A girl I work has to wear a mask to work everyday – at least, until the CDC (Center for Disease Control) deems “flu season” over.
She’s allergic to the flu shot, which means she’s exempt from having to have it. I’d say lucky girl, but I wouldn’t want to have to wear a mask every day. That would royally suck rocks.
And it does for her. She hates it. In fact, she’s cashing in some of her vacation time so she can give herself a break from the dreaded mask until the “flu season” is over.
I put “flu season” in quotation marks because I distrust the CDC perhaps even more so than I distrust our government and ya’ll KNOW how much I LOATHE our government, especially right now. I think this whole “flu season” fiasco is just a scam to wring more money out of people by making them get injected with God knows what sort of drugs to line the drug companies pockets with cash.
And to top off my angry sundae, it’s perfectly legal, in the state of Missouri, to MAKE employees get the flu shot whether they want it or not. All under the guise of protecting patients and other employees.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against protecting patients, especially the patients that have weak immune systems anyway, of course not, I’m not a monster, however, I’m not completely convinced, actually, I’m not convinced AT ALL, that the flu shot, in any way, deters the flu. Do you know how many strains of flu there are?
Exactly.
The odds of actually getting a vaccine for the type of strain that happens to cross your immune system in the year you happen to have God knows what injected into you is slim at best.
And if you’re honest with me, and yourself, you know I’m right. How many times have you heard people, express in genuine disbelief mind you, how surprised and shocked they are they actually came down with the flu after receiving a flu shot.
“But I don’t understand,” they whine while coughing up a lung and sneezing the tops of their heads off, “I GOT the flu shot. Why am I sick?”
Indeed. That’s the BILLION dollar question, isn’t it.
This flu shot thing is a deal breaker for me. The first year they made it mandatory that we either get the flu shot or lose our job, I sat down with Kevin and we seriously discussed my next step. I wanted to quit. I almost quit. I still want to quit. But (and there’s always a but, isn’t there), since Kevin is self-employed, that leaves it up to me to provide my family with health insurance.
And quite honestly, we can’t afford to be without it now – not just because we’re gambling on the fact that none of us either get sick or have an accident, but because we’re now required to pay a penalty if we don’t have it.
Anyway. I’ve bitched and moaned about this topic for years now – it’s old news – you know how I feel about it. Blah-blah-blah.
I’m bringing this up now because we’re now in “flu season” and I mentioned to Kevin the other day that if the CDC felt like the bottom line was too low and needed to up their profits, they may decide to declare a “pandemic” (remember H1N1?) and if that happens, I’ll once again be REQUIRED to get another bogus injection full of poisons.
Is this job really worth that? What if the long-term repercussions is Alzheimer’s? Or Dementia? Or something else just as bad?
No job is worth my health.
It’s time to get serious about a new job again. I can’t make the change over night – it will take time to ease my way out. I hate to brag (*ahem*) but my co-workers rely on me. I even have my manager coming up to me asking for advice on things now.
Whoa. Super flattering but also super stressful. I’ve become the poster child for scheduling, I guess.
I’m not taking this lightly – I’m very grateful for my job and I truly love the people I work with, but I can’t stick around and continue to participate in something I feel very strongly against.
So. What to do? I can’t quit without another job lined up for my family’s sake. And I would never walk out on the other girls – I couldn’t forgive myself. So it’s time to suck it up and start building my portfolio again. And I have my eye on one particular company that I think I would be a shoe-in for, AND, I’m my college degree is my ticket in the door. But they won’t take a serious look at me until I can show them what I can do. I have a few ideas on how I can do that – it’s just finding the time to do it. I’ll need to take screen shots from the programs I use at work. And I think I can do that as long as I use the dummy account they’ve created for training purposes. Obviously, I have to be very careful not to violate anyone’s privacy.
That would be bad. Very bad – especially with all the strict HIPPA laws in place. (Which is actually a good thing – people need their privacy protected – too bad the government doesn’t agree with that, but whatev).
Wow. I hadn’t planned on writing this much. I just wanted to mention that I feel sorry for my co-worker for having to wear a surgical mask all day. I don’t know how she doesn’t run screaming from the clinic tearing her hair out. But this issue is never far from my mind and I guess I needed to purge my frustrations. I sort of feel trapped and I resent the fact that the company has taken one of my choices away from me – but I need to stop complaining about it and take steps to do something about it.
It’s time to be pro-active.
(I need to bookmark this post and refer back to it from time-to-time to keep myself motivated to move forward with this get-a-new-job thing. It’s just soooo much easier to stay put and keep doing what I’m doing. Change is hard, doing nothing is easy).
By the by, we drove by the hospital yesterday and noticed that the construction guys are finally building up the foundation. We saw several concrete pillars, I think we’re finally making progress on the tower. (The’re building a tower onto the main hospital and my doctors will be moving their practice to that tower – I’d like to stick around at least that long and make the move because HOW COOL IS THAT?!? A brand-spanking new office. Sweet!)
Write From Karen 