Stress Continues to take its toll

I spent that weekend alone and had almost no contact with anyone else except John Potts and his hired hand.  I tried to avoid the latter since he was uneducated man with very little skills and at times seemed a little strange.  He kept pointing his 410 shotgun at me and kept insisting I take a walk with him in the surrounding woods!  I decided one grave in those woods was enough and stayed in my apartment.

The next week at work, the owner of the company was back in his office.  When I spoke with him, to my surprise he expressed satisfaction with the work I had been doing.  He also informed me that I would now be reporting to a female scientist who had been with the company less than a year.  Of course the woman was the requisite female manager which any government small business loan would demand.  The fact that she was just out of graduate school with no experience in the company product area was not a major consideration.  She accounted for a "minority"  in management on the grant checklist which was critical for any government grant.  I tried to find any company documents written by her and even did a limited search for scientific publications by her without any success.  It seems her primary qualification was that she was a female.

In addition to her apparent lack of qualifications, the female manager provide no guidance or help in my work.  What work I did try to do, was met with passive assistance.  Every time I needed to use a some equipment or an instrument, someone would assist me in a very cursory manner and then act like I should know how to run the specialized instrument.   The instruments were complex and computer operated and required a fair amount of learning and experience to operate properly.  The fact that I was given very little assistance and was made to feel that the operation of the equipment was trivial generated a lot of pressure and self doubt.  However, after years of fascist state torture and belittling, I wasn't at all surprised that I was put in these no-win situations.  My experience told me that expectations in regards to operating the complex scientific equipment was totally unrealistic, and when I did a survey of the personnel at the company, I found very few if any of the scientists had a firm operating knowledge of the equipment.  Yet somehow I was suppose to be able to operate the equipment instantly.

The tremendous, continual stress I was being subjected to again began to take its toll on my physically.  That Wednesday when I left work, I stopped for something to eat and then drove back to my apartment.  I turned the car off and sat there in the car for a few second just relaxing in the sunlight.  Before I knew it, I was sound asleep and didn't wake up until 30 minutes later.  I was so exhausted, I didn't even make it to my apartment without falling asleep.  I also was starting to develop a cough and swelling and soreness in the glands in my neck.  The dread of another bout with bronchitis came over me.