My World With Words

Yesterday, the local recycling center caught on fire. I don’t know the full extent of the damage, but I’m bummed for a couple of reasons. One, they provided a real service by recycling a lot of large appliances, like washing machines, TVs and the like, and judging from the smoke, that’s part of what went up in flames. Two, that’s where I take my recycling, and the next nearest place is twenty miles away. So I’m hoping against hope that the smaller recycling area will be open again soon. I really don’t feel like driving too far to drop off all my Diet Coke cans.

The smoke was visible from thirty miles away, and we could see it clearly out my office windows, a mere ten miles away. There was so much smoke that it led to some speculation that that center had been a drop-off for tornado debris (we had multiple tornadoes in May) and a lot of wood was burning. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Of course what actually burned doesn’t make it fortunate.

Situations like this are easy to dismiss as news headlines for a day if they don’t affect you directly. I wonder about this recycling business. Of course I’m probably affected in a relatively minor way if I have to drive a distance to drop off my recycling, but I’m thinking of how difficult and expensive it will be to rebuild the center. There are those who will be out a job, at least for a time, and I doubt they were paid well to start with, so it’s probably not a group of employees with substantial savings.

News reporters and newscasters are trained to remain objective in their reporting, and that objective tone can diminish our understanding of the cost of some situations. I appreciate the news outlets, like NPR, that interview those affected so some of the emotion can come in to the story. Still, the story is reported one day and gone the next. Yes, there are ongoing stories, but generally we don’t know the full impact of many of them.

I mentioned the tornadoes in our area earlier in this post. I work with people whose homes and property were severely damaged, and they’re still dealing with the consequences. It is one thing after another. There isn’t always a whole lot of good information in situations like this. One coworker I sit next to was afraid to get FEMA assistance because she and her husband are going through bankruptcy and she thought the FEMA help wouldn’t be available to her. I doubt that that’s true, but she feared even asking, in case she was given inaccurate information and later paid a price.

Now the hurricanes have hit. I have friends who have a winter home in Florida, and they only just today got word that their place survived the worst of Hurricane Milton. Yes, there was damage, but nothing that can’t be taken care of. I feel for them because their home here locally was damaged by one of the tornadoes in May, and they’re still cleaning up after that.

The same coworker who didn’t want to ask for FEMA assistance is planning a trip to Florida in two weeks. We’re trying to talk her into rescheduling, but she says she needs the vacation. Still, she gets on YouTube and watches video of all the damage in the areas she plans to visit. It scares her. I really wish she’d rethink her plans.

The aftermath of news stories is something we don’t always think about if we don’t live them, but it’s there nonetheless. Life is hard. Give to others when you can, especially if you’re lucky enough to come away unscathed.

Image Credits: News Headlines © suratin–stock.adobe.com; Recycling Symbol © Julia–stock.adobe.com; Tornado Damage © Noel–stock.adobe.com

Years ago, it was trendy to make “dead cat” jokes. There were even books with charming titles like 50 Things To Do With a Dead Cat. As a cat lover, I was offended by these jokes, but was told I needed to just laugh at them, that I was too uptight.

I didn’t laugh. And I didn’t laugh when later, at my first full-time job, my operations manager, Bill something-or-the-other, would call me over to him because he liked the swing of my hips. Again, I was told I was too uptight, it was just a joke. Today it’s called sexual harassment, and that manager could be fired for it. Back then, even the other women told me to just laugh along with Bill’s “harmless” sense of humor.

It wasn’t harmless. It deeply offended me, so much so that I can remember what I was wearing the first time he asked to see my walk. I was eighteen and needed that job, besides, there were no company policies to protect me.

Today, as we know, such policies are the norm, in fact, many of them are the law. We see ourselves as enlightened these days in those matters, which leads me to wonder, in what areas do we still need work?

Many advocates for those with intellectual disabilities take the charge against using the “r” word, yet I still hear it plenty. I know most of you reading this blog probably don’t use it, in fact, you may not know what word I’m referring to, so I’ll just say it: “retard” or “retarded.” It’s offensive to me, and many of those who have that disability know that the word, whether directed at them or not, refers to them.

My mother recently encountered an immigrant woman who didn’t know what ice cream is. “How can she not know that?” Mom railed, with more than a modicum of disgust. “Her English is good. I guess she’s just uneducated.”

Uneducated? Because she’s an immigrant unfamiliar with ice cream? That’s not only unfair, it’s bigoted. It’s a word I hear thrown around a lot, and it’s not always said about people with a lack of education, simply people who don’t know the same things the speaker does. Let’s toss that word out of our vocabulary as well, at least when it’s said derisively. Even if people are uneducated, it’s not always their choice.

The book of Proverbs in the Old Testament speaks to some of this, referring to madmen who lie to their neighbor and then say, “I was only joking.” (Proverbs 26:19). I think that lies, in this case, can refer to hidden barbs, comments masked as harmless yet that in reality are loaded with injury.

The fact that that proverb has been around so long tells me it’s a problem that’s as old as humankind. I know it’s probably always going to be a problem with kids, but as adults, let’s focus on growing awareness and help some of those thoughtless comments go down the drain.

Image Credits: Ice Cream Cones © Vector Nazmul–stock.adobe.com; No to Harassment © IndigoElf–stock.adobe.com; In the Middle © Vitalii Vodolazskyi

I’d rather not work, either, so the work laptop is unplugged and we can go play. Except Mimi and her brother Walter broke their favorite toy–the fishing pole toy. Hmm, we’ll have to get creative. Maybe if I toss around those cloth mice they’re so fond of. Whatever we do, it’ll be better than working!

Image Credits: Cesar Cat © Belinda O; Paws in Heart © Bigstock Photos; Illustration of woman and cat © Tanya–stock.adobe.com

Years ago, I was a communications manager in the Benefits department of a major company. One of my favorite responsibilities was “translating” legalese into more commonly spoken language, as many of the employees we were directing our messages to had barely graduated from high school. If they’d even gotten that far in their education.

I had a good relationship with the attorney in that department, and she respected the work I did. One afternoon, the two of us were joined by three others in her office, and we were having a chat about a variety of topics, when this one came up: is it easier to ask forgiveness or permission? The four of them all agreed forgiveness was easier, and they laughed about the number of times they’d done just that on the job. I wasn’t so sure. Call me a goody two-shoes (and you wouldn’t be the first), but I was never one to just do what I wanted and then hope the higher-ups would smile benevolently and forgive.

About a week later, I was in a situation where I was faced with either completing the job the attorney wanted or working on one the VP of my department had asked me to do. I was in a quandary. The VP outranked the attorney, yet the attorney’s project had a tighter deadline. Neither one was in the office, but my manager was just getting ready to leave for the evening. I stopped her and explained my situation. She told me to work on the attorney’s project and she’d deal with the VP, if that should prove to be necessary. I was glad, because that was what my gut wanted me to do, but corporate politics don’t always agree with one’s gut. I had been on the verge of working on the VP’s project and asking forgiveness for letting the attorney’s work wait.

When I brought the attorney’s completed project to her the next day, I jokingly mentioned my discarded plan. The look on her face told me I’d done the right thing in completing her work first. I found out later that this was an incredibly important legal deadline, something she’d neglected to tell me initially.

Now, I believe in asking forgiveness from a forgiving God, but I am not tempted to ask for it from a mere human in situations like the one I just described. I ask permission first. At work, always. For that matter, I can’t really think of a situation where I wouldn’t, at work or otherwise.

Everyone operates by their own norm, by their own standards. But I believe we have to work together. Had the attorney let me know how critical this deadline was, I never would have pondered putting forgiveness ahead of permission. She knew the nature of my job meant I could be pulled in different directions, yet she withheld important information from me. I don’t think she did it deliberately. But she sure set herself up when she and others all agreed on the forgiveness track.

Communication is important, and it happens in so many different ways. Even without this experience, I know far better than to ask forgiveness rather than permission from my current manager, or anyone in management at my job, for that matter. It just isn’t done. It’s a good work environment, but we respect each other enough to ask permission first.

The bottom line? Don’t send mixed messages to your employees. In retrospect, I see this as a bigger problem at my former employer than I then realized. There were multiple situations that were confusing, and I wasn’t always able to ask advice. Management was asked to walk a tightrope of rules and regulations that were haphazardly enforced by the higher ups, including Human Resources (or the “People Division” as they called themselves). If there’s a rule worth communicating, make it a rule worth keeping.

Image Credit: Puzzle and Justice © BMMP Studio–stock.adobe.com Shocked woman © Voyagerix–stock.adobe.com