Thoughts.com

We are a week or so away from my step son getting out of jail.  Has been a long almost 3 years but looks like he will be beginning his life again with some big hurdles to jump but also it seems life is giving him less and less as we get closer.  We just found him a solid job with a future and even possible advancement, more than I could have asked for in that area.  The one downside to the job is that it will mean he will have my wife's sister's husband as his boss.  He is an OK guy, more than OK since he made thsi offer I guess, but he is moody and erratic at times.  His own wife had reservations about this and my wife was thinking of selling points before we pitched this to my son.  When he called and I mentioned it he said OK before even asking what it was doing.  He knew it was a job, he knew he needed one, whatever and whoever he had to deal with was secondary.  He showed maturity.

At 22 he is more mature than a 55 year old at my office.

Long story made very short this man is the youngest of 13 kids and has a wife that works with us that continues what the family started.  This man is babied.  She does most of his work(but during this incident I am about to tell you about he said he was a workaholic...shame is he truly thinks he is).  He is Baby Huey from the cartoon and Budda rolled together.  He is a sweet man with more than a few health issues brought on my diabetes and just poor self care.  But despite the fact that it takes almost an act of Congress to fire anyone here, and that is why he has been here for 28 years, we still push to get people to work.

Three weeks ago I sat him down to have a meeting.  In that meeting I gave him an improvement plan.  The only reason I put it in writing is because that way everyone knows what is expected.  There was no punishments, no threats, just a plan to..frankly...ask him to do what he should already be doing.  Right as I gave him the plan I got a call I had to take so I quickly told him to read it over and we would talk when I was done.  The call took a bit so by the time I was done he had left for the day. 

In the morning I called him to my office and could see he was still worried about this memo/plan.  He told me how he had been up all night worrying, how he had called his doctor about this, how he had called a lawyer to see if it was legal for me to put him through this...when I tell you that what this memo was was equal to as if your boss said to be on time, do not leave early, make sure you answer the phone when it rings on your desk, and do not come dressed in a swimsuit to work..BASIC THINGS..that is all it was, but more job function realted....His voice became more and more loud.  he became more and more upset.  He demanded I rip up the memo now "before it causes more pain."  He then told me he had already said goodbye to his children and told them should this stress I was putting him under give him a stroke and kill him it was on my soul and they are to blame me.  When I tried to point out it was only a memo and not any disipline he said NO, "memo means disipline!" and I nor the assistant I had in there as a witness to the meeting could not calm him down or make him see a memo is just a memo.  I offered to rip it up if he met the goals in it, again things he should be doing now, in a month.  He said he hates deadlines and they are unfair!  He then began to cry.  At this point my boss, who happened to be in the building, walked in due to what he was hearing thru the wall.  He asked me and my assistant to go and he would talk to the employee. 

10 minutes later the EMT was there taking the man to the hospital as he had passed out. 

He came back a week later and I sat him down to talk and all I got was a slow moaning voice telling me about how high his blood pressure got(260/140), how he called his children to his bedside at the hospital to say his goodbyes again, how I need to realize how ill he is...I could hear the violins...And before you get thinking I am cold I know that his BP was DANGEROUSLY high and he could have had a stroke or a heart attack but two things 1)He did this all to himself working himself into that lather and 2)If you are so ill you can't work, you can't work.  Retire, go on disability, whatever.  But to think that the world will baby you even more than is has is immature.  You are not being a man, or a woman if he was female, but a child!  Oh and he did the whole my-death-is-on-your-soul BS again too.

I get that what my son has been thru may have matured him more than even I know, but when a 22 year old with true perceptual diff.  is more a man than a 55 year old father of 5 with 20+ years of work experience it makes me shake my head.

Been a bit but I am back again....

Had an incident at work that I will talk about in another post in another context but that incident lead to a conversation that lead to a question....

At work, is it better to be an open book or a blank sheet?

What I mean is this:  During the conversation I mentioned that I am seeing a psychologist twice a month as an aside to something else.  After saying that I said I added "But you knew that because like you have said, I am an open book."  The person I was speaking with said that he did not think being an open book was a good idea because then "people have things to use as ammunition against you"(a slightly paranoid idea in my head).  He added that the less people know about you at work the better.  

I said that I thought that he was wrong in that if you stay a blank sheet then people get to fill it in as they want.                                                                                                                                                                       I used the following example:

If tomorrow someone said I watched underage porn most people would respond they did not believe it because while I may be an abassive ass at times I am not a pervert.  HOWEVER, if they said it about the person I was having the discussion with, who is the definition of a blank sheet, while people might say he had shown no signs of being someone who might do that they would also have to say they had nothing to disprove it either.  There is an old saying that says you have to stand for something or you will fall for anything, and in a sense that same thinking is where I am coming from.  There is also an honesty that comes from this openness.  And that also give people "context".  Being a manager people often accuse me of things to get their way, figuring that the powers that be will give in to make the allegation go away or as "compensation" for the wrong they say I committed.  Often it is he said vs he or she said.  I win usually for one reason, I always admit when I did it and have for years.  I am an open book.  A blank sheet plays his cards so close to the vest that who knows if he has 5 Aces and is cheating like he is being accused of.

So what do my Thoughts friends think? 

I was going to make the last post about two things but decided to split it up.

My wife and I bowl.  Was her idea after the seperation as a way to do more things as a couple and get out and meet people.  We do it for fun.  I get that people are serious about this but at the end of the year no one is making a living off any prize they are going to win in some bowling league in Central NJ.

A few weks ago they changed my wife's schedule at work and now every few weeks she can not make it from work to bowling in time.  She misses the first game.  Once we just used her average,  Another time the people we bowled against were great and we waited for her the 30 minutes it took for her to get there.  But you can not ask this of people so I came up with what I thought was an easy solution:

Since they let you pre-bowl if you are going to miss the whole night just pre-bowl one game.

I was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO wrong on this being an easy solution.  

She mentioned it before we started to  bowl last week and before the night was over there were meetings with the team captains, calls to some commission, checks of past league rules...I thought soon Batman and Superman would come to give us The Justice League's ruling before it was over.  They decided to let her do it. 

This is why I have never been a joiner.  People make every fun thing into rules and regulations and rulings.  It is a stupid Monday night bowling league in an aging bowling alley on a two lane road in NJ.  To paraphrase the old song..."Does anyone remember fun?"  

"It is not what you say but the way you say it".  My mother told me that and it is one of the few things she was right about.

We are looking for a dog since Earl died.  We could get a puppy but that would be unfair to it and to us.  We need an adult dog because that fits more who we are now and plus I have always thought rescuing a dog is better than a puppy.  We think we found one but need to get approval from the organization.  It is run by a 92 year old retired doctor who I think was who they based HOUSE on, but toned him down by 100. 

I will be the first to admit that maybe we should have taken Earl to the vet more, but we had a bad(read "died")experience with an older English Bulldog that we took to the vet.  The vet was not at fault but just like people who get off a crashed airliner might not be too ready to get back on a plane, we figured as long as he stayed healthy we would not tempt fate.  He was fed a best food that I had researched was good for him.  He was walked just enough for his age....a 13 year old bulldog which is not really that common.... and he showed no signs of his age.  But yes, just like people, dogs need regular visits to the doctor.

 So we found a dog, the perfect dog, a dog that when we went to the adopt event at the pet store that this rescue organization ranthis dog was looking up at us, no barking, no noise, he looked so alone that I decided he had to be the one...so we applied and filled out the application and waited.   We had to wait from Saturday till Thursday to confirm we still wanted the dog.  On some level I get it but on another why have these dogs wait.....

So we email the rescue and say we still want him.  No answer

So I decide to email as my wife....seems less over the top....and he responds to "her".  Seems the whole vet thing is an issue.  So "she"responds explaining why we did not take Earl as much as maybe we should have.  Then comes the part where I almost lost it.....

He emails back and says we can have the dog but he is sick of seeing people NEGLECT their dogs and just let them grow old and die and then they are shocked because one day they are healthy and the next the dog is dead.  Now listen, I am sure we could have done more.  But even if they saw the brain tumor that killed him coming they could not have stopped it without very expensive surgery and care.  But even if for arguments sake they could have given him medication X that slowed the tumor I think to say that we neglected this dog is insulting.  I was furious reading this.  But I decided for the good of the dog I would hold the more bombastic part of my tounge and respond saying that we wanted the dog but that I was offended at his accusation...but doing it mildly but firmly.  I then added another email from "my wife" that pointed out that I was angry and only held my tounge for the good of the dog.   I only continued this "Sybil" act of emailing him as two people because he seemed to only respond to the emails from "her". 

We got the dog and while trying to housetrain a never housetrained 6 year old dog that is also so shy it hurts is a bit more difficult than I thought I am glad we did it.  I just wish that these people that run shelters would think this all through.  Yes I get you see abused animals so you have a bad image of people.  Yes I get you are trying to weed out bad owners.  But if you discourage people from going to you by quizzing them on every aspect of life(I was asked in applications how many times a year did we throw parties in the house, if we planned on children in the next 15 years, my views on hollistic medicine and one even asked a question that I think was asking if we let our pets watch us make love but I am not sure)and making them feel like criminals then they will stop coming and go to puppy mills to get puppies which makes them money and promotes puppy mills.  Then a number of  these new puppies will be abused and neglected which means more need for rescues but they will be overfilled because no one comes anymore.   I could have paid 700$ for a puppy or the 350$ to a shelter which I know also helps the other dogs.  Why push me to a puppy when all I want to do is help?    

One of my wife's best friends from high school has 5 kids, two of which she adopted from a very bad situation.  This was AFTER she had a son of her own that is about as severely autistic as you can be and be functioning.  He is now a 300 lbs, 25 years old and has the mentality of a 4 year old...he got mad at God because he would not answer his prayers to make Pokeman real.  Of the two she adopted, one is in jail and ran up a high credit card bill on a card he "borrowed" from them and the other runs away constantly, has tried to commit suicide 5 times and has been "engaged" 7 times in the last 3 years.  Life is not a bowl of cherries.  

But last week on his way home from a party where they refused to serve him because he was underage and drunk already and where he fought to get his car keys back from people trying to keep him from driving...and I mean physical fights....a classmate of one of the kids flipped his truck and died after hitting a tree.  The friend of my wife said at least she needed to be thankful for the fact her kids were all alive.

On Sunday my wife and I visited my son in prison.  We had to tell him about the dog which was not easy because he had been looking forward to the welcome that he would get from him.  He broke down a few times but he will be OK.  It was hard though because he seemed more alone when he left the room this week then ever before.   It was hard.

As we stood with the other visitors waiting to leave I saw a couple I had spoken to a few weeks ago on line waiting to get in.  They were happy at that time that their son was getting out soon and all this would be over.  They had told me that the week after New Years was going to need to be the last time they came here before he got out that next week.  I was about to congratulate them when I saw they were angry as hell.  I very shyly (a quality I am not known for) what was wrong.  It seems the son they had come to see while he was there, who they had mortgaged the house to get 60 grand to help, who could have served 25 years but for their help getting him a good lawyer, that son had just told them to drop dead !  He was getting out, he did not need them, he wanted nothing to do with them.  Now as someone I told this to pointed out you do not know what the relationship was like before and maybe the impression I got of them was wrong or the parents living in a sort of "battered wife, 'He loves me, that is why he beats me'" fantasy world but neither seemed the type.  I could see the anger but also the pain and I knew the feelings they had about pouring in all that support, all that hope, all that love.  I could not approach knowing how it felt to have that all slapped back in your face just when the light at the end of the tunnel was getting bright.  And that is my point....

I could not imagine my son thinking about thinking about thinking about doing that.  All he talks about is living with us when he gets out and more than one person has commented that he is one of the few people his age that sends thank you notes or even says an honest thank you....something that developed in jail to a large degree although he was a kid that said thank you at times.  He cried on his mother's shoulder when he broke down about the dog.  He knows what he has and is thankful.

As bad as life gets sometimes you need to remember it could get alot worse and say thank you for the bad.