Unsolicited Human Resources Visit

I was taken to Human Resources, today.

Today started out quite badly but has ended rather well, much to my fortune. Unfortunately, I woke up extremely exhausted and had such difficulty staying awake that I could easily have crashed the car had I not managed to stay just vigilant enough… but I couldn’t stay awake in class to save my life. I practically slept through the PowerPoint presentations and I’m not sure how I managed to pass the tests. Kat told me it’s because I have more brains than the average bear, and I’ll take that. I’ve always taken pride in my intelligence, particularly when others recognize it and commend me for it.

            While I’m not sure why I was so exhausted this morning, I’m equally unsure of why suddenly, around 09:00, pain shot through my chest near my left shoulder when I shifted and raised my arm slightly. The pain persisted, so I went to Kat’s office and asked if I could enter for a minute; she accepted and I closed the door behind me to sit before her and explain what was happening.

            I explained the pain and that I didn’t know why it was happening. She got up from her chair and instructed me to sit in it and lean back after she told me to take off my duty vest and belt. I followed her instructions and leaned back as told to do, then broke into some tears.

            “I can’t seem to stay awake—it’s making me really emotional, I’m sorry,” I said, my voice cracking as tears broke free from my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. She looked at me kindly and said: “It’s okay. I know it’s from frustration. You’re frustrated with yourself because you can’t stay awake.” She explained that she understood because she got the same thing; she tends to cry when she gets overly frustrated with herself. It felt so good to have someone stand before me and tell me that they get it.

            Kat told me to rest my head on her desk and get some sleep. She said she was going to go “do uniforms,” which meant going into the back room and picking out uniform items for us to take home today to wear tomorrow and for the rest of our time working on the Sound Transit account. I couldn’t believe my ears—I was being instructed to get some sleep—while at work! I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I moved the chair to the place she’d indicated on her desk and laid my head down, when she added, “and if you feel like crying, go ahead and do that, too.” I can’t remember feeling so blessed.

            I know that I fell asleep because I woke to a knock on the door. I’m not sure why, but I thought it was Kat, perhaps announcing her presence before entering since she knew I was sleeping as she’d told me to. Instead, it was Ryan, one of the instructors.

            “Are you okay?” he asked me. He’d asked me this quite a bit over the past couple of weeks and it made me slightly concerned because I felt—still feel, really—like more attention is on me because I’ve had a couple of difficulties that I view as minor but I understand how those above me view them as major. For example, when I had difficulty breathing, it would be a major problem if it persisted and I was unable to wear my duty vest because it prevented me from getting enough oxygen while breathing. I said I was okay and that Kat had told me to wait in her office for a little bit.

            “Are you okay to talk?” he asked. I thought he would want to talk to me again, as he’d done twice before. I was wrong.

            Instead, he led me to the head of Human Resources, Heather, and dropped me off in her office. I sat before her while she explained that falling asleep on the job is a terminable offense in my line of work, which was something I already understood because it had been covered in our first day of orientation. She repeated this probably three or four times before our conversation was through, but she did allow me to explain my situation to her and exactly what has been going on with me, which at first made me feel like she was truly listening… but by the end of the visit, I was left relatively unsure, in part because she got the last word.

            She led me back to Kat’s office and I re-entered after Heather left, sitting in front of Kat again.

            “What happened?” she asked. She asked if I’d gotten any sleep. I felt jittery, then, the way I feel when I’m woken suddenly from a sleep that may or may not have been very deep. It was a kind of jittery that comes from anxiety, I later discovered, but at the time I explained it to Kat as “the jittery I feel when I’m woken up suddenly, so I know I slept,” at least a little.

            “Ryan came and knocked on the door and then took me to her—her name was Heather?” Kat nodded and said yes. “He took me to Heather’s office and she explained to me that falling asleep is a terminable offense, which I already knew…” I explained what had happened and Kat looked at me. I’m not sure if her expression was sad, irritated, or a little bit of both, but she then explained to me that she had not wanted to involve HR.

            She had wanted to take care of me and help me feel better without involving HR because she understood that with me, like with her, all I really needed was a little rest and I would be good to go. And I was, for the most part. I still took a nap after I got home, but I did feel more awake after the short nap I’d taken in her office. She told me that she’d told Matt, the other male instructor who actively taught classes during the first three weeks of training, but that she hadn’t told Ryan, and she’d wanted me to simply rest for a bit in her office without needing to involve HR.

            Suddenly, it felt as if Human Resources was the enemy. Like involving them was my first step out the door of the company for which I’ve just barely started working. Thinking back on it, I’m still not quite filled with dread, but I am wary. I’m aware that things I cannot control could cause me to need to find different employment, and the idea is terrifying to me because I feel like I’m in a job that’s actually a good fit for me. I don’t want to be proven wrong by forces outside my own control.

            I left early today to make at least one appointment with the VA. I ended up leaving a message because the nurse didn’t answer her phone—perhaps she was on lunch—and she has yet to return my call. In the meantime, I’ve purchased melatonin to help me sleep at night and niacin to wake me up in the morning, as the sleep issue has been relatively persistent since starting my 07:00-15:00 training shift. Perhaps that persistence is why Ryan took me to HR.

            Regardless of the reasoning for what happened this morning, today did end on a positive note. I had a good nap after I got home and left my voicemail with the nurse who works for my doctor at the VA, we took Persephone to play at the mall, and we had a decent dinner. Here’s to hoping melatonin and niacin are enough to fix my sleeping problems.