Perspectives

I have a coworker who is, from my perspective, a pain in the rear. I would like to be more harsh but I try to keep the vulgarities out of my vocabulary. This person has a life perspective that she is the center of the universe. Now if she were 5 years old, I guess I could understand why she would think that as most 5 year olds generally do have the perspective that they are the center of the universe. As with most companies in the United States, my work decided to split her job and give half of it to me and then have her go to the main hospital campus for the second half of her day. Basically, I'm doing something called job-sharing. She is in-house and I'm retail, but because I come from in-house and am still a Certified Pharmacy Technician, I can do both jobs. And, apparently I will be starting Monday. I'm thankful to still be employed. CSM let over 300 people go in 2011, five of them from pharmacy including my direct manager and the department director back in June. I could have easily been one of them, but because I am the only person doing the billing for the retail pharmacies, there was no one who could do both my job and theirs. However, the powers that be decided that two techs in the same room were one-half too many and pulled this coworker back to the main campus for half-days on my non-school days.

Now, this wasn't my idea. I had nothing to do with it, I didn't suggest it, nor do I wish to have her job. But, from her perspective, this coworker has decided to tell everyone she meets that I am out to get her job, her personally, and that my goal is to get her fired. She sees this maneuver on CSM's part as something I orchestrated, not the bean-counters in finance who decided that I could do one and a half jobs while she is just being pulled back to the main hospital for 4 hours. The outpatient site I work at has a large pharmacy room that is locked with just us two inside of it. I have my "office" on one half of the room, and she is on the other half. And, it probably doesn't help that we have a mutual dislike for each other. She pretends to "like" me, and I don't pretend to like her. I can tolerate her and civilly answer any questions she poses, but, to be honest, I just don't like her. I knew her from way back in my Columbia days, and when I was a newbie tech she flat out told another tech that "she (myself) doesn't know anything". I was standing in the same room with them when she said and she made no attempt to apologize or rephrase her statement. At that point, I decided I had no use for her and to this day I don't. But, that doesn't help me when she is convinced that I'm the reason she is being persecuted. Again, she thinks she is the center of the universe and why wouldn't I want her job? She considers this the "end of her life" and an "attack on her". I told her she was being overly dramatic and that maybe she needs to re-evaluate her outlook on life and consider herself lucky she still has a decent paying job.

So, I now have a 60 hour work week (my full time and her part time) position crammed into 40 hours. It has not once occurred to her that maybe she got the better end of the deal. I am actually looking forward to her leaving for half the day even though it means I have to fill in for those four hours. Silence is golden, and her leaving so I don't have to hear about how this is all a conspiracy against her will indeed be golden.

This has been one of the more difficult semesters I have had since returning to school. Spanish has been incredibly elusive for me and a huge struggle to learn. I still haven't mastered my panic when taking tests and did very bad on the last test we took. Luckily, we get to drop one test score for our grade and that will be the one I drop. I still don't understand what is going on and why I panic so, but it must be a confidence issue. This panic is something new for me and I have a new perspective on people that suffer from it in their daily lives. I certainly see enough medication moving out the door to treat this issue, but I always had the thought in the back of my head that they should just be able to take a deep breath and calm down. I know differently now and will never make that assumption again. I have two finals for Spanish class and I am absolutely dreading both of them. One is an oral final and the other is a written final. And I've been doing a fair amount of freaking out about them. The interesting thing however, is that we had to write a one page composition on a movie we watched and that presented no emotional issues for me. I sat down, wrote it, and did a fair job of it. Why? Why am I able to do that, and not answer questions on a test? We weren't allowed to use translators, or outside help from Spanish speaking friends or family, and could only use our notes, handouts, text books, and a few words from the dictionary. Yet this presented no issues for me. No drama of panic, no hysterical excuses, and certainly no migraines. I have no answer.

Our perspectives constantly and continually change in life. For the most part I want to think that is a good thing because shouldn't our perspectives become more acute as we age? Isn't it the trade off for gray hair, wrinkles, and sore backs? As we experience life and all it offers or takes away we should be learning something from our passage of time. There is a lesson for me and my panic somewhere and all I need to do is figure out what it is. Then, maybe, just maybe I can get back to being the stealer of jobs and general all-around evil orchestrater of all things bad to my coworker. Because I have nothing better to do than to make my life more difficult and time-pressed than it already is. But, that's my perspective.