Monday, April 27, 2009

You Will Stand Alone!

One incident which was meant to raise fear and anxiety involved the taking of my
picture. One day two workers were talking about a light meter they were holding when they walked over to a couple of feet of me sitting at my desk. They pointed the meter in my direction, made a couple of remarks about the meter reading and then walked off. Later that day I was sitting at my desk working when I happened to look up. There across the room, standing at about the same place the two workers had been with the light meter, was one of the workers pointing a 35 mm camera at me. I quickly put my hand in front of my face and got up and walked away.

The next day there was a birthday party at lunch for one of the employees and a similar type of incident involving picture taking occurred. My first reaction was fear and the thought that “they” wanted a picture of me. If I had thought about it, “they” had all my photo albums in storage plus, they could have taken my picture many times before without my knowledge. But the visibility of the incidences was meant to raise my defense mechanisms and make the adrenalin flow without actually physically or verbally threatening me.

In addition to all of the psychological stress I was under, my physical health was rapidly failing. I was running a fever and my throat was constantly sore. In addition to my sore throat, my throat felt constricted and I was having difficulty swallowing. My condition continued to worsen until one day I back to the motel from work, laid down and started to experience severe chills and fever. At that point I knew I had to see a doctor.

Since I did not know anyone in the Louisville area, I had to find a doctor through the people at work. The next day a coworker recommended a doctor whom I called immediately for an appointment. The following day I saw the doctor who diagnosed me with a severe throat infection. He prescribed some antibiotics and told me to come back in two weeks. I felt my illness was a lot more serious that the doctor indicated, but I accepted his judgment that the antibiotics would clear up the infection.

I took the medication, but for some insane reason I continued to go to work everyday. I tried to get as much rest as possible, but getting rest at the motel suddenly became difficult. First, the temperature in the motel room became noticeably colder. It was the middle of January and we had no heat in our room. My wife complained to the motel manager, but it did not do any good. On one occasion I decided to go to bed early but the blaring of a radio kept me awake. After trying unsuccessfully to locate the radio, we called the front office and the manager admitted that he had “accidentally” left the radio on in the laundry room. He said he would turn it off. An hour later and two phone calls later the radio was still blasting away. Out of complete frustration, I got out of bed, got dressed and went looking for the laundry room. I finally found the radio in an empty laundry room blaring at full volume. I turned it off and returned to bed wondering if the whole incident hadn't been planned to deny me precious sleep. I finally got to sleep around 1:00 AM!

My physical condition continued to deteriorate and now my throat was visibly swollen to the point that I could hardly eat anything. Finally I returned to see the doctor. This time the doctor expressed serious concern and decided I should take a different, more powerful antibiotic. He also made an appointment for me to see a throat specialist, but that appointment was not for another two weeks.

By the time I saw the throat specialist, the infection was “under control”, but he warned me that if I didn't get some rest, the problem would probably reoccur. With that diagnosis, I decided I had to leave Clopay and get my physical health back.

The people at Closteal seemed to be aware of the fact that I did not intend to stay there very long. I did not try to keep my plans a secret and used the company phones to talk to employment agencies.

The closer I came to leaving, the more direct the threats became. At one point during dinner on a business trip to Chicago with another Closteal employee, the subject turned to how companies treated employees. The discussion became quite heated. The co-worker finally turned to me and said, “Trust us or you will trust no one. You will stand alone.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. How could he make a threat like that? “I still have friends and I will trust them and not you or big business.” After my comment, neither of us said much the rest of the evening.

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