Speak Up!

My job is stressing me out. It’s crunch time; only two more weeks left and the last week will be a 6 day camping trip. I’m cranky, I’m exhausted, and I’m not happy. I love my job, I just dislike the politics and drama. Planning events and recruiting volunteers is fun; I get paid to camp, how awesome is that? But there are people on my team who would like everything to be done their way, and that’s just not how a team works. There are people on my team who don’t listen to my opinions, my suggestions, my needs.

For instance, putting me on the wheelchair bus is a bad idea. I am physically unable to lift the wheelchair members without hurting myself or more importantly, them. If something bad happens during the seven hour long bus ride up to camp, I will not be of any help. I’m supposed to be the staff member on the bus. This does not make sense to me. I wouldn’t feel comfortable knowing my own physical limits.

I spoke to my boss, and he sees my point. Finally. I wouldn’t have gone to my boss had the person who made the bus assignments listened to me when I pointed that out. Instead, he argued with me saying nothing would happen and I would not have to lift a wheelchair member at all during the trip. However, he can’t grantee that, and technically the rule is when lifting someone in a wheelchair you must have a staff with you, so I couldn’t tell two volunteers to do it either. Because it isn’t safe. I know how to do wheelchair lifts, but I physically cannot. If someones safety wasn’t potentially at risk, I wouldn’t say a thing.

It’s irritating me how my medical disability is holding me back from so much. This is the field I wish to work in, yet I’m unable to do a wheelchair lift. I’m working on it, and training to do it in ways where I would not hurt myself at all. I’m not a very strong person, and my bones aren’t very strong either. I never understood that aspect about MHE; you have a lot of bones but their fragile, or at least mine are. That’s no fun. Where’s the use in that?

The important thing is that I am working on finding ways around my MHE. I now know my physical limits, and I won’t push myself to do something that could result in jeopardising the safety of someone else and myself. I’m not an idiot. I won’t allow that to happen. I’m not only speaking about the now, but also about in the future. I won’t do stupid things to satisfy co-workers. It just ain’t gonna happen. My word – when it comes to my physical limits and health – is law.

I wasn’t so smart before. I used to push myself to do things to satisfy other people. When I worked at Tim Hortons, I ended up hurting myself really badly several times trying to satisfy my bosses and co-workers. I couldn’t lift the cream bag to change it without hurting myself, but I knew my co-workers were sick of doing it for me. They didn’t know why they were doing it for me, they just thought I was lazy. So one day I did it myself. I ended up dropping it on the floor after hurting my wrist really badly. I also fractured my ankle at school. It was Track and Field day and the teachers were notified that I couldn’t participate in the event. They told me to volunteer at the Shot Put game and pick up the really heavy balls. I ended up fracturing my ankle in one of the holes that the really heavy ball left. All these things (and more) happened because I didn’t speak up.

So from now on I will.