cl0ckw0rkf0x (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cl0ckw0rkf0x) wrote2007-03-23 10:29 pm
cl0ckw0rkf0x) wrote2007-03-23 10:29 pm
Simplot: reminiscing
Something a friend posted has reminded me of a turning point period of my life: when I worked at Simplot.
It was when I got home from Australia, I was traumatized and diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. I got back in November 2003. In january I started taking the vitamins many of you have heard me clamour about, that changed my life, and I started feeling much more relaxed, like I could cope with things better.
Later that month I started working at Simplot. My first day there, there were two long tables in the staff breakroom. MY first instinct was to go sit off in the dark corner in the back of the room and read a book while I wait for my shift to start. But I told myself, no Lindsay, that's not how you make friends. Things are going to be different now. I'm going to make them different. And I sat at the front by the door. And the first people to come in the door came and sat within conversational distance from me and introduced themselves.
I know that doesn't seem like a big deal to people who don't have trouble making friends, but it was for me. I hadn't thought it would be that easy; that making such small changes could change so much. It wasn't that I was completely incompetent, it was more a few small things by which I was sabotaging myself. And I did them because for so long I had tried not to be noticed, because if I got noticed, I got teased.
But adults are pretty different, and that whole place, you know, working twelve hour shifts, if you don't have character, if you don't in general cope well with life, you don't work there; not very long anyway. So all around me were in general good examples of people to emulate. And when there was someone who was stuck up and snotty, she wasn't the queen bee tormenting the vulnerable, she was the one we all sat back and asked each other, what the fuck is wrong with her? Heh.... and when she (wife of a preacher, no less) started bangin' the ops manager, and told Kim not to tell anyone, Kim told me first. Probably because I was the first one she saw, but that's not the point. The point is, I was in on the gossip, and not the wallflower no one thought to say anything to.
And there was the work. I sang while I worked. At the top of my lungs, for hours, though I know no one could hear me over the noise of the machines (we had to wear earplugs.) Lots of Great Big Sea, and Barret's privateers. Folk songs. The Hole in the Bottom of the Sea. Anything. Just watching the potatoes go by, twelve hours a day, and picking out the rotten ones.
Then after a twelve day run, we'd do cleanup, which took a full day. There were times they shut down the machines late and cleanup ran over. I worked sixteen or eighteen hour days a couple times. Then they'd get us doughnuts or pizza. When we worked on the moving parts of machines, we had to lock them down; manually cut the power to them, and put a lock on them while we were working on them, so we had the key, and no one could go in and unlock it, because we had the key. No one was allowed to work on a machine that someone else had locked down. Eventually I knew cleanup in wet end well enough that when Debbie called in sick, they put me in charge of underlings and gave me her radio to do it.
The work was satisfying. I'd come home exhausted, and I knew I couldn't do it forever, but I made the most of it, and I did appreciate it. I did a good job, and I got respect for it, and I was proud of myself.
All this was at the same time that my relationship with Rob was petering out, so it was good for me in a lot of ways. I felt more and more a whole person, and didn't need a boyfriend to justify my existence. I started to realise I was more a trophy girlfriend than anything, and wasn't happy with that, so I stopped acting like it, and whatever. Rob wasn't good enough for me anyway. Coward couldn't even break up with me in person. I was bitter for a while, but not long; being bitter takes up too much energy and I have better things to do, and deeper things to be bitter about, I suppose.
this is getting long. K, going to go do something else now.
It was when I got home from Australia, I was traumatized and diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. I got back in November 2003. In january I started taking the vitamins many of you have heard me clamour about, that changed my life, and I started feeling much more relaxed, like I could cope with things better.
Later that month I started working at Simplot. My first day there, there were two long tables in the staff breakroom. MY first instinct was to go sit off in the dark corner in the back of the room and read a book while I wait for my shift to start. But I told myself, no Lindsay, that's not how you make friends. Things are going to be different now. I'm going to make them different. And I sat at the front by the door. And the first people to come in the door came and sat within conversational distance from me and introduced themselves.
I know that doesn't seem like a big deal to people who don't have trouble making friends, but it was for me. I hadn't thought it would be that easy; that making such small changes could change so much. It wasn't that I was completely incompetent, it was more a few small things by which I was sabotaging myself. And I did them because for so long I had tried not to be noticed, because if I got noticed, I got teased.
But adults are pretty different, and that whole place, you know, working twelve hour shifts, if you don't have character, if you don't in general cope well with life, you don't work there; not very long anyway. So all around me were in general good examples of people to emulate. And when there was someone who was stuck up and snotty, she wasn't the queen bee tormenting the vulnerable, she was the one we all sat back and asked each other, what the fuck is wrong with her? Heh.... and when she (wife of a preacher, no less) started bangin' the ops manager, and told Kim not to tell anyone, Kim told me first. Probably because I was the first one she saw, but that's not the point. The point is, I was in on the gossip, and not the wallflower no one thought to say anything to.
And there was the work. I sang while I worked. At the top of my lungs, for hours, though I know no one could hear me over the noise of the machines (we had to wear earplugs.) Lots of Great Big Sea, and Barret's privateers. Folk songs. The Hole in the Bottom of the Sea. Anything. Just watching the potatoes go by, twelve hours a day, and picking out the rotten ones.
Then after a twelve day run, we'd do cleanup, which took a full day. There were times they shut down the machines late and cleanup ran over. I worked sixteen or eighteen hour days a couple times. Then they'd get us doughnuts or pizza. When we worked on the moving parts of machines, we had to lock them down; manually cut the power to them, and put a lock on them while we were working on them, so we had the key, and no one could go in and unlock it, because we had the key. No one was allowed to work on a machine that someone else had locked down. Eventually I knew cleanup in wet end well enough that when Debbie called in sick, they put me in charge of underlings and gave me her radio to do it.
The work was satisfying. I'd come home exhausted, and I knew I couldn't do it forever, but I made the most of it, and I did appreciate it. I did a good job, and I got respect for it, and I was proud of myself.
All this was at the same time that my relationship with Rob was petering out, so it was good for me in a lot of ways. I felt more and more a whole person, and didn't need a boyfriend to justify my existence. I started to realise I was more a trophy girlfriend than anything, and wasn't happy with that, so I stopped acting like it, and whatever. Rob wasn't good enough for me anyway. Coward couldn't even break up with me in person. I was bitter for a while, but not long; being bitter takes up too much energy and I have better things to do, and deeper things to be bitter about, I suppose.
this is getting long. K, going to go do something else now.
no subject
I'm a friend of funkyturtle's
Found your descriptions of autism/Asperger as an adult very interesting. I was diagnosed as ADD as an adult, and my son is now diagnosed as on the autism spectrum (high-functioning, probs with transitions, boundaries, etc). So while dealing with that I'm wondering (I've never stopped actually) what the hell is my problem. :)
Your descriptions in your autism tagged entries are quite familiar to me - eye contact, crowd overload (I call it "getting twitchy"), difficulty making friends, etc are all very familiar. Thanks - some days it helps to know about others with the same types of difficulties.
no subject
I skimmed over your LJ, and the entry about your son's assessment. If there was anything I would say as advice, it's to not think of it as people expecting him to "be just like everybody else," as much as remembering that while he should be allowed to be his own person, the world will not change for him, and what he needs is not to "be like everybody else" but to be able to cope with the same world everybody else lives in. It's much more objective and helpful to think of it this way.
Also, I'd recommend a multivitamin of some sort, as people on the autistic spectrum often have trouble absorbing certain nutrients (vit. b6 is one often noted). My doctor suggested I try taking B6 and Magnesium, and they completely changed my life, as I said, though I've switched to just taking a multi, which has been fine. May help, may not, won't hurt.
If you'd like to talk more, funkyturtle can get you my aim id or msn, and I'd be happy to.:)