AuDN4T

It was kind of messed up; I feel like the experiences with unpleasant individuals overshadowed a lot of the positive. This is super unfortunate because there were many positives that came out of it. Many great people and friends made.

The first day I got to the building I didn’t have much instructions on how to get in. So I messaged the person I was meeting – the HR Partner. I wasn’t sure if I needed card access to get into the elevator or on the floor. Conducting many projects in office buildings, my understanding is they all vary with security levels (some provide you an escort to walk the floors while others give you card; some required card access in the elevator, others had a foyer in the elevator lobby). In those instances I’d rather meet my site contact downstairs, which is what I ended up doing in that situation…. I even did that when visiting our Texas office. I spoke with the downstairs front desk person.

The orientation was interesting… It was a quick show of workday, the company website and the training website. Workday had a bit of an intro to the org structure. This part was overwhelming realizing how big the org was (bigger coverage in support levels in comparison to my previous organization). The HR Partner asked if I was bilingual to which I responded that I was trilingual – it’s kind of a funny question/answer situation because technically I am bilingual + 1. But not in the traditional sense of what bilingualism means in Canada. It seemed like this is where the tone shifted. I sense that this person expected the person in my position was to be bilingual but she had no control over this because she was not in the position to dictate this. Later on you end up realizing there is a control aspect in this person’s views. If it is not in their control they are upset about the situation.

With respect to the bilingual aspect – the people hired in Quebec are also hired as bilingual but it’s not feasible to have every person in the organization to be bilingual (BC, SK, MB). Not everyone in the country will be bilingual unfortunately. There will be people in Montreal that are English speakers and there will be French speakers. Some may struggle in the other language; however, this is the reality of the situation. Having leadership that oversees people is not always French speaking – this is the case for the GM and the industry DM. Marketing and communication are not bilingual either. Speaking with the team members in Quebec – I have always had a positive experience. I’ve respected the French language as much as I could. I’ve always been grateful when our TM who would translate for us. I did have a situation with a contractor that did act unsafely on a scissor lift and they turned this in an awkward situation. I just want them to be safe nothing more, nothing less. But in general, I’ve had great relationships with those team members in Quebec and I do wish I was able to get them that training the industry required despite management arguing that they weren’t really workers in the construction industry. The training gave them a good basis and understanding of risks in the industry. Overall, I think there should just be a standardized training program for all of Canada. This would make it easier for a lot of employers.

Anyway back to the orientation. I was told to put in my email signature but the link provided was missing. It was weird trying to navigate branding but things were not working. We had lunch at Basil Box, we talked a bit about worker comp and her experience with an STD case. We talked about cycling and that she was into mountain biking. I thought that was cool. Told my former manager that I thought this person was cool (if only I knew what would come in the coming months and year). She did say that global was working on a global program for the system but didn’t think it was possible and how the past person put together different programs. Trying to get access to them was impossible; though I ended up getting this later from my colleague in the US.

After a certain time hit, she ended up leaving and I just sat there like… that’s it? lol. This seemed to be a typical process – coming in at 8am and leaving around 2 or 3pm. Not that I really cared but also just silly when you expect others to be in the office at a certain time but there’s an exception to others. I understand that some people want to beat traffic but the consistency.

I tried to be in the office every day at the beginning. Kind of a commitment I made because I’ve had comments from people working in facilities that there’s a double standard between those working in the field are there but others sit at home. I remember mentioning this to the GM at the time saying from an optics standpoint, I wanted to be in the office because logistics or store TMs have to be on-site. Fair is fair, right? A standard I created of sorts for myself.

Over time, my presence in the office became less. Eventually I avoided the days that the HRP and the rest of the team was there because of situations during meetings where the vibe from this person was a bit too aggressive and judgemental or controlling? The structures of the meetings were not easy to follow through because you were supposed to bring up topics what you need help with. At first I just brought up topics I was working on but she thought I needed help with this. I tried to adjust my approach the following meetings and would bring up topics I needed help with. If a topic was brought up about drug and alcohol with contractor safety at mining client facilities – I was shut down – but it was kind of an angry response. I couldn’t even explain why something needed to be done. It just got more uncomfortable.

You notice you end up being treated differently. Newly hired HR specialists get flowers and gifts… you never really got that but were considered part of this team. Not that I was asking for flowers or gift packs but it felt weird when one person asks you why you’re not really meshing with this team but then on another hand, you see you are treated differently. They end up doing a Halloween team costume and ask you if you want to be apart of it. One person ends up making the costume for everyone while you make yours and it’s completely different from everyone else’s because two people made them in two different styles – one person made 6 costumes and another one made 1 separate one. Again, you end up feeling left out. But you’re expected to fit in but you’re subtly isolated. You’re expected to sit at their table during lunch but you’re not comfortable speaking because whatever you say will be used against you. I didn’t feel comfortable sitting in that cubicle area. Having to move desks to accommodate new HR TMs was crappy and again subtly telling you you’re not really part of the team.

There was a point where I ended up just not feeling good. I ended up feeling nauseous in ’23. I had a hard time eating. I wasn’t eating properly. I couldn’t look at certain foods and I couldn’t quite figure it out. Lost a lot of weight where it was noticeable even on camera. Started to feel impact on my body. Would wake up at 2 or 3am in the morning and couldn’t sleep. My eyes felt off. Turned out it was dry eyes. But at the moment it felt like they were popping out of my head. I can’t even explain how messed up I felt. Had a lot of visits to health clinics. A couple of visits to the ER. One ended up with a kidney stone – still don’t know how that ended up happening… could it have been the one antibiotic I was on and not hydrating enough? I’m not sure.

The kidney stone was traumatic. I’ve never felt something so painful in my life. Driving myself to the hospital was a terrible idea. How they handled my pain was extremely poor. I’ve never thrown up so much bile from pain. I couldn’t look at having bananas for a while because that was the last thing I had to eat. The male nurse asking how I was doing and saying I’ve had better days, resulting in him doing a mental health check up felt a bit messed up. Not getting the pain medication and continuously throwing up in the waiting area was messed up. Being told by the same nurse to throw up in the washroom was very counter intuitive… there was a chance I’d miss hearing being pulled into getting my CT scan. I would have had to stay in the bathroom. But the solution to this should have been pain medication. Even prior to the CT scan I was throwing up in the corridor. The technician was checking in if I was ok. The heat produced by the CT scan was the best minute or so of that ordeal. The silly thing is I ended up getting pain medication after 3 or 4 hours and ended up getting to sleep on bed before getting the doctor to diagnose that I had a kidney stone. Doctors and nurses need to listen better (I’m lucky with my current family doctor).

There was the colonoscopy because of stomach issues I had after a trip to Vancouver. Pretty sure I got food poisoning from the restaurant at the airport. I think it was the hoisin sauce. Had a similar experience with hoisin sauce at a Vietnamese restaurant. It seems like it was sitting on the table for quite some time which could be why it could have resulted in food poisoning.

There was also a point where I was having coffee and all of a sudden my coffee was tasting salty and I couldn’t figure it out. This is when my eyes were starting to feel more dry and my mouth was getting dry at night. I’d have to have water by my bed side. I’d fall asleep with water in my mouth. I’d go through different eye drops. Tears didn’t do much when it got bad. I needed to get more lubricating type eye drops. The wild thing is that the antipsychotic medication did cause my eyes to produce more tears and my mouth was not as dry. Once I got off the medication, the dry mouth was back and I had to use Xylimelts… these really helped a lot. The dry eyes and dry mouth subsided significantly but there are still moments where they do get dry. I’m not sure if it’s when I’m stressed or if I’ve had certain beers that could cause this?

The crazy thing was every time I opened up my teams, certain people would pop up when searching. To this day I don’t know if this based on an algorithm or if it was based on who had recently checked your profile in teams. But that particular HRP would come up. I remember being at a company annual meeting and spiralling. One person is talking about DEI and his son and here I am spiralling over some detail (I can’t remember what that detail was). I think this was the beginning of my mental health crisis. I remember asking a fellow colleague what she thought about the whole situation and the dynamics around this and she did say she could sense there’s some very uncomfortable moments between the two of us.

Throw in the teams message to the DM about the concerns around the set up demo equipment and people not wearing safety footwear and him lashing out. That definitely added to the stress. Having this person go to one of my managers who messaged my other manager on this and telling me to back off. The messages were not intense or problematic. I was simply stating facts. Having this person later basically have me eat crap during a hash out conversation was not fun. Saying I’m just support and mansplaining to me about health and safety. It was a really crappy conversation. This behaviour didn’t stop there. He continued the condescending tone and mansplaining in other meetings. To the point where I was questioning what am I really doing here? Do I even know what I’m doing… as I’m struggling with paliperidone and having insane akathisia and feeling suicidal. It did feel like an injury similar to the kidney stone. 11/10.

Having to go on another STD to figure this out felt like I failed or like I wasn’t worthy enough for it. I was also worried about how many sick/wellness days I had left – it was terrifying. I can’t articulate my psyche around this time period. Having that one person who attributed to this – asking my colleague what the details are around my leave. Not acceptable.

The HR development days – they didn’t feel the same when they were online – some people would leave the office halfway through. If you wanted to pay attention to the speaker, you’d have to shush people in the room who were talking and get yelled at for shushing them. Having the meeting in person with everyone in TX in ’25 felt more engaging and got people bonding; thought it felt like a lot of topics all at once. Being told the slides would be available… but not having them provided sucked. Having marketing and an DM doing the ’24 HR development day was not very memorable. I was on paliperidone, I was struggling to stay awake. I just remember the DM said to throw in some curse words during the story telling but also condescending to colleagues.

Seeing the HR team go through 2 specialists was a hit to morale. Both were really cool people and I learned a lot from them.

The food selections for meetings felt too homogeneous at times. Variety would have been nice. It was nice to have Basil Box the one time we got it in the office.

Having your workiversary not accounted for during office celebrations sucked. It was nice to have leaders celebrate it including your birthday. Unfortunately I did not feel comfortable with the local HR group teams chat. I did enjoy the original team with facilities – getting to understand their work and bonding over memes of workiversaries and bdays. Those got pretty creative.

Team Camp – HR vs. WS team… it was day and night but it should be noted that I was kinda going through it with the medication and forgetting it and having a hard time getting a prescription in the US. I think I wasted maybe ~$100CAD on Ubers to get to a walk-in clinic and hospital. I did enjoy the team in OK and the work we did to determine this we needed to work on. The HR one just had a sense of tension in the room and tack on the person leading it making a comment about me not being part of the team and suggesting I needed coaching. I’m sure it came from a good place but it just did not feel like a safe space in this moment when the HRP was caught gossiping about me with her. The dumb thing was that I was also grouped together with the HRP for determining what I thought I needed to change and she suggested I get out of H&S. Again – making me feel unsafe. I’m not sure why I was stuck having to do this exercise with her when she was continuously picking at me.

I’ll stop here for now. There’s more to be said but I’m getting sleepy.