around the neighbourhood who create huge piles each year still have their large piles, but the piles at my son’s school are out in complete sunshine all day and were gone before my house snow was gone.
So I should be feeling something, right? Excitement? Hope? Freedom? Nada.
Larger emergences
Over the course of the pandemic years, I was work from home the whole time (except a little bit the last few months), and we were pretty careful given our relative high risk. My biggest release of tension was when my son was able to get his vaccine, although I was happy for my wife to get hers too, as she went through chemo etc. I was nervous for myself, sure, but more worried about them. Over the three years, Jacob had a mild case once, while Andrea and I have managed to avoid COVID so far. Andrea and I have 5 (or is it 6?) doses now.
But we had not really “emerged”. When some of the first mask mandates lessened, Jacob was excited to go to a restaurant and sit on a patio, which we did near the cottage. It was nice. But it didn’t feel normal. Since then, he wears a mask at school every single day by choice, along with about a fifth of his class. He’s avoided the flu and colds, so his call.
Up until recently, whenever Andrea and I went out anywhere, such as shopping, we were masked. Don’t care what others were doing, it was just what we felt comfortable with at the time. We have loosened up for restaurants, partly as it is a bit silly to wear the mask until the food comes and then breathe in everything for the next 30 minutes like that will make a difference from the first 30 minutes. So, for restaurants, we have loosened up.
At Christmas, people started talking about going to “events” like concerts and plays again. I had two very strong reactions.
First, I did a gut check on the mask / virus thing. Was I comfortable going and being surrounded by unmasked people for 2 hours sitting in close proximity? Surprisingly, I was okay with it. I felt like I had emerged enough that I was willing to do that with other people. I would still wear a mask, but I was willing to go.
Second, on a totally different level, I had NO IDEA if I’d be able to handle it from a social perspective. I was feeling almost agoraphobic or severely introverted with the idea of being around a lot of people. The crush of people? Would I be able to handle it? I had no idea.
In March, we went to the Harry Potter play in Toronto. There were eight of us in two rows. And I was fine. I didn’t feel crushed at all.
Well, to be honest, I had a problem with my knee, I had taken a bad fall at the house before we went, and my kneecap was throbbing. I didn’t have my knee braces with me, haven’t needed them in 3 years because I don’t DO anything that would aggravate them, but I was wishing that I had them. So I was surprised that all I was feeling was anxiety that someone would jostle me or I wouldn’t be as agile trying to work my way through large crowds. Other than trouble on stairs for the theatre and the parking garage, I was fine overall.
Which even that is misleading. I wasn’t just “fine”. I literally felt NO ANXIETY at all. I wasn’t affected by the crowds, didn’t even feel claustrophobic a little. I was sure that I would, I had been stressed in advance and tried to talk myself into a good brain pattern in advance to handle it, but then I was there, and it was nothing.
I had “emerged” from the last three years.
We still take basic precautions, sure. There’s no reason not to take them. But we’re wearing our masks fewer and fewer places. Not just me, Andrea too, and she has been the more diligent of the two of us. Obvious, of course, with her chemo. Jacob still wears it, although I think part of that is more habit than safety, and he is only wearing a cloth one, so not the most effective of protections.
A small bump for my psyche
When I realized that I had made it through the play, that I wasn’t affected and fearful and claustrophobic, I had a small bump to my psyche. And so I started looking into options for plays in Ottawa to see if I could tap into that source of external pleasure.
Each year, I used to go through the Ottawa Little Theatre, Gladstone Theatre, National Arts Centre (Pops orchestra music, English Theatre, and Broadway), the Great Canadian Theatre Company, the Kanata Theatre, and the Meridien Theatre to see if their season was worth a careful perusal.
So, after I was back and looking around, I was like, “Hey! I should go through those again!”. And then was disappointed. GCTC is the avant garde theatre, and while I used to find some stuff when they were still on Gladstone, since they moved to their new venue about 7 years ago, I haven’t seen a single play on their roster that I would pay to see. Their latest offerings? Let me give you two descriptions so you can see for yourself:
Play 1: The Doctor introduces the gang: The Cobbler (Wanted: name redacted), The Lover, The Dancer, and The Kid. A story about falling off the map of decency and becoming an outlaw. A contemporary female Western. A hero myth for girls.
Play 2: This is Gilles Jean. This is his mother. Those are his brothers. That is his friend, and his friend’s wife. This is the distance between Gilles and goodness. What will Gilles do for love?
I have NO IDEA what either are about, nor do I care. I’m happy that the people who want to watch that type of theatre have a place in Ottawa to go. I would prefer more mixed offerings across the spectrum for each venue, as I would with the NAC English Theatre series. A few years ago, the artistic director stated it quite plainly — they could do something commercial, fill every seat, and be a great success, or they could “push the envelope”, fill most seats for most days, and break even. They normally choose to break even rather than be tainted by anything so commercial as success.
While at first glance that would seem just a question of venue, the problem is that those are the only two real venues putting on plays with professional actors. The rest is amateur theatre or travelling shows. Yet, I’m okay to aim that way.
We used to have seasons tickets for The Ottawa Little Theatre, and their season list is okay without screaming “pick me, pick me!”. The Kanata Theatre is very similar offerings, and there are two I would consider. One is Brighton Beach Memoirs, a popular offering, but it is rarely done with much panache, and not enough usually to warrant another viewing if you saw it recently. I confess I’m really looking for something for Jacob to experience. I can’t match the offerings of the Mirvish Theatre in Toronto, but I’d love for him to see something professionally done. In the absence, there’s an amateur mystery one for Sherlock Holmes he might enjoy in Kanata.
I’m still waiting to see what NAC has to offer for next year. Most of the rest were a let down. And with it? A bit of a let down in my psyche. I have very little interest in going to movie theatres, too many people talking or playing on their phones while the movie is on. I’m fine to watch it at home on our TV, even if I rent it shortly after release. I miss big screen stuff, but not enough to leap towards a movie theatre. I’ll get over that, I hope, for the new Indiana Jones just so we can see it in a big theatre together.
I need more though
We’re in the middle of a home reno (3 bathrooms!), and I have some projects of my own to finish. But I think I’m going to have to commit to some astronomy stuff too that will get me out of the house. The theatre stuff is just too far away and not spontaneous enough.
Is it possible for my psyche to start to smell like Spring and bloom like re-birth? Let’s find out.
I grew up in a blue-collar household, the son of a factory worker. Both parents voted NDP for most of their lives, strong believers in the importance of “labour” representation, and strongly distrusted Liberals and Conservatives. So I was indoctrinated early. For them, the argument was mainly about adjusting power imbalances regarding things like health and safety and wage negotiations.
I like the premise of a union
In a private-sector setting, and up until about the mid-1980s, I can buy the general argument. Labour working together towards a common goal against an employer that is driven by profit at any cost. I get the rhetoric, the power to the people clarion, the rise of the Proletariat rabble-rousing.
But fewer and fewer people work in those large factories where health and safety are solely ruled by a profit-seeking employer. There are a ton of labour and environmental standards and rules that have been enacted that replace much of the concern. And when people want to claim it was unions that got that, I’m willing to nod and say sure. There are some quibbling aspects of general society progressing along, Human Rights legislation, political developments that have nothing to do with any union, but sure, I’ll give it to them. It doesn’t change the fact that a significant majority of jobs that are unionized are far more controlled in their activities by laws and regs than by an active union “holding management to account”. There’s still a role, of course, and if a union member finds something wrong, and fixes it through the union as the proper channel, great. Is the union required? I’m not sure. The number of accidents and unsafe practices in non-unionized shops tend to be about the same when you account for the size of the workforce.
To expand on that idea, if you go to the promotion sites for unions, they’ll tell you that unionized workers make more money, have pensions, greater job security, better health and safety, better hours, etc. All of which are statistically true. But once you account for the size of the workforce, a bunch of those “benefits” start to be less cause and effect and more correlation. Many of them are simply the result of having a larger workforce, which can support a union and thus attracts one, not the fact that they have the union itself. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t eliminate all the variables, they do produce benefits. But not as high as most individual unions want to claim. Union members pay dues and they can decide for themselves if the benefit is worth it.
But there is one thing I love about private sector unions. They almost NEVER say they are serving anyone other than themselves. They argue for increased benefits, better hours, more pay, etc., and they do so against profits or whatever. They don’t say “We’re doing this for you, the customer.” They’re honest and transparent about their motives. Unions exist both literally and legally for one purpose — to serve the membership. That’s their raison d’être. In fact, if/when they stray from that purpose, they can be sued by their members.
I am often troubled by the rhetoric of public-sector unions
When a public-sector union is entering negotiations, they alter the rhetoric of their private-sector counterparts. Instead of being transparent about their motives, they’ll wrap themselves in the flag, point out that they’re serving Canadians and that they and they alone are standing up for individuals. It’s complete BS, to be blunt. Nobody elected them, they weren’t chosen democratically to represent Canadians, we have those people, they actually ran for election. And won. They and they alone have the right to say they represent Canadians. Did you vote for another party? Great, doesn’t change the fact that nobody elected a union. And Canadians don’t get to vote for what the union is seeking.
Teachers’ unions are notorious for this. They will post manifestos about how they’re all altruistic and that they’re striking to ensure small class sizes to protect your child’s education. They fail to mention a small self-interest there that if class sizes could be reduced to 20 instead of 25, they would get to hire 20% more dues-paying teachers.
Nurses will rally around wait times, all for you as a patient, but forget to mention that reducing wait times often involves hiring more nurses or giving them more hours and overtime.
Everyone does it in public-sector negotiations and sabre-rattling. Pick a sector, find a service, and the union will rally around the benefit to the public. All while failing to be transparent about how it benefits the members even more so.
But two things trouble me more about the posturing and rhetoric. I’ll leave the second one to the end, it’s a values and ethics issue for me. However, the first is that most of what they claim to be negotiating is within the employer’s purview alone. For lack of a better term, a management decision, even though the union tries to pretend otherwise even to its own members.
In the current federal climate, the unions have said, “We’ll negotiate on return-to-the-office!”. Except there is zero legal footing for such a claim. It is relatively black letter labour law that place of work is a management decision. Sure, the unions might gain a bit of noise around the fact that the change happened during negotiations when terms of work are not supposed to change unilaterally, but in the end, it’ll just be noise.
Yet unions tell their members they’ll reverse RTO, reduce class sizes, and reduce wait times. Right up until the employer says, “Can I offer you an extra half percent in wages?” and suddenly, the unions all fold like a house of cards. Because they knew they could never win on the issues. Instead, they get a vague promise from the employers to review something or another, so the union can save face, but the win is suddenly all about the wages.
I hate the phrase, “When someone tells you it’s not about the money, it’s about the money”, I find it too simplistic for most situations. Often times, it ISN’T about the money, even though money is inextricably involved. However, it seems like for almost all union negotiations, it is just about the money. That’s literally the bottom line. So I tend to get really uncomfortable when unions pretend otherwise, that they’re somehow better than other unions, that they’re serving Canadians, really, they’re here to help everyone. And to be honest, not always sticklers for accurate messaging and facts.
But the legal requirement for a public-sector union is the same as it is for a private-sector union. They are not political parties, they are not charities, they are not NGOs dealing with social issues. They are an association representing members and have to do what is in the members’ best interests.
Yes, I still pay my dues and even registered as a member
When I started in the government, I was a member of PSAC. And I hated the union with a passion. Some of the stuff I saw them do was, well, obscene. Picking and choosing types of employees to help based on their base salary. Literally telling a pregnant PM-05 that she already made enough money so they wouldn’t help her with a blatant discrimination situation because there were all these AS-01s who would love to have her problems.
Or the outright lies to members about the state of pay equity negotiations that resulted in TBS actually finding a loophole in the negotiation rules. Normally, when a negotiation occurs, the employer cannot communicate directly with members. They can ONLY communicate with the negotiators. However, the union can do/say almost whatever it wants. And at the time, they did. Blatant misrepresentation and misinformation while holding thousands of cheques hostage, pretending it was TBS refusing to pay. So TBS managed to find a loophole — instead of communicating with members, they instead reported to Parliament on the state of negotiations, and released the real offer they had shared so members saw it anyway. In an era before social media, with limited ability to share stuff as easily as it is now, the TBS release still managed to go viral in some communities. With a lot of really ticked-off staff waiting on cheques, horrified to find out that TBS had offered to release the cheques on the already-settled claims so that people could get the money, and had even moved the money to accounts ready to go out with the push of a button. But PSAC told them no, while simultaneously claiming TBS was stalling and didn’t want to pay. Some members were none too happy. Others swallowed the lies hook, line and sinker, “my union, do or die”.
I saw the previous strike while at then Foreign Affairs. One of the more vocal members was rabidly nuts. She would take a baseball bat, and a football helmet, and spit on anyone who tried to cross the line, even though the majority of people were NOT members of PSAC and were not on strike. I have no clue how she didn’t get arrested or worse. I find it challenging to respect a claim to be representing anyone while spitting on people and threatening them with baseball bats.
So, with that background, when I switched to the EC category, I was VERY happy to transfer my dues to CAPE. Why? Mostly because they weren’t PSAC. In fact, for a lot of CAPE members, that’s actually our unofficial motto. “We’re not PSAC.” Some ex PSACers think the PSAC executive are all nuts. New, old, doesn’t matter. One tar, one brush.
I was happy with CAPE, as they were cheaper, for one thing. PSAC is one of the most expensive unions, and if you’re in the AS or PM category and in lower levels, they’ll represent you well. If you’re not, well, let’s say there are a lot of people with views about a multi-class system. And don’t get me wrong, those AS-01s and PM-02s NEED good representation on pay. But if you pay your union over $1000 a year, and not one of those groups, you might want some services too. Over 25-30K in a lifetime of dues? Yeah, that starts to get a bit shocking.
For me, I’m fine to be part of a generally sleepy union. I pay my dues, I even registered to join. Why? So I could get updates. They do the negotiations without being rabid about pretending to save the world as they do it. They’re a little aggressive but not crazy aggressive. And for the most part, they help people figure out labour relations issues with a side of representation.
To me, partly because of my HR guide, I see the benefits of people helping other people in the public service. I don’t care which union they’re part of, I don’t care much about unions overall. I have views, sure. But I don’t care if others are passionate about it. I’ve been approached by three different unions to see if I am willing to develop a special guide for THEIR union, one that they wouldn’t share with non-members, and I always say no. I have no interest in that, even if they’re willing to pay me. If someone invites me to present somewhere, as long as it isn’t too “unionish”, I’ll present. It is kind of my civil servant equivalent of being impartial amongst various factions. I’m agnostic, in the end.
I guess I wish that the unions did more of the type of stuff I do. Including more explanation and transparent outreach to answer questions from members. There are a lot of people right now struggling with understanding Return to the Office, Work from Home, Duty to Accommodate, etc. and the unions are telling them, “Absolutely, file your DTA, we’ll help you get that approved, all good”. Except they won’t and they can’t, in most of the situations. People are getting NO push back from the union to understand how DTA actually works, and that the likelihood of success is extremely low for the types of issues people are pursuing. When it goes bust later, some people are going to have huge mental health letdowns. Pushing is good, sure, but pushing without realism is dangerous. I think it’s potentially devastating, but well, in the end, those members have a right to pursue their interests even if I think it will end up badly for them. I don’t want to run the union, I’m happy just to vote on stuff.
Yet CAPE still plays games, and to be honest, it seems almost rampant in all unions. Some are run relatively cleanly for a few years at a time, and then maybe it’s simply that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It seems like someone is running the union, and they want to get more done, so they try to put key people into key positions to make that happen. Building a functioning executive. And then some other members start to view it as someone’s private little fiefdom, where decisions are rubber-stamped instead of debated, and decisions are taken in back rooms rather than in the meetings. It happens in many. CAPE and PSAC have gone through their leadership scandals, but unless one is willing to get involved oneself, it’s a little too easy to throw stones at the outcomes.
Even though there are two things that bother me
There are two medium-sized things within CAPE that annoy me. Not enough to withdraw as a member, but they really gall me for their almost arrogance.
A couple of years ago, CAPE wanted to join the Canadian Labour Congress. Many of the members asked, rather indelicately, what the heck? It creates no direct benefit to members, and nobody appointed CAPE as our political representatives. CLC is quite often far more political than most members are comfortable with their union being, partly because members do NOT all share the same political views. Some are quite opposed to much of what CLC stands for and advocates, so it was rejected at least once before it was later approved in a subsequent year. A number of members noted that it had already been decided and rejected, but came back and passed.
However, the bigger complaint is how they approach increases to dues. The union executive wants to increase dues, partly for inflation and partly for the increase in services to members for labour relations issues, etc., and I happen to agree it probably needs to happen.
They initially proposed increases and the membership said “no”. Then they proposed another increase and the members said “no”. So they got creative and tried to make the dues proportional to salary so all the junior members would pay small amounts and more senior members would pay more…in other words, drastically increasing costs to long-time members while providing no additional service to any of them. Again, the membership said “no”.
Last year, or maybe the year before, they came up with a new idea. They proposed not only adding a dues increase, but going back and making it retroactive something like 7 years, overturning all the previous decisions by members when they had said no, and then catching up again. Members said no, and rather emphatically as I recall. Some of the discussion was around the legal implications of a union continuing to revisit previous decisions that had already been taken.
This year, I understand the current proposal is again going to be an increase, linked to a larger budget so that it isn’t a separate vote (i.e., if you approve the budget, you approve the increase; if you decline the increase, you also decline the overall budget), and adding in a request to make it indexed for inflation. The idea of indexing dues for inflation, when the members’ own salaries are not indexed, seems a bit cheeky.
To be blunt, I don’t think the dues issue is a difficult one. They have not had a dues increase and there is lots of work to be done. So, instead of playing silly games, the easiest way to get a dues increase is to give people an option — let them vote separately for a small increase, a medium increase or a large increase. If there is a zero increase option, show what will get cut. Yet nobody seems inclined to communicate openly with the members to say, “here’s our core business, everything else is above the line and can’t be done without an increase”. If you want more money in a membership organization, all you have to do is show the members what they get for their existing dues and what will be cut without an increase/what will be added with an increase. It’s not rocket science, it’s basic governance. If the members want it, they’ll approve; if they don’t, they won’t. Unions, NGOs, associations, all of them face similar issues. And the recommendation in the academic literature is always the same. Transparency, and “zero-based budgeting” for what is covered and what is not, with anything “extra” being heavily scrutinized. You don’t get to bury CLC in the core budget and then put labour relations officers in the “extra” column (also called the “Musical Ride Gambit” that the RCMP used to do on budget reviews).
The dues issues drive me bonkers. If it wasn’t that the base budget pays for labour relations help for members who need it, I’d be tempted to either try to get involved to stop it, fix it, etc. or withdraw from the union.
All of which pales compared to a values and ethics issue
So, I’m bullish on the theory of unions, like their contribution to wage negotiations and labour relations, and a shifting of power. I don’t think we should nominate all unions for sainthood, and public-sector unions, least of all with the rhetoric. But rhetoric is where I come to my biggest problem.
I’ll accept the argument that public services are important. Nursing, education, and the public sector in general.
I believe realistically in the power of the state to make huge differences in people’s lives for better or for worse, and that working to make sure that it is “for the better” is critical. I don’t think we should have bigger government than we can afford, I’m not an advocate for the approaches of the Nordics or most of the EU, I’m fine to go with some sort of happy medium. I suspect that the current size of the state is too large to be sustainable.
But after we go through those arguments, and I accept them, where I end up is simple.
Public services are essential.
I know, not everyone will agree with that. Some might say “essential is as essential does” in some altered Forrest Gump-esque world or that all services are essential but some are more essential than others (with a mis-nod to George Orwell).
I’m willing to say though that if the politicians are running a program and haven’t cut it, then they have determined that it is, in fact, essential.
But here’s the rub. If it is essential, then we can’t go on strike. We can’t have those two mutually exclusive thoughts together.
You are either essential and can’t withhold services under any circumstances (outside of a national disaster) including striking, or you can go on strike, and then you’re not an essential service.
Teachers are the ones that I relate to the most on this. I am fully on board to say teachers are an essential service provider. Super important, no substitution, no alternative, can’t be tossed aside. We need them. But then they tell me that students are so important, the children are our future, and so they’re striking and providing no service to those kids?
My mind literally cannot accept both premises. To me, it is like a doctor not providing help to a sick patient in an ER. Sorry, yes, you need me, but I’m not going to help you, someone didn’t pay me enough this week. Hippocratic oath, be damned.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to disenfranchise anyone in a public-sector union. I’m willing to accept that they CAN have a right to strike. But as soon as they do, to me, they are admitting they are no longer essential. And thus are not a whole lot different than a private-sector union. Forget the flag waving, forget any special status.
I’m fine with any other form of engagement. Just not withholding an essential service. There’s a word for that. Extortion.
Where does that leave me?
I’ve been fortunate on two fronts. As a member of CAPE, the union dues are relatively under control and the constant tweaking / governance issues are not enough for me to say “see ya later”. I get nervous when a union starts to get political, similar to some of the horror stories from California union issues. I get even MORE nervous when they start to make decisions on behalf of members without actually TALKING to members to find out what their views are. However, while all of it is annoying, it is not enough to create an existential crisis. If I had a choice, I’d probably choose not to be a member, but I’m fine paying dues to help with labour relations issues. And I get to vote on all the issues, as a member, so I can shake it off.
The second front that has benefited me in my squirrel brain is that CAPE has not voted to strike, and based on past years, not likely to do so anytime soon. CAPE members tend to be less militant than other unions, for good or bad, and so I don’t face the ultimate test. I don’t have to say, “Okay, dude, is this a real principle or are you just blowing smoke?”.
I suspect in the event of a vote to strike, I would end my membership and likely pursue becoming a RAND deductee…I’d still be able to vote on striking or not, I’d still have dues deducted, but I wouldn’t be a full member of the union. I’d be a dues-paying “pseudo-member” because the law says I have to pay. Yeah, I know, it’s only a symbolic gesture, in some ways, since you still have to pay and you still benefit from the collective bargaining.
I’m not sure that I’m willing to go to the “full level” of conscientiously objecting to the dues to avoid having them go to them at all (in unique circumstances, they can be routed to a charity instead). But it would be closer to my real feelings. I just haven’t had to face it yet.
I guess in the end, I feel like I’m bending my ethics more than breaking them. And as always, my view is inward, not outward. I don’t care what others choose. If they want to strike? Go for it. None of my business.
I just don’t want people trying to convince me they’re doing it for Canadians. It doesn’t tend to ring true when the final offer is accepted. And I don’t want my union to decide to withdraw essential services.
I try to be open to other people’s views, particularly if it is diversity-related or age-related perspectives. I don’t always share their views, but I try to understand them and be open to the insights they provide, use them to better my own thoughts and actions. That isn’t some altruistic endeavour or that I’m a “great” person, it’s simply that other people have experiences I don’t have and can never have in some cases. It seems ludicrous to try to limit my views to only those things I experience myself. Translation to my frame of reference can be hard, as it is for anyone.
[ADDED TEXT] And in that light, I’ve gotten some good feedback from people that perhaps not only is my tone too harsh, but there’s an undercurrent of unintended misogyny in there because I was talking about complainers and whiners, but had labelled them all Karens. Those are completely fair points in my view, so I’ve tried to adjust some of the wording below. Another noted in one place that I slammed everyone dealing with childcare issues upfront, when I only meant to slam a small subsection who I think hurt those with more legitimate concerns.
Yet I confess that ever since the government announced the plans for return to the office, the number of whiners [edit] I am seeing in the newspapers and online seem to be growing exponentially. At first encounter, I take their complaints at face value, and try to understand the balance they have landed on in the issues we’re all dealing with, always looking for the shades of nuance. I can’t help it, it’s the dork in me. But I am finding it increasingly hard to find any resonance in their positions. The balance seems so far off from the average worker out there beyond the public service, it seems like privileged whining.
The main type is the Reductionist, who says “I can do my whole job from home, so no reason to go back to the office”. Because they think they alone have SEEN THE LIGHT and will illuminate things for everyone.
Of course, it also means that they never read their job description. Where it says, for example, in almost EVERY SINGLE ONE, that you will “work with your coworkers in the office”. The wording varies, sometimes it is explicitly linked, sometimes only implicitly, but it almost always says somewhere in the document that work will take place “in an office”. Together with other people. Not talk to them on the phone or video chat, but together in the office. But they say “Hey, everything is working, I don’t need to do that.” Except first and foremost, that’s not their call. They don’t get to decide if it’s working or not, their boss does. That’s actually what they do. And they have evaluated it. And have seen that things are NOT working just fine. Horizontality is WAY down. Silos are WAY back up. It’s a problem. A REAL PROBLEM, not imaginary.
Management has seen it before, and they know how to fix it. Get people to interact informally i.e, the same way they fixed it the last time. Video interactions increase the likelihood of transactional relationships, not holistic ones. As a result, the majority of people only talk to each other when they need to discuss some work item. They aren’t chatting at the water cooler, they aren’t sharing in the hallways, they’re not sharing, period.
I’ll give you an example from my own world. I was in the office today, ran into a guy I haven’t talked to in over a year, haven’t seen in 3. Last time I was interacting with him, he was working on a small training project. Seeing him prompted me to ask how it had gone, it was a success, and the quick conversation prompted me to think of a way I could use some of his work in another context. Exactly how in person interactions are supposed to work. Could I have done it virtually? Of course. If I had ANY reason to call him out of the blue just to chat. Seeing him pass by gave me the opportunity to network (as much as I hate that term), come up with an asymmetrical solution to a problem I have, and build off his experiences. If I was only virtually, he wouldn’t come to mind, nobody would suggest the link, I’d come up with a solution in relative isolation. In short, we’d be working in silos. And in this case, reinventing the wheel. Huge loss of productivity. Yet I’m on the higher end of the networking/sharing spectrum. It’s one of the things that I’m most known for — people regularly call me to ask, “Hey, I was talking to so and so, and they said you know everyone in the branch, who do you think I should talk to about this…?”. And yet my sharing is down. I never realized how much of it before was based on serendipity, that accidental run-in. Sure, I would do the formal informal thing…if I was dropping something off to the ADM’s office, I would take a different route back to my cubicle and stop by different work friends’ desks to catch up, see what they were doing. Not because I was formally “networking”, although I guess it was, I just did it because I like talking to people about what they’re working on, and I would “wander” occasionally to make sure I wasn’t hiding in my cubicle. I am, regrettably in that respect, an introvert at heart.
And senior managers see (as I have at my level) that the sharing/networking is way down. Every day. And they told people about it over 2 years ago. Told them to increase interactions. Build collaboration. Hold social meetings. Act like adults. DO YOUR FULL JOB, not just the part you’re doing virtually. Build virtual water coolers. Find ways to get out of transactions and meet with broader communities. And most people did NADA. Hell, half of us don’t even turn on our cameras. But there are some whiners trying to explain to management how everything was working just fine and nothing needed improving.
A second type is the Subway crowd. These are the people who think that ANY reason to go back to the office is about management wanting to support local business. So-named after a rough open mic day at one department where a manager tried to explain how going out of his house and going to Subway at lunch at work — returning to some of his pre-COVID routine — was actually good, and people took it to mean that because they didn’t want to go back to work, he was somehow tone deaf and saying Subway was worth it. It’s not what he was saying at all, I’ve seen the transcripts and reports, but hey, they took it the way they wanted to take it. And for the meeting itself, that’s fair, their reaction was their reaction. But then a bunch of people thought it would be funny to make hundreds of Subway memes to mock government management as being idiots. And again, if they could speak to their manager please, they would get someone to fix this idiocy. Uh huh. That went over like a lead balloon. People were being openly insubordinate towards management, and some people even got lawyers involved because of the harassment. I’m sorry, but that lack of judgment hurt EVERYONE. Management that was leaning in on being as flexible as possible reacted VERY badly to that behaviour by some staff. You can disagree, sure. But if your attempts at humour are triggering cease and desist orders from your management at the risk of lawsuits for defamation or harassment or even disciplinary action? I struggle to find any balance in that position. Even if I agreed with some of the position, the methods show an enormous level of unprofessionalism. One can argue that’s generational, I’m an old fuddy duddy, even though I like my humour fairly dark, but it really didn’t help anyone’s cause. It made management even less flexible about RTO.
The REALITY check is “COVID time is over”. For the last 3 years, when problems cropped up, things didn’t quite go right, or people had problems making connections, everyone said, “Cause COVID/WFH/Teams”. But that excuse has run its course and DMs asked TBS to issue guidelines, which they did. A lot of the complainers forget that. It wasn’t TBS suddenly coming out of nowhere to say “Hey all the DMs say it’s great but we’re going to ignore them and force people back.”
DMs told TBS they needed at least some of the people back in the office part of the time. Most departments had not gone to the level of ESDC where they analysed every job category, a much more balanced approach in my personal opinion (for what that’s worth in the TBS world), so TBS issued a blanket policy for everyone. Many of the DMs seemed to want this because the chaos of dealing with the Subway crowd wasn’t worth the extra aggravation to find more flexible approaches. Lots of staff complain that management isn’t listening, and they’re probably not completely wrong on that front. There are serious legitimate issues at play but after Subway-gate, it seems like many DMs simply said, “Well, staff aren’t going to listen to us anyway” and therefore spent little time trying to explain the problems they’re seeing. One policy, no muss.
A third type are the Malibu Crew. Malibu Crew wants to complain that life overall is just so hard and that it is all government’s fault. The Malibu brand has a pretty heavy union vibe to them in terms of rushing to the union to get them to strike! Talk to TBS! Talk to EVERYONE’S MANAGER and get this changed. I suspect I struggle so much to understand this group because they swamp other people in the wake who have more legitimate issues. Take child care, for example.
There are some Malibu members who are whining that when they go back to the office, they are going to have to now get full-time child care [Edit: FT, not just CC in general]. Umm. They do know that they were SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING at home right, not providing childcare for their young kids while also working? But some weren’t using childcare. There are some in this category who have kids under 5 who they have had at home the whole time and just didn’t tell their bosses that oh, by the way, they’re working 7.5 h a day while also making sure they’re 4 year old has a snack, is watching pig cartoons, is NOT biting their sister, etc. Off camera, out of mind? The techniques of this group are mind-boggling myopic. They are actually giving interviews and writing articles that they were able to keep their kids at home while they were supposed to be working, and now, they’ll have to pay for childcare like they were supposed to already be doing. Management, MPs, others are actively discussing these articles where people are directly quoted and well, they’re not looking to console them. This is EXACTLY what some anti-WFH people are swearing is happening everywhere — employees not putting in their 7.5h at home because they’re doing other things. It’s not really true, but then you have people giving interviews where they say it is, annnnnd that hurts everyone. But it really hurts those other parents who DO have more realistic child-care issues.
For example, there is a different group of parents that show up in three camps. One group is made up of the divorced parents who have the same issue they had before the pandemic — kids are at their house only part of the time, either part of the week or alternate weeks for example, and with RTO, they have to adjust to figure out how to handle the scheduling issues. Totally problematic, nobody is saying it’s the government’s fault, they’re just saying that switching things and adjusting schedules may take some time.
A second group is comprised of parents who are struggling to get part-time care for their young kids. Part-time care is REALLY hard to find, with places often offering all week first, and only partial if there is somehow a gap. But with demand? Most places don’t have left-over spaces to offer PT. And their employees don’t want to only work PT. Many of these parents may have to take FT options just to ensure a space. But again, the parents are complaining about the logistics, not the need to do this. Some of this is often offered by schools after- and before-school care, but those programs can’t ramp up on a week’s notice or even a month’s. They have to hire more staff and that takes time too. If they can even find staff.
A final group is very similar to the second group, but are often the parents of pre-teens who are old enough not to need constant supervision but likely aren’t old enough to be on their own. Right now, they finish school, they come home, and a parent is there. All good. But if the parent isn’t there, because they are in the office a couple of days a week, then they likely need to figure out some sort of after-school “care” from a neighbour or at the school itself, or camps. Many of which are not readily available on a dime, as noted above. Often it can take weeks or months to figure out the best solution that works for everyone. But it is less acute than the second group, because the kid is almost able to take care of themselves. They could easily be at home with a WFH parent without any “distraction” for the parent.
I have strong sympathy for this group. Finding childcare is ALWAYS a struggle. And when you have it working, the last thing you want is something changing. They’re worried about figuring out the logistics in the short-term, not challenging the need to do something. And yet they get lumped in newspaper articles with the Malibu crowd, and people are dismissing their combined issues as being fake news. Or self-entitled claptrap.
The struggle is real, and I wish there was more nuancing in the responses. On the Malibu front, government would likely do very little to be flexible, it looks more like exploitation of a loophole than sound policy to support. But the other three sub-groups of parents? There are ways in which the government COULD be flexible, on a case-by-case basis, but the more the “issue” is defined by the Malibus, that flex will disappear for all parents struggling with child-care.
Let’s move on though to the Lazy group. “I don’t know how to make RTO work” aka “I don’t understand the assignment”. This group wants to complain about how they went to the office for interactions and they spent the whole time sitting at their desk on their headsets and didn’t go to any of the meetings in person. And then complain they could have done that from home.
Yep, they could have. Because they didn’t do their job. They went into the office to interact with people and then did everything in their power to NOT interact. Then they claim, “See? I told you so.”. I struggle to understand their goal. Do they think management will say, “Okay, you’re right, our bad, go back to WFH”? Management is far more likely to say, “Okay, 2d/week wasn’t enough, let’s change to 3d/week” … or 4 or 5. Yes, those who refuse to make it work may indeed ruin it for everyone and may be why we can’t have nice things.
Moving on
At this point, as I said, I can mostly understand their original positions but I struggle to share the balance they established on the issues. I sympathize with their struggle, they’re clearly affected and seized with their own situations, but I find it difficult to empathize with their approach and complaints. And the more they complain and complain, with no sense of balance, the less I am inclined to listen. It gets tiresome, partly because I think it is more likely to hurt our WFH cause than help it (more on that later).
I find it even harder to empathize with false Medicos. These are not the the same false prophets from the early pandemic who didn’t want to wear masks who denied COVID was real, these are the “I-don’t-want-to-go-back-to-the-office-but-I’ll-rationalize-that-it’s-because-I-know-it-isn’t-safe”.
I understand their fear. In a high-risk household, I share that same fear. I also know that every other sector has already gone through this. There are bumps, sure. There are challenges, sure. Yet 3 years later, the majority of problems have already been addressed. Not everyone agrees with that assessment, I know, and I empathize with their fear even if it has little to do with a realistic assessment of risk.
Those with real immuno-compromised problems should have a working Duty-to-Accommodate process that is fast and light-weight. The tests and criteria are well-established to identify if being around people dramatically increases your risk.
Those who are fearful but not at higher risk are overwhelming that DTA process though. Almost all of them are going to be denied. As I said, every other sector has already gone through this, there’s legal precedent, there’s medical evidence, and 99% have failed to convince anyone their fears are legitimate reasons not to RTW. Every sector from 2020 to now has gone through these issues. Restaurants, retail stores, factories, other offices, etc. All returned to work. Those with real immuno issues got swept along like flotsam and jetsom. They should have had support, instead they got trampled. It’s almost like the workplace equivalent of abled-bodied people parking in handicapped parking spots “just for a minute” while they run into a store.
[Edit: I’ve revised the following section considerably, people said I was too harsh on the example in question, and they’re probably right.]
The ones that tick me off though are those who want to “sue” if they get or because they got sick. I get the desire. I’ve been involved in some disability communities over the last 20 years for various reasons, and it is one of the first aspects of the newly disabled. They want to sue someone for whatever is happening to them. This isn’t about being litigious, it’s a recognized psychological coping mechanism that people use to help themselves make sense of their new situation. Nobody wants to feel like the universe is in control and they are just a meaningless speck. They want to feel, to regain some control over their situation. Knowing someone else is responsible is a good way to do that…”They did this to me” instead of “sh** happens”. And while that coping mechanism is prevalent, it is also one of the most destructive forces too. It stops the “healing” process from moving through the stages of acceptance to the new reality. That doesn’t mean you don’t do “something”, you totally should if you have grounds, but the mindset of those seeking “justice” for what’s been done with them frequently clouds their judgment, confusing “I was impacted” vs. “I was wronged”.
Because of my ancient legal background, I have gravitated to reading articles and cases about COVID issues since the pandemic started. I am always fascinated how large complex systems respond to new areas. Mostly my interest focuses on North America, as I understand the broader jurisprudence there better than Europe, for example. I also tend to read a lot about accommodations, what works, what doesn’t.
In my previous version of this post, I was reacting in part to someone who wanted to sue based on having gone back to the office, being generally against RTO as well and that it wasn’t needed to be done (all the various reasons), they got sick, claiming that it had to be from the office (100%, no shadow of a doubt), and they wanted to sue for the potential long term effects. Maybe they’re in that newly disabled category, another Reddit user suggested they were, and just fearful about economics, income, etc. I was harsh in my reaction because there are LOTS of people who have asked the same lawsuit question over the last three years. Maybe I was wrong to lump him in with the other group.
In my opinion, based on everything I’ve read and my involvement in disability issues, there’s no basis for a lawsuit. To be clear, my reaction to these issues is two-fold.
Upfront, I tend to react to the reasons people want to complain. They will wax and wane about why RTO is bad for them, and so their motivation is that they KNOW better than everyone else involved, everyone is stupid, there are no issues. They are often one of the other types mentioned above, but now add their biased interpretation of medicine and law to the mix.
On the secondary front, I can tell you that the evidentiary burden you would have to pass for a lawuit is enormous. After people said I was too harsh and didn’t take his concerns seriously, I ignored the RTO rhetoric and said, “Okay, well if you DO want to do a lawsuit”, here’s the list of things he’ll have to do to win a lawsuit based on what I have read over the last three years.
In its simplest form, you have to prove causality — ideally by showing the person who infected you was at work. Epidemiologists haven’t been able to do that for 3y, they can only prove known exposures. But just as lots of people have been exposed and not gotten sick, others have been exposed without knowing it while riding a bus, a friend who was asymptomatic, etc. Probably work, but causally work? Very challenging. You would also likely need to prove that the government’s request was unlawful. Again, very difficult to prove, and unions have found no case law that supports that position, and they have LOOKED hard. For safety protocols, it would likely need to show that either some basic element was missed that was required or there was an egregious error in how it was implemented. Government has generally had higher workplace standards than most equivalent offices, and it will be the medical professionals who will determine what was “required”. Plus if they “encouraged” you to do more, that is a big out for liability. They established the minimum, not the maximum. In almost all cases that have “won” or had any success, it was almost always that the workplace did NOTHING. Government has also been the last to go back, three years, another “evidentiary” element in their favour of a cautionary approach. Not impossible, but difficult.
Short of those elements, it will be difficult to sustain a lawsuit. In short, the law won’t look a lot different than it did pre-COVID. If you were at work before COVID and someone gave you the flu or a cold, you couldn’t sue your workplace. You couldn’t even sue the person who made you sick. The legal standard has not shifted from that general principle. About the only time it HAS shifted in 50 years is if you had something like HIV/AIDS and had unprotected sex with people without disclosing your status. And even then? Most courts tossed the lawsuits. A few succeeded on the basis that it wasn’t informed consent, but not universally. There are a few other duty cases, but they all required an overt act to demonstrate something the employer or person did to make them liable. There is virtually no basis in law to sue that “You were sick, now I’m sick, it’s your fault”.
But my reaction to this group is that it completely screws up the conversation with management. If you start from the position that “I have the right as a employee to stop you from doing this”, and you sue, then when you lose, and you will, management has almost carte blanche to do whatever they feel is appropriate. You embolden the other side when you lose. And if there are lawsuits? All management flexibility will be removed to deal with anything. Management will harden its stance in face of a lawsuit.
So I’m ticked because the result will hurt the WFH cause more than help it.
My glass is 60% full — I really want RTO to work
Soooo, let’s start with a built-in bias of mine. I like working from home. I know, you would think that my complaints about the above group might make you think otherwise, but I do. If I could WFH for the rest of my career, I would.
And while people want to complain that RTO is terrible, I want to celebrate the 60/40 win. We got to keep working from home 3d a week instead of having to go back 5d a week. And I want to see people make that work, because if we DON’T make it work, TBS has already indicated to their own staff, they’ll send us back 5d. They already did it. We didn’t make WFH work perfectly, so we got sent back 2d. To pick up what we had lost because so many of the people out there didn’t find ways to make WFH work as well as it could have. We were complacent, myself included.
And it’s why so much of the complaining bugs me. If we as the broad public service are seen to be complaining about fake stuff, stamping our feet on the basis of what we think our rights are vs. what is in management purview and vs. what the rest of Canadians deal with, if we go into the office and NOT make it work, we’re going to lose the 3d WFH that we have now. And the more fake noise that is generated, the more likely we’ll be seen as the Subway crowd. And I really don’t want management to stop listening.
For my team, I am showing as much flexibility as I can on which days. I’m being flexible for training that falls on “in-office” days and telling them to do it from home. I’m being “reasonable” where I can be. I’m booking office spaces so they don’t have to. I’m buying them pizza on the first full day in the office so they can relax, get to know each other informally in person, and not have to worry about lunch. I’m an introvert, no one would ever accuse me of making it “fun”, but well, I’ll do what I can based on their suggestions too. And from my perspective, I’m also doing a lot to shout it from the rooftops so management SEES IT WORKING.
So that nobody decides it isn’t working and gives me a solution I don’t want. I just fear that those who look like they’re whining will have more impact on the outcome than any good the rest of us can do.
That’s just a fun fact that I wanted to share with you. I don’t know if riding in an ambulance is on the morbid side of your bucket list, one of those “well, I’d like to but not because I need to” activities, but well, I can check it off whatever list it was on. Sigh.
I blame the cook
So let’s have a small health recap. I have diabetes, under control with mild medication. I have reflux, also under control. Oh, and high blood pressure. And again, under control. I’m a maintenance worker basically.
About 18 years ago, my brother had a heart attack. That may not sound particularly relevant, but the behaviour that went with it was…he had pizza for dinner, over-indulged a bit he said, and then had bad heartburn later that night. He put up with it until about six in the morning and decided it wasn’t going away, so off to emergency he went. Nope, not heartburn. It was just his heart. Not surprising, given our family history for both my father and my sister. Plus own comorbidities for diet, etc.
Anyway, fast forward a month after that, and I was at home with Andrea. I don’t remember what we had for dinner. But at about 8:00 p.m., my digestive system started kicking up a fuss. Really aggressively. I took something, Gaviscon I think (my default save all for digestive stuff), and there was no change. Worst than I had ever had it before. It was discomforting, and a bit painful, probably a 4 or 5 for a scale out of 10. Not screaming agony, but it had my attention. Probably just digestion, I thought. But well, that’s what everyone thinks. Including my brother. And I knew that time was muscle, so I trundled off to emergency to be sure.
Of course, the inevitable happened. I went to emerg, and they tested me on a monitor, give me no results, and send me to triage waiting. I didn’t know at the time that of course the nurse basically ruled out the most likely signs of a cardiac event, but I didn’t know that, so I sat around for about 7 hours wondering if I was having a heart attack. Nope, I finally saw the resident and supervising doctor, they gave me a pink lady (lidocaine is the numbing agent of choice, it comes in a pink liquid form like a small shot of Pepto Bismal, and down the hatch it went). Instant relief, 7 hours later. They hooked me up with acid reduction meds, they generally work for me as a preventative, keep things under control, except once in a while I’ll have a bit too much of something, or over-indulge on something like pizza, and I get a bit of residual indigestion. Over the last almost 20 years, I have come to know what it feels like, and I take Tums if it is basic or I feel like I need to just burp a little, or I go to Level 2 for the Gaviscon. My father had similar issues and Gaviscon always worked for him too. Some people swear by the pink over-the-counter stuff, but Gaviscon works.
So, the last few weeks have been a bit stressful at work, getting into the new rhythm of the job, and I’ve eaten out more than I should. I’m also trying to do some other stuff around the house and fix my website, I don’t have a lot of bandwidth for planning meals, and I’ve generally been doing a crap job of eating healthy even without going out. Let’s say I didn’t go into Sunday with a stellar foundation. Can you see where I’m going with this?
Yep, we went out for dinner to Golden Palace on Carling Avenue. Some consider it one of the best Chinese restaurants outside of Chinatown, and swear by their spring and egg rolls. We had it a couple of times for take out, but we’re trying to “emerge” from our hermit shells a bit more, so we went on Sunday night. I confess, again, that my stomach was NOT doing as well as I might have liked, but I figured I’d take it easy on stuff, avoid spices, just have a nice simple meal and it wouldn’t cause too many issues. If I had a bit of gas, I’d take Gaviscon.
Dinner was great, and it is the first time we’ve taken Jacob to an actual Chinese restaurant (outside of more buffet-like places). We haven’t taken him to Chinatown but it’s on the list. We lost our favourite Vietnamese restaurant, and we all like Chinese, so thought we’d give it a go. Jacob loves their Sweet and Sour Pork so we had some of that, with a small portion for me…I’ve eaten it before, no worries. Won Ton soup is popular for Jacob and I, and if Andrea can’t find something more interesting, she enjoys it too. All good.
We wanted to introduce Jacob to something with Black Bean Sauce, even though he tells us that he doesn’t like black beans. We told him we don’t either, but the combo is good, so we went for a chicken option. It’s not something we normally have, can’t even remember the last time I had it. Could be 10 years at least. I still salivate over the first time I had it at Ben Ben’s in Chinatown way back in about 1993. It seemed fine, both at the time and in retrospect. I didn’t go crazy or anything on it, had a small serving.
My error might have been the beef and broccoli. I like beef, I like broccoli, and I love how it is served so crisp. The downside? It had a TON of oil on it. And I had it as my main dish. It went down fine, no issues, came home feeling fine. In fact, I was a little proud of myself that I didn’t over-indulge in anything, I kept under control.
Jump ahead to midnight, Andrea and I were binge-watching a show, time for bed, shut off the show, sat up and wham. A little bit of indigestion that had been sitting there hit me like a vise on my chest.
A two-inch swatch of pain right below both breasts, stretching basically nipple-to-nipple. And it was intense. I initially thought it was just partly positional. Nope, I could not get it to subside. And on a pain scale? It was hitting a solid six with pretensions at seven. Feeling like NOTHING I have felt before. Way different than what I felt almost 20 years ago, it did not feel like simple indigestion.
Initial denial
Hey, my name is Sadler, I have to start with denial. We got ready for bed, I was convinced that once I laid down, got comfortable, I’d be fine. It had dropped to about a five or so for pain and discomfort. And I knew it wasn’t likely my heart. Oh, wait, I skipped that part of the backstory.
About 4 years ago, I was having some weird chest pain that seemed positional. Which made no sense. But a couple of times I had it while exerting myself, raised with doctor, they sent me to Heart Institute for full review, all good. My heart came back totally fine. I’ve also done stress tests. All good. Which is not to say I’m good to go for life or there aren’t ongoing risk factors, but all things being equal, it may not be the first likely cause.
It took me about 30m to get ready for bed, tried Tums, tried Gaviscon, working slowly I thought. I laid down, tried to get comfortable. Back? Nope. Right side? Nope. Back again. Nope. And the pain was back, up to a 7 now. WTF?
Okay, I knew that wasn’t normal for any of the previous experiences, and as I said, this felt different. Soooo I was thinking…could it BE my heart? Doesn’t quite feel like it should be, but time is muscle, as they say. Well, frak. And I was in too much pain to drive myself or take a cab to the hospital to be sure, and if it was my heart, well time is muscle. Crap, frak, and double fraking crap.
Okay, I called it. I was going to the hospital and if it was my heart, I needed an ambulance. I didn’t want to go that way, but well, that was the most viable option. If it was indigestion, I probably didn’t need to go. If it wasn’t, then I definitely needed to go.
Andrea called while I got dressed, they took about 8-10 minutes to get there. Brought in portable heart monitor, everything showed normal. But the pain was still present. The 911 operator told Andrea to have me take aspirin (it helps break up clots if there are any) and the paramedics gave me some more. We were at the house about 15 minutes I think, and then I walked outside to the gurney, they loaded me into the Ambulance. We sat in front of the house for another 10 minutes or so, and then they took me to Queensway Carleton.
You know that bucket list thing I mentioned? It’s not so exciting. I was sitting up a bit on the gurney, but I’m kind of long, so there was no support for my head or upper shoulders. I felt every bump on the way, I felt like I was riding in the back of a pickup and needed to hold on. Every sway sent me to the side. It was fine, but I didn’t feel particularly safe, I must say. It’s a short run to the hospital from my house, maybe 5-7 minutes.
Triage
The triage nurse took all the details from the paramedic while I hung out on the gurney. It was not particularly comfortable, not only just the pain was still there (holding in about a 4-5) plus some general stomach-ache discomfort, but also because I couldn’t find a position where my legs and back were well-supported. They offered to move me to sitting up in a wheelchair which I probably should have taken, but I stayed put because I was more afraid the chairs would be too uncomfortable, unable to stretch out a bit.
They took blood to test for traces of cardiac arrest, ran another set of monitors through the portable machines. The blood test came back clean-ish, but there’d been some clotting issues, so they redid it with an IV entry in my arm just in case. I probably should have taken the IV, but I didn’t feel like I needed it and they didn’t push it. The second bloodwork came back clean too.
All of this time — about 90-120 minutes, I was just hanging out at the hospital. But the paramedics had to stay until they got through all of that testing. Why? I have no idea. There were lots of paramedics hanging out, even for a quiet night. After a while, they were down to just 4 of them, just chatting. One veteran of 32 years was chatting with a newbie of 2 months. Swapping stories but mostly listening to the old-timer. I learned some interesting things, maybe I’ll use them in a book some day. But me? I just wanted some answers.
My pain and discomfort were down to about 3-4 when triage “accepted” me and they transferred me to the regular waiting room. It was dead quiet, only 2 people in the entire place. And the paramedics left.
About 20 minutes later, I was called into the back area to see the doctor for the night. He basically told me that they had pretty much ruled out my heart and he was instead much more interested in my gallbladder. I can tell you, gallbladder was not on my list of pool picks if we’d been running a pool. Heart had been relatively eliminated as soon as the paramedics ran the monitor at my house. I still wanted to go to the hospital though as I was in too much pain not to go. I’d thought of kidneys (hey, I’m diabetic, EVERYTHING makes me think of kidneys!), but didn’t seem likely. I know what kidney pain feels like, this wasn’t it.
Spleen was on my list. But it had been on my list in the last month anyway for some extra discomfort I had on the left side of my body at one point. Likely early indigestion stuff in the month. I’ll remain in denial about that for the future for a while longer. Pancreas? Liver? Ulcer? Gallbladder never made my list.
So after he told me that it was likely my gallbladder, I checked out the list of symptoms (as did Andrea, she was at home with Jacob but I had texted her). Yep, they look like a lot of related symptoms. Okay, huh. What was next?
First up, they had decided it was gastro, and would give me the lidocaine. You get it in a small cup with a straw and told to try to get it down as fast as possible, as deep in our throat as you can, to stop the numbing agent from working on your throat and tongue. That wasn’t awesome for someone with a HUGE gag reflex, and I started to feel nauseated. I had a vomit bag, but I never had to open it!
Secondly, while he tried to do a basic ultrasound in the examining room, he needed a full ultrasound and tech to review it. They wouldn’t be available until the morning.
Thirdly, I needed to do more extensive bloodwork looking at all my other organs outcomes, not just the heart that had mostly been ruled out.
He gave me an option to hang out at emerg for the next five hours until I could go to imaging, plus another couple of hours after that with them for results of everything. No thanks, that didn’t sound like fun. I offered to do the bloodwork so that would be done before the morning, which prompted some serious thought.
He looked at me, looked out into the bay. Looked at me, looked out into the bay. He then said, “Well, we could do that, but we only have 1 nurse right now and she has 25 patients to monitor.” Oh, right, okay then, tomorrow morning it would be!
I grabbed a cab home which seemed like more work than it should have been to order and come, got home, and the pink lady had fully taken effect by then. My discomfort was still there, like an upset stomach, but still thinking it was gallbladder, I followed the advice of some reputable organizations online that said to sleep on my left side so my gallbladder would be free to do its magic with no compression. It worked. Andrea didn’t even hear me come in. I fell asleep around 4:00 a.m. and slept solidly until 8:00 a.m. or so.
Because life continues
I had no real concept of time for any of the night before. We didn’t call the ambulance until after midnight and I was home in bed by 4:00 a.m.? How was that possible? I felt like I was there for hours and hours. I normally run Jacob to school, but I was not up to it this morning. I generally don’t say no to that, ever, I make it work. This morning? No, I was not going to be vertical in time. We let him stay home, as he was likely to be worried anyway.
I was a little stressed for the day. Sure, I was at the hospital, that trumps everything for my own work, of course. Except I wasn’t dying or anything. I was home. And I was supposed to act today, as my Director and other two managers were away, as was my #2 in my team. It was like the perfect storm. And with 4 hours sleep, I wasn’t running on all cylinders, that’s for sure.
My cellphone rang a couple of times before 9:00 and I knew it had to be the imaging department. I don’t get a lot of calls. And before work? Almost none. But I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone yet, I was still dozing. I’d had a conversation with Andrea about Jacob, but I don’t even know if I was coherent or not. I dozed until 9:00 but I had to get up…not for work. Not for Jacob. Because my bladder was trying to get my attention. 🙂 You know, normal stuff.
Talked to the imaging people, agreed to 10:00. No food for me, just as well, I didn’t know if I wanted anything. The ultrasound took almost 45 minutes to an hour. One star, would not recommend. I have increased empathy for the pregnant women out there…It never looks like they’re pressing that hard, but they had to work hard on me today to see the organs. Too much blubber in the way.
And apparently, the tech needs to concentrate. I was nervous, asking questions, babbling basically. Until she told me essentially that I was distracting her and she needed to reduce the chit-chat, plus I was moving while talking. A very nice way to tell me to STFU. Back to emergency, a bit of confusion checking me in as I already had the arm bracelet from last night, but they got me sorted, all good.
While I was in the waiting rooms in multiple parts of that journey, I was using my workphone to update various people about being half out of it for the day, everyone was concerned, solicitous and reassuring of course. I have a great work environment. But I still wanted a few files to keep moving. Cause life continues and I wasn’t in pain anymore.
They did the bloodwork and sent that off, back to the waiting room. Finally got called around noon to go over to an examining room. And the doctor gave me the diagnosis.
Something I ate
My gallbladder appears fine. No signs of stones. No signs of anything.
Liver? All good.
Spleen? Not distended.
Everything across the board? All good.
So despite it looking exactly like the description of a gallbladder attack, as the night doctor had suggested, the body and tests say otherwise.
Which means it was likely just something I ate. Most likely either the excess oil on the beef and broccoli or perhaps the pork was too fatty. Not likely the black bean sauce, but we can’t rule it out. Or maybe there was MSG in the meal. Or maybe it was just the accumulated load of the last few months, years, decades on my body.
The solution is pretty basic — totally bland diet for about 3 days, slowly reintroduce other stuff, and adjust my diet over time. Be more careful about what I eat.
I was back home around 2:00 and ate some soup and toast that Andrea made for me. Then I did some work for about an hour, although I don’t know for sure, I wasn’t doing well on tracking time. Andrea went over to the pharmacy with Jacob for me to get some ginger ale, more aspirin (the other batch had expired) just in case, and some Pepto Bismal for a possible future re-occurence.
A small mental downturn
I could mentally kick myself that I ended up taking an ambulance to the hospital for what was basically indigestion, but it was really painful, so if I hit that level again, I would need to go anyway. And I don’t want to hit myself too hard at the risk of not going the next time I think something could be my heart. Which of course they all hammered me hard on, congratulating me on NOT just dismissing it but coming in to have it checked out immediately. The paramedics were talking about all these people they’d brought in for actual heart attacks where the person was having a heart attack while continuing to do chores around the farm, cuz the chores needed to be done. I don’t think I’d be that crazy, but then again, I was working on my phone all day.
I’m generally okay with signs of changing lifestyle and diet. But what is kicking me around a bit are two things.
First, it wasn’t like I had over-indulged, big and heavy, or anything. I ate basic portions, didn’t over order. I ate responsibly, if I’m looking for a description. That doesn’t mean I haven’t done OTHER things wrong and maybe this was the accumulated impact of the last little while in particular. But it’s a bit hard to “avoid” the trigger the next time if you didn’t see what you ate as a giant red flag in the first place. Andrea agreed, I hadn’t gone hog wild or anything. So that’s a bit disconcerting for the future…how big a trigger will things be? If oil on beef was a trigger, what else might be vs. a full aggressive change in diet? If I have to do the latter, it can be done. But I need some semblance of scale too, and I don’t really have one yet. The only way to know is to try certain things in the future and see how my body reacts. Which is a weird place to be, honestly. There have been other nights where, for example, I’ll decide to have an extra slice or two of really good pizza. Should I? No, but it has never been more than mild indigestion, and I was willing to pay the price. This time? I had a small indulgence (the oil) and I got a five-alarm fire in my stomach? Hard to set up a good warning system other than just trial and error in moderation.
Second, and this is a bit harder to adjust to, there’s no treatment option for the future. My gallbladder was fine. If it had been that, they could have removed it. But it’s not. So it’s just that my stomach reacted. If it happens again, I asked if there was something else I should be taking besides the Gaviscon which is my nuclear option usually. And it didn’t help. So what else is above Gaviscon? Basically, nothing.
If it happens again, I just have to ride it out. If it is bad enough that I need the lidocaine, I can go to emerg. But there doesn’t seem to be a Rx option for something like my acid reflux meds, but more of a “responsive side”. I can do everything I can for the preventative side, maybe that’s easier or harder, but it can be done. But not having an option for treatment at home if/when it happens again? Yeah, that’s not fun to think about.
I should celebrate it wasn’t my heart. I know that.
And I didn’t have to have surgery to remove an organ. Another plus, all my original organs are still inside my body. All original equipment.
But the thought that I could eat something with a bit more spice or impact than I’m expecting, that I might end up in a full-on level 6-7 pain experience, that I either go to the hospital for the lidocaine or I just ride it out, that’s not a great mental thought process I want to spend much time on.
It may be “just indigestion”, but it sure kicked the crap out of my body over the last 24 hours. I’m exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally. Hopefully, moderation is sufficient and I don’t have to be anal-retentive or paranoid. I can handle what it means at home, not sure I want to handle what it means when I travel to inlaws or at the cottage or visiting friends. As I said, it’s just a mental health thing. I’ll adjust to the new normal eventually, but trial and error is rarely my preferred method of learning.
Often when we talk about things on social media, we can easily slip into the Chasm of Venting or the Rainbow of Unicorns…everything is terrible and people need to vent, often about other people, or everything is sanitized within an inch of its life so everyone is photo perfect. As is their life.
That’s not me, never has been, and never will be. I live in the grey zones. I yearn for nuance, granularity, the level 3 thinking that goes past the obvious, second guesses the reframe, and zeroes in on the inner squirrel wondering, “What holy hell led you to be thinking THAT way?”.
And then all of it gets set aside for something simple and enjoyable that gives you a mental health bump.
My son as a social animal
The first thing is for my son. He has some physical issues, and it mutually reinforces his introverted nature. So while he is liked by most people (kids or teachers), a couple of years ago we were really worried about his social connections. He was really pushing back against going to school, every day was becoming a fight, 2 months before the pandemic’s impact, and we were trying to figure out what was going on. He’s better than average, but underrates his performance. He assumes if he doesn’t get something in class, he is the only one struggling. His teachers confirmed no, he’s generally above the middle at least, and in some areas quite decent. Personally, I think he would do a lot better in English only, but that’s a separate set of issues. Anyway, we were chatting and he said that he didn’t do anything at recess. That day? No, pretty much any day. So what was he doing? Standing there by himself doing nothing. Frak. That’s not supposed to happen, either we should notice or he should tell us or a teacher should notice, right? This was grade 5. Nope, nada. Well, crap.
He did a year online, exacerbating some of the issues, unfortunately, back in school last year and this year. And he found his crew. He has a small group of five friends that eat lunch together every day, and a couple that he seems close to, at least as far as a parent can tell. But he’s not running around the neighborhood with other kids, he doesn’t have a friend who lives in the adjoining house or backyard as I did growing up. He does have friends, a few of them whom he games with regularly, but he’s harder core than they are, and their parents likely aren’t as device-friendly as I am. So for his birthday, we were grateful and reassured to see that not only did all his gaming friends come for a gaming night, all his lunch friends came for a mini-golf outing.
But he tends to be the social organizer for outings. Over the summer, he organized another outing (at our urging) for mini-golf. Some of them have siblings they play with or next-door neighbours, so most of them have other friends. And it’s easy to worry that as amazing as we might think Jacob is, maybe his friends think of him more as an afterthought.
It can worry me as a parent sometimes. With a bunch of other things to deal with and more to come in high school, he has to deal with being disconnected. He has friends, but does he REALLY have friends? They came for his birthday, but was that just a group dynamic? He’s not the “social glue” that everyone gravitates to, he’s not the king of his crew or anything.
And then earlier this week, we were dropping him off at the school. One of his closest friends that he has talked about a lot was there, but a bit ahead of us at the drop-off, so he had already started walking away. We saw him, but he could have easily ignored Jacob and kept walking, it wouldn’t have seemed particularly rude or anything. But he didn’t. He’s a pretty good / nice kid from what we’ve seen, a bit quiet, but he not only waited for Jacob, he walked back to us to meet up with him.
That’s such a simple thing, right? To see a friend hang back so he could walk with him? And yet it struck me as huge. A friend who obviously WANTS to spend time with him, he’s not just a hanger-on to a larger group per se. It’s hard to measure that as a parent when most of their interactions are at school or online. There are some basic logistical issues to all of them getting together, some physical, some practical, and some more about where their parents live in different parts of the city and which parent they’re living with this week.
Jacob is doing better with his own anxiety, he’s more comfortable pushing me back on things (wait, is that a good thing? hehehe). And he’s looking into things like an IB program and an international certificate option for school. My son. The one who has never spent a night away from a family member as guardian. The one who has never gone to a corner store on his own and bought something. The one who we have managed to get him to order things in restaurants now on his own and to speak up for himself in non-school settings too. The introvert with anxiety issues who needs some capacity building and practice to be more independent.
We’re still waiting for surgery for him, and it limits his mobility. He can’t walk far without getting exhausted, definitely less than a kilometer if he’s carrying his backpack, although longer if he’s out walking with mom. But all of his accomplishments for knowing geography, math, history, and his sense of humour? It fails in comparison for me to see him have a true friend, one who could easily keep walking but was happy to see him and came back to join him. A friend who likes him as much as he does in return.
Poor modeling behaviour
And yet, I would say he has had poor modeling behaviour around him over the last few years. Sure, Andrea has her health issues, and it has meant that we are way more cautious about pandemic isolation issues than most. I have drastically curtailed most of my external outings in person, we do a lot of takeout, although now that we’re all multiple-boostered, and Andrea’s immune system is rebounding, we’re doing meals out with some cautions around the time of day, the busy-ness of a place, etc.
But in terms of friends? I can count the number of outings in the last two years with friends on one hand. An outing with Vivian, an outing with Aliza, two outings with Paul and Mary Ellen, and one with Sanden for lunch. I might be missing some in there, but I don’t think so. That’s it. I just haven’t felt comfortable doing it.
Today, I delivered on a lost bet and bought lunch for my friend and coworker Roula. We had bet on whether a possible work-related announcement was going to be included in the Minister of Finance’s Fall Economic Statement and I bet it would be. One FES later, I owed Roula lunch.
I had been wanting to try Bowman’s on Carling for several years now, someone told me they had pretty good food, including their wings. I’m always game to try different pub foods, and when Roula and I were talking about places, I mentioned wanting to try there. She has been a couple of times in recent months, with really good results, so she was game to go again and break me in.
It was awesome. Well, to be clear, the food and the company were awesome. The place itself is a bit more reminiscent of a broken-down honky-tonk where you would expect to see a lot of day drinkers at the bar (there weren’t) as it has a bit of a tired feel. Worn tables, basic menus, etc. A working pub/bar, if you will. The menu was decent enough for pub options — good appetizers, wings, sandwiches, multiple nachos, burgers, a few other things. I often rate a place by how many things on the menu I would actually order, not just things that sound good but that I would actually consider on a given day in the right mood. For me? Just about all of them. I wouldn’t take them all, not literally, as there are some on there I like better than others and don’t get often enough, but I’m definitely going back.
The wings were awesome. For me, part of the challenge with wings is to try some with no sauce. Lots of places can come up with fantastic glazes out of a bottle, but the wing itself is often nothing special. All of their wings are fresh, no frozen ones there. Larger-size, I worked through 2 full pounds of wings. No fries or anything, just straight awesome wings. I had some honey garlic on the side, so I could try it, very nice. Overall? The best wings I have had at any restaurant in probably close to 10 years.
But I also just really liked hanging out with Roula in person. We’ve known each other for a fair while now, not sure exactly, maybe 8-9 years or more, and we’ve worked together for most of that, so we see each other fairly regularly. But not in person for lunch. We were there for almost 2 hours. Some other people were supposed to join us, and while I would have liked to see them, as a “cool blue” introvert, I am more energized by one-on-one outings like this than I ever am in a group.
I came back bouncing. Just a huge energy bump. I have a few more outings in the coming weeks with other people, although I’m not ready for full-on socializing. But it sure felt good…
Work has been really tiring of late for learning the new job, and I’ll talk more about that this weekend. But for now? All good.
