a day in the life

got the letter from unemployment today.     :-(     quoting from the claim adjuster's comments: "you left your work because of stress.  you failed without adequate reason to request a leave and thus your seperation became final.  leaving work under these conditions is voluntary and without good cause attributable to the employing unit.  therefore, you are disqualified..."

well, what'd i expect?  hell, based on that version, i'd have denied me.  i called the director of human resources at adcare hospital (where i worked) today, a very nice guy named paul.  he started-out working in the admitting department, and i was on occasion his supervisor during that time.  anyway, i called because i need to liquidate my retirement funds, i would not have called if i could have avoided it.  paul was cordial, even friendly, explaining the retirement fund's procedures for wresting money away from them.  it takes two weeks. 

then, paul felt it necessary to address the denial of my unemployment claim.  hmm.  i had hoped to bypass that awkward issue and his complicity in it entirely.  but he had a need to talk about it.  (awww).  without coaching from me, he said of his brief tenure in the admitting dept., "i know firsthand that job is the hardest in the hospital.  it was the hardest work for the least money i ever made."  he went on.  "just this week we had a woman walk out of there after only three days."  i found out later they had another walk-out after fifteen minutes.  awww... 

not. 

 

plausible deniability.  if i were in their position, i would use it.  the employee has no written proof of his expressions of distress, of gasping, choking and drowning.  no taped recordings, or even transcripts, of his conversations with administrators about abusive conditions and about incidents of specific abuse. 

but i knew all that when i went there.  it is pretty obvious right up front (aparently within three days), how not up-front they are about things, about their responsibilities and your responsibilities, and how policies are tolerated in a loose-leaf binder, somewhere apart from actual practice, and how a wink and a nod or a glare and a scowl is how things are really done.  it comes across the first time you see that face, the face of a smiling glassy-eyed refusal to care.  'it's all very nice, you bringing this to my attention, thank you very much.'  period.  it is the face of a pledged allegiance to a particular set of corporate self-interests, a narrow inflexible and dehumanizing framework that denies any reality outside of itself, inviolable no matter how compassionate the impetus to reach beyond its limits (or rather, its limitations).  and they call themselves a hospital. 

there should be rage, but there is not, from one who came perilously close to reaching there and fitting in, but didn't.  fortunately.