Posts tagged as:

workplace

Mad as Hell

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday November 2, 2008

Dealing with real anger.

The series about what I learn in cognitive behavior therapy consist of the following parts:

After I discovered that I in a sense caused my own anger I expected that I would stop talking to myself but it got worse.
It took me a few days before I realized that was because I was actually angry at a guy at my work. This lazy bastard has been doing only halve his work for years. The problem is that is that mister vd B is a manager four levels up. Two levels below the general manager. He causes a lot of problems for me and my colleagues.

Late December last year he subtracted 192 hours overtime from my time sheet instead of adding them. Which in effect meant that I started this year with a negative total of vacation hours. I found out about this last May when I wanted to plan a holiday.
I was told that it didn’t matter. I could still plan my holiday and the time sheet would be corrected.
Two months after that I found that the problem still wasn’t solved. So I started a complaining campaign that resulted in absolutely nothing.

In September I finally got to talk to mister vd B and he acted surprised. As if this was the first time anyone told him about this. He looked at my time sheet for 2008 and told me that I must have made a mistake with my time sheet from 2007. But he was willing to look into it.
One week later I got a new time sheet for 2007. He had actually forge it.
My 6 weeks period of sick leave in October and November was missing, instead he had written 3 weeks of holiday. And he had given me 39 holiday hours in the first week of the Christmas holiday!
I only work 31 hours a week.

After this I must have been very angry but I didn’t recognize the feeling.
I filed an official complained at human resources and demanded an answer by the 25the of October. In the letter I mention some details about Promen’s fraud with reimbursement of traveling expenses and told them that I would send a copy of the letter to the union if they didn’t respond in time.

Then I waited.
And as I learned to recognize my feelings of anger I decided that I shouldn’t go to the union but to the police.

The 25the of October came and went without a response from Promen.
I did hear via the grapevine that this lady of human recourses had talk with mister vd B and that he had promised to correct his “mistake” at some point in the future.
I was also told that there wasn’t much more that human resources could do. Which is very strange because Promen has rules about what will happen to people who don’t preform their jobs.
After fair warning they are sacked.

Last Monday night I was so mad I couldn’t sleep.
I wrote a little note about a few other fraudulent things mister vd B has done. (Among others forging my psychological examination in 2002. As a result of that I didn’t find out that I’m autistic until 2006.)
I told the lady of human resources that if I wouldn’t find an answer in my mailbox by Friday I would notify the police and send her the note via Promen’s internal mail service.
I don’t believe I’ve ever been so angry as I was Tuesday morning on route to my work. People must have thought I was mad as I was yelling to myself at the top of my voice.

Wednesday my manager told me that I will be having a talk with someone on November the 10the at 10 o’clock. He didn’t know with whom but I would get a notice in the mail.
I didn’t get a notice in the mail so I still don’t know with whom I will be talking but I’m assuming that it will be with the general manager. He is the only one in the company with the power to sack mister vd B. Which is one of the two solutions to the problem that I find acceptable.
The other being that mister vd B is convicted for fraud and spends the next few years in jail.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.

Finding suitable work

by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday September 17, 2008

Working hard for a year to find out why I want to keep what I already have.

A year ago I started a program at BAVO-RNO to find work that was suitable for me considering the fact that I’m autistic.
In the first part of the program I research my own qualities and those of other people. Although I don’t remember the exact list of qualities I found, it was interesting to think about them.
Being autistic I tend to focus on the individual parts of behavior of people without realizing that there is a deeper meaning, a system to there behavior.
For instance tomorrow I’m having a meeting with one of my manager about a, for me rather costly mistake, he made at the end of last year. I always knew that I couldn’t trust him. But I never realized that there is a kind of motivation to his behavior: He is lazy and willing to do anything to prevent people from finding out that he is lazy.
Now I recognize that I can deal with him accordingly.

It was when we started with the second half of the program that I felt that I was loosing speed and in the end coming to a complete stand still.
In the second half of the program we started thinking about what kind of jobs I would like and what kind that would suite me.
The problem there was that I had put down the condition that it should be a job at which I could start without getting an additional education. I was 46 at the time. Which is rather old for somebody who has experience in the field but hasn’t worked the field for the last decade. But starting from scratch in a completely new field of interest with a completely new education would mean that I would be 50 before I could get a job. Which would be completely impossible.

But my existing skill set is somewhat limited.
I’ve work in IT for a few years but that was more then 10 years ago. I haven’t kept up. Which means that my knowledge base for a fast moving field as the IT is gone. No change that I would ever get a job there.
I also have a different skill set. After leaving the IT I was fortunate enough get the first year of a study called “inrichtings werk”. As far as I know this type of education never existed outside of the Netherlands so I’m not quite sure how to translate it.
It was a study where you were taught to teach people how to change there behavior. The study was meant for people who would work with people that didn’t feel that there were responsible for there own life and there own problems. Meanly people with (mental) handicaps.

For some one who, like me, didn’t know that he was autistic it meant learning about behavior, social skills, acting and a whole lot of other skills you need to survive in a modern day society. But I also learned how to influence people and how to change their behavior. I’m actually quite good at it (if I may say so myself ).

But as far as finding a job this is also a skill that’s not very useful. Influenced by emancipation movement of the sixties and seventies the way social workers dealt with the disabled changed. People became responsible for there own actions. Which meant that social workers became advisers and sounding board for their clients. Listening to them and asking them questions. Which is a completely different skill set. One for which I don’t qualify.

The third option was to try to find some kind of unskilled labor.
Although I did think about it for a while it soon became clear that there is no way that I can do unskilled labor outside of the sheltered workplace.
When people do unskilled labor employers invest hardly anything in them. Which means it’s very easy to dismiss them. But even if they aren’t dismissed workers can very easily be moved from one department to an other.
I have experienced both in the 8 months I worked outside of the sheltered workplace and both were to chaotic for me. In both cases I experienced a lot of panic attacks.

So early August I concluded that there is only one workplace left for me and that is to do unskilled labor at the sheltered workplace.
If that sounds boring that is because the work we do is very boring.

But when I started thinking about working for the sheltered workplace for the rest of my working life I realized that I do have a skill that has a value within the sheltered workplace. I’m schooled in teaching people who feel left behind and not responsible for there own life and ~~handicap~~ disability how to live and work with their ~~handicap~~ disability.
We have a lot of those kinds of people within the sheltered workplace.
This may not be a skill that is recognized by the sheltered workplace and at the moment there is no job in it. But that only means that I will have to ~~sculpt~~ carve my own niche out.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.

We are never wrong

by Henk ter Heide on Friday January 25, 2008

If you instruct me to do something in a certain way I will for ever do it that way. If you want me to do it an other way you should change your instructions.
I don’t know whether this is good or bad thing, but to me it’s just a trait of autism.

The department I work at has a machine that cuts strands of rubber to a length of 2 meters 39 centimeters and 5 millimeters. About a 400 a day.
My workstation is behind that machine and my work is to check whether this machine works the way it should. Sadly it doesn’t so about half the strands are longer or shorter then there supposed to be.
When I first started working at this task, early last year, I was instructed by the foreman that the strands had a tolerance of 5 millimeters but if a strand was less then 10 millimeters too long I wasn’t allowed to cut it because it would shrink and if it was less then 10 millimeters too short I wasn’t allowed to through it out because it would stretch.
These instruction didn’t sit very well with me. I’ve always been taught that you shouldn’t mess with your tolerance. But instructions are instructions.
Last year I have had to do this very boring job for something like 8 times. Every time I complained about I was told that I had to do it because of the high quality of my work.

This week was the first time of this year I had to this job again. After 5 mind numbing day some one of quality control noticed that I had an odd way of cutting the strands to length.
He told me that a tolerance of 5 millimeters meant that I should cut the strand if it was more then 5 millimeters to long.
I answered that if it were up to me I would have done so from the start but these were my instruction. So this guy from quality control called my foreman who immediately started to cover his ass: “No, he never gave me those instruction”. “No, he would have never told me to ignore the tolerance”. “No, he is never wrong”.
It’s all my mistake. I didn’t listen to the instructions. To punish me I have to re-check the 1200 strands I’ve checked in the last few days.

You can imagine that was was very angry. Not only do I have to do this very boring work. But the moment something is wrong I’m blamed.
Not to mention that only yesterday this same foreman complimented me on the quality of my work.

For a while I was thinking about ways I could take my anger out on my work.
I could cut the strands shorter than they should be. Or I could ignore strands that are to long. Or I could miscount the amount of strands I put in a box.
But all those those things would hurt the company much more then it would hurt the foreman. And it is not me. I can’t work that sloppy.
After 10 minutes I realized that I don’t have to take revenge the company for allowing this attitude.
They are doing that them selfs:

Two weeks ago I’ve been told that I would get a new job.
One of the largest companies of the Netherlands has given Promen a very large order.
This company needs 4 little holes drilled into thousands of pieces of rubber. Because of the noise some one has to work on his own in a little room. The foreman boasted that he had recommended me for the job.
The job is to be done very precisely so he and an other foreman spent two day positioning a template before making 10 samples. Apparently not satisfied the company asked for 16 more samples.
Since it’s supposed to be my work the foreman showed me how to do it.
But after doing 10 of the second batch of samples the foreman noticed that the holes were a millimeter off and I noticed that there was something wrong with the method we used.
I told him about my concerns but as ever the foreman told me that he is never wrong. He took a few hours to reposition the template and made the other 6 samples.
So instead of calling the customer and telling them that we have made a mistake and that we will make some more samples, we are now waiting for approval.

I would be very surprise if we’d actually get the order.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.

Getting those juices flowing again

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday January 20, 2008

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.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.

Dialing down expectations

by Henk ter Heide on Monday October 1, 2007

I have to dial down my expectations to, hopefully, reach a point where I can fulfill my expectations.

Working at the sheltered workplace I meet a lot of people who feel that they are destined to do an important job.
Usual they are people who were born with an disability. They were told there whole lifes that people with a disability should have the same rights as other people. Sadly they were never told that they should fight as hard as other people.
For the largest part these people have hardly any schooling and never had the taste of a real job before they entered the sheltered workplace. Although they know almost nothing about real life and do the most stupid of jobs they still feel that an important job should be handed to them on a silver platter.

Although I’m also born with a disability I never knew that. A few years ago it was suggested that something might be wrong with me. I only last year it was found that I have autism.
Living in the real world I’ve always known that you have to fight for those things that are important to you. I never was very succesfull with my fight, but I did know.
I would never have expected that I would fall for the feeling that I should get something for nothing.

But I have.

When I started drawing, earlier this year, I felt that since I could see pictures clearly in my minds eye, it should be very easy to draw them. I should be able to create beautiful drawings without much of an effort.
With my first drawing I found that what I see in my minds eye looks nothing like the real thing. But I figured that with a little more experience I could make it work.
But my last two drawings make it very clear that I won’t be able to draw the pictures in my mind.

So I find myself at something of a fork in the road.
What to do next.
Feeling some what panicked last week I have been thinking about just giving up. Just putting my pencils in a cupboard and forgetting they ever excisted.
But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t go back to a life of watching telly and playing computer games.
That would leave a big hole in my life.

The other possibility is to start experimenting. Stop trying to draw the pictures in my mind. Instead just draw.
People with autism are supposed to have very little imagination so I have no idea where that will lead me.

Maybe at some point I will find that I will have gained the skills to draw the pictures in my mind. But it is also possible that I’ll just draw nice, hopefully some beautiful, pictures without ever reaching that goal.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.

Anxiety attack at work (Drawing: Boy in swimming trunk partial portrait)

by Henk ter Heide on Friday April 27, 2007

I had a panic attact at my work last week Wednesday and Thursday.

Wednesday they gave me other work then I’m used to. Well actually the same work but in a different room with different people. It caught me off gaurd.

For some reason I reacted very strongly but without recognizing my own reaction. I didn’t treet people very nice.

Thursday they gave me back my my own work. But I felt very anxiet so I took some sick leave expecting that it would pass. But it didn’t. Last Tuesday I felt fine until entered the building were I work. I felt some strange sensation in my throat and on my chest.

It took me nearly two hours to recognize it as a feeling of fear.

It took me a few days to figure out why I felt fear at my work and why I’m still feeling fear. It has to do with the agreement I made with my employer.

As an autistic I need al lot of structure. I need to know what will happen to me and what kind of work I will do and where I will do that work.

I’ve been working with Promen for the last seven years and I found them to be a very chaotic. Over the last couple of years I have had several times that I was reprimanded for doing exactly what they told me to do the day before. Then the next day they changed there minds again and again reprimanded me for doing what I was told to do. Then the they would change there mind again, and again…

You can expect the same kind of trouble when you enter in an agreement with them: The person who is responsible for transportation won’t bring me to my place of work because I didn’t tell him that I had to go there. He doesn’t even seem to realize that it is not my place to tell him what to do. Next they called me to ask me whether I would agree to changing the agreement because it would be much easier, on them, if they didn’t have to do what we agreed upon.

According to the agreement I would get a secondment with the company Lemkes and if Lemkes didn’t have any work for my I would go to a specific interal department.

Actualy Lemkes isn’t a very good workplace for me. It’s a very nice small company with a varying workload and a varying amount of temps. Which means that it isn’t structured. But even with the varying workload and varying amound of temps it’s still more structured then Promen.

Working with Lemkes was kind of an escape from Promen. It’s kind of strange that someone with a disability would need to escape from the company that is set up especialy for people with disabilities.

Now I’m at the mercy of Promen and that’s a fightning prospect.

Boy in swimming trunk partial portrait

Do you like my work? Subscribe to See me draw!

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.

Awakening (Sketch: Pointed ears)

by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday April 11, 2007

This morning I had an intake with a organisation called BAVO RNO (dutch). BAVO RNO guides people with mental disorders and people with autism with problems ranging from having problems with how you should deal with friend to what kind of job you should have, how to find it and how to keep it.

The last few years I’ve been working at a company called Promen. Promen is a sheltered workplace. This campony is supposed to create jobs that fit someones impairment. But all they have to offer is unskilled labor. The other problem with them is that they’re very badly organized. As a result it is next to impossible to get them to stick to an agreement.

Pointed ears

Do you like my work? Subscribe to See me draw

Working with them has been very tiring. To the point my brain sort of shut down and I couldn’t think about anything but the stupid work I was doing. And off course autistics don’t regnize there own feelings so I only knew that I felt bad.

The last few month, ever since I learned that I’m autistic, have been a kind of awakening. I now know what kind of circumstance tire me. Mostly in circumstances where I have to talk a lot I tire easy. Finding that I’v a photographic memory, starting with drawing, starting with this blog are all things that have me using my brain again.

Getting a job were I can use my brain is the next step on that road. That’s were BAVO RNO comes in. They actually have a plan. A few steps they help you take to find what kind of work would suit you. A relief after Promen. This man actually recognized my enthusiasm and liked it.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.