disability

Finding a way out of the “annoyance” trap.

What do you get when you put 2.000 people with disabilities in a room?
A lot of complaints about all the problems they have.

Last week one of my colleagues got a new job. After having a secondment at some company they gave her a contract.
You would think that every body would be very happy for her but they weren’t.

Friday at noon I stepped into the minivan that would take me home and the first thing the driver told me was how angry he was because Gerry didn’t say good-bye. He thought that would be a normal thing to do. When you find a new job, you say good-bye to the driver of the minivan who has taken you to your work for the last few months.
I disagreed. Telling the driver not to pick me up because I found a new job wouldn’t be on top of my to do list. I would trust Promen to pass that information on to their drivers.
Talking about it I found that the driver did know that it was the responsibility of his manager to give him that kind of information but it was much easier to blame Gerry.
My problem was that he kept nagging about it for the thirty minutes I sat in his car.

I would love to tell you that this anecdote is about something that hardly ever happens. But sadly it isn’t.
Working at a sheltered workplace means having to listen to this kind of stories all day long.
Even worse. Working at a sheltered workplace means telling this kind of stories to every body who wants to hear them. (And to every body who doesn’t want to hear them ).

It’s kind of a trap.
When you start working at the sheltered workplace you have a lot of problems.
You have tried working in a regular job and failed. You have tried again and again and failed. At some point the government steps in and you are send to a sheltered workplace.
You tell yourself that you wasn’t send to a sheltered workplace because you did something wrong. You tried your best but it just didn’t work out. You are not to blame.
And of course you are not the only one who feels that he is not to blame. Every one of my 2.000 colleagues feels that he is not to blame. That something happened to them that was out of their control.

Now you might think that a sheltered workplace is managed by people who are specially trained to work with people with disabilities. People who know how they should teach people how they should do their work and how they should work in a healthy manner with respect for their own body.
But you would be sadly mistaken.
With the president of the company as notable exception the management consists of people who also are disabled. Who where send to the sheltered workplace because they couldn’t hold their own at a regular job. People who feel they did nothing wrong and that nothing is their responsibility.

When I started working at the sheltered workplace in 2000 I found myself in the worst organized company conceivable. Managers never left there office and “the people” where left to fend for them selfs. “The people” where at full strain and exhausted and everybody was complaining about their problems.
Within a few weeks I found myself joining the armies of complainers and I’m still complaining.

Over the last few weeks something has changed. Instead of getting annoyed about all the problems I see at my work I find that I’m ever more getting annoyed with myself.
I used to have a very nice life filled with all kind of mysteries. Even though there are a lot of emotions I can’t recognize there are a few I do recognize and I used to have them.
But nowadays the only emotion I have is annoyance. The mysteries are gone and all I do is getting annoyed with people and circumstances.

Last Wednesday I thought that there should be some way to stop annoying. Maybe I could ask my counselor if he knew of a way.
I didn’t.
When I started thinking about ways to stop annoying the answer was obvious.

Up until I started working at Promen I used to research subjects I didn’t understand.
Usually I chose very strange subjects to research. e.g. Why people consider suicide. Did king Richard III of England really have his nephews killed. And several other strange subjects.
Some subject would fascinate me for some months or years and I would read a lot about it and think a lot about it, reach some sort of conclusion and forget all about it.
I never quite understood why I did it, but now I have kind of a theory.
Gifted people often have strange interests. I’m not gifted but on the edge of being gifted. If my IQ had been a few points higher I would have been.
People with autism are supposed to collect things but as far as I knew I never did. To me a collection is just something that takes a lot of room and you have to dust it. It never made much sense to me.
But now I’m realizing that I did collect. Not things you can put in your bookcase but information.

The only thing is that I never did anything with my information. I read about something. Thought about it. At some point I would reach the end of my interest. And there it would end.
Not any more.
Now I have this blog.
Instead of only reading about a subject I now can go a step further and write about it. So I will be starting a new category. Projects.

I’m not completely sure how I will go about it.
Maybe I’ll first read a lot about some subject and then write something about it. Or maybe I will write about a project while I’m still researching.
Which ever way I chose it should help me get my juices flowing and my mind off of the annoying circumstances at my work.

I’m thinking that my first project will be about suicide. I’ve read so much about that subject over the years that I would be nice to write about for a change.
My second project will probably be about the economic situation in the Philippines. A subject about which I know nothing what so ever. Probably I’ll also do a project about the movie Zeitgeist.

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