#we had some restructuring lately and she was one of my supervisors now she's not

[xannerz]

oughg

vp asked me how i was on a personal level during a call today, like actually Checking In (maybe it's because i've been more scattered/frazzled lately and i said i have been overwhelmed), and i froze, staring into the webcam like

"not great"

[retailworker13]

AITA for writing this letter to a manager to explain everything instead of trying to get past my anxiety to explain all of this with actual words?

I apologize so much as this letter is very long but addresses all the points I was told was going to be "discussed" with me by someone at work.

A little bit of background, there is a specific coworker at my job that everyone seems to have a problem with, for a multitude of reasons (including many managers and quite a few customers). We all do our best to be nice when she's working with us, but she never stops complaining about anything, and we do try to help her out with certain things. It's gotten to the point she can't work very much because of the complaints she's gotten from other coworkers and customers. After I got off of work 5/26, what I understood was she spent the rest of her shift complaining about me, and whatever I did to a manager who (after a lovely restructure), went from supervisor to manager because the positions combined. Totally fine, we all went through the restructure just fine and have been doing okay since. The virus has screwed a lot up for this but we are all working through it.

I really want to hear honest stuff because I do get really bad anxiety in situations where I get messages like "So and so is going to talk to you today because A,B,C." I actually clocked in late today (5/27) because the manager was apparently waiting for me to go into the break room to get ready like I normally do. I clocked in only 5 minutes late after talking to the store manager and my coworker who had initially texted me. The manager was clocked out the same time I clocked in, and was there 15 minutes after they had clocked, because they wanted to talk to me about everything. I may act all big and tough when discussing how irritating this is for me, but when it actually happens I get pretty anxious and a lot of times start to get sick from nerves as well. Because writing is the only way I can communicate effectively and as clear as possible, I wrote a letter that I will be giving to my store manager first before giving it to the other manager for the sole purpose to protect myself from whatever they have to say. I don't think I should have to explain myself since I am no longer in the middle of a high school drama, but in this case I need to because of how this specific coworker is. For privacy I have blocked out all names, of course, including my company. So...here goes...

Letter:

Okay, I’m typing everything up because I have pretty high anxiety when it comes to stuff like this. I was spoken to by Store Manager yesterday (5/27) about “drama” that happened between Coworker and I on 5/26. However, I was completely unsure of what exactly took place yesterday as she didn’t seem to have any issues with me at all. I do know that she didn’t call me up for assistance, or even up to cover her breaks, which slipped my mind as I was busy working on orders in the back.

She has a habit of clocking for breaks and continuing to work, and I thought maybe that’s what she had done because I was in the back working on orders and I wasn’t going to argue with her about doing so as it has been a small issue in the past. If at any time she needed help, she never got on the radio to ask for it. She was working on designing graduation posters and banners for some reason, since the graduation season is well almost over. I understand there may be some stragglers and that’s okay, but we already have designs and do not need new ones.

To reiterate, I was unaware that Coworker had any issue with me since she never spoke up about it. I try to let her know as much as possible the jobs at hand that we need to work on, but she brushes it off and goes to do her own thing. Yes, this severely gets under my skin as when she is around, I’m working on every order I can to make sure that the next shift doesn’t have much to work on, or doesn’t have to worry about the order besides a quality check and call.

She spent her break and lunch on the back computer designing things, which really got to me since I did have quite a few customers at a time, and she was in plain view of them. Store Manager has told her repeatedly to take her break in the back and it wasn’t an issue again until now. I didn’t speak up about it though expect to Store Manager. Again, there was no reason to sit in the back where she was visible to waiting customers. I didn’t have people outright ask or tell me about her, but it was pretty obvious that they weren’t happy.

Again, if she had any issue with me specifically, or complained the rest of the night about me, then why didn’t she say anything when I was there? Why did she wait until after I left to talk about whatever I did to her that day? Yes, there are times I can get annoyed with her, but it’s when she does stuff like all of the above. I had to redo an order that could have been easily done the first time had it been printed properly or even quality checked. And as it turns out, this order was one that she had told the customer we couldn’t do because of the quantity, didn’t even give the option of splitting the order like the other store did, who turned around and split it with us anyways.

Before I go any further as to what was discussed with me today, I just want to say that I am just listing things off as I experienced them and how I see them. I went through similar issues at my other store, and some issues that were pretty worse than all of this.

I follow policy as best as I can, and if I don’t, then normally it’s hopefully a small thing that just slips my mind, which include a changed price, or a slight misquote. However, there are certain things I pretty much stick to the script on. Which includes copyright and all corporate files. I do not go through and delete files unless they’re my own, and I don’t appreciate being blamed for it.

I will admit to throwing the price books away. It has been made clear by corporate that our online receipt numbers need to be up and if taking away the SKUs in the book means we can do that then so be it. There are also SKUs in the book she continually prints that we do not have any more. They took out our flat design prices because those are Affinity only, not us. We are $1.25 per minute, $0.59 per action, and $19.99 base fee. Nothing else. All of those other prices get sent out for a reason and we need to keep it at that. If corporate took that stuff away, then there’s a reason and we need to listen to it.

We have been lenient on school files because of everything that is happening. But I’m still abiding by our copyright policies with College logos, names and mascots as that’s on the list of stuff we cannot print. I do not “pick and choose” what and what not to print, I check nearly every file for Copyright and if it has it then I either have them sign the release form if it’s not outright Disney or Nickelodeon or something of that nature. However, there is one single exception that I make that it is his personal artwork and if you’d like me to have him sign a release form every time that he comes in then so be it. It’s for his business.

Now, if we are on the subject of picking and choosing, then I’m not the only person in the department who does it. And if you are able to pick and choose who we do and don’t give a copyright violation to then we don’t either. Also, there are multiple orders that have still yet to be paid for that have been there for months, that it is obvious that they aren’t going to come pay for. I am just trying to get an understanding as to how I am the only person in the department who has any issue since I’m not the one who took those $300-600 orders (banners, invoices, etc.).

As a department, we normally function pretty well until we have an issue with an order. Especially the ones like Special Customer 1 or Special Customer 2, or any of the orders that you personally take care of. However, we get issues when we don’t know how to do the order, or we are charging them what we are supposed to be because they’ve “never been charged that” or “they don’t pay that”, when we should be charging them for designing or parts of their order. Again, I’m speaking in terms of what I’ve experienced and what the department has had to go through after the restructuring.

Since you are technically not in the department (as much as you were as supervisor), it makes it hard when we have orders like this because we are following what we were trained to do, and we are getting the short end of the stick for this. We as a department aren’t at fault for this and I’m not saying you are either so please don’t take it that way, but it does make it a lot harder on the rest of us when you take a week-long vacation and we get yelled at over the phone because we are only supposed to have files on our systems for 2 weeks and emails for 30 days and it’s not our responsibility to hold them.

I don’t pick and choose what to do or not to do, I keep everything as uniformed as possible when it comes to turn around times, jobs that we do, jobs that we don’t do, the express fee, copyright, pricing. Everything is as crystal clear as I can make it. If someone else doesn’t like it, but it’s the best I can do and I can’t recommend anything else, then that’s all I got but I did everything the way I was supposed to do it. No one uses the express fee (and sometimes I’m guilty of it too, but I always try to get as much done with the job as I can) and there are a lot of jobs that absolutely have to have it, because we have to put their job in front of everyone else’s to get it done even though everyone else has to (and is normally okay with) a realistic turn-around time.

I don’t just take in a job, leave no notes or information and expect someone to get it done for me. I put as many notes as possible about it, or as many notes that are needed, and I try my best to get the order started. I fill out the project folder as needed, and I keep the notes clear and understandable for everyone. I don’t mean for any of my notes to come off as passive aggressive, and I can print you every single note I have not handwritten. Everything is spelled out as clear as I can make it, and it does get under my skin when they go ignored, or even trashed/shredded before anyone else can see them. If it addressed to someone specific, then it will go to that someone specific (unless of course it’s a question or a request in case anyone else knows the answer).

I am as nice and kind to customers and associates alike to avoid getting complaints or having any issues at all, and if I have a problem, yes, I vent about it as I did in this letter. But it is at the point in time where it’s getting old, and I’m done trying to fight to stick to what corporate’s given us and what we are supposed to be doing that I don’t care who has a problem with me, or even if I work in the print department at all. If there are so many issues with me following what corporate is telling us for that department then have me moved to the floor. I don’t want to be in a department where I’m trying to do the right thing and follow the rules, guidelines, policies, and training that has been giving to me, explained to me, or that I’ve been through. It’s not like I don’t know what I’m doing in the department, I’ve worked there long enough, and I have experienced enough to know at least how to conduct myself when speaking to customers, and I know almost everything I need to know about the department to effectively work there. There is a minimal list of things I don’t know how to do, but all things considered, I don’t deal with specific services that we provide all that often. But it’s not like it’s something we need to memorize like we do with everything else. Corporate has given us everything we need, and I’m not going to apologize for following what they’ve provided in terms of rules and policies. But if I’m one of the few in the department that actually do this, then I’m not the one that needs to be spoken to about all of this.

I’m not going to sit back and go through “drama” that can easily be fixed by just following corporate guidelines. I don’t care if “having a SKU book is okay” because it’s not. Corporate took the SKUs away to get our online receipt numbers up and our register keys down, but we have the ENTIRE price book of what we do in stores now on the register. If we can’t make an online receipt, then we have the register. I’m not in the wrong about this. There are more productive ways to spend time then to go through and deliberately put something back into a file that Corporate left out on purpose. And I’m not sorry for feeling that way but I’m not the only person who has a problem with it, I’m just the one who’s the most outspoken about it and I’m not afraid to shred the books I find because no one else needs them. Even the cashiers know how to find the book, or we could just make it easier on them and give them an online receipt since they are more than capable of doing that too.

If I’m going to be targeted for doing what I’ve been trained to do and work how I’ve been taught to work, then maybe I need to rethink my position and find a better one. Or we could just do our jobs the right way the first time how we are trained to do it, and have no issues, and we would all be fine. If not, then I need to rethink my decision to work either in this department, or at this company all together.

[davidnegrizzle]

Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum

I worked at Target for the majority of my adult life. I was hired in October 2009 when I was 19 years old. I started as a truck unloader/stocker and worked about 12 laughable hours a week. My paychecks never cracked past $300. I didn’t care. I was 19 and still living with my parents who didn’t charge rent. All my income was pocket money. I worked mainly Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Every Tuesday and Thursday I spent what little money I made at Disneyland with my friend Val. We were a mess and half. At one point I even received a call from Chase inquiring about suspected fraud. They wanted to know if I was really spending every Tuesday and Thursday at Disneyland. The female disembodied voice over the phone told me she was jealous when I confirmed and wished me a great day.

Something happened to me at Target, though. I found my footing at Target. I grew and matured. Through changes in management and learning about myself and my faults, I started to get recognized for my talents. Four years after getting hired I took a promotion. It was the best decision and the worst decision I have made in my career.

Being a supervisor allowed me to use my problem solving skills, it changed the pace at which I worked, and it taught me even more skills— skills that my friends, who were barely graduating from college, were trying to acquire.

Target inadvertently also pushed me to go back to school. Through some miscommunication and misunderstanding between my manager and mentor, who was also named David, I received an abysmal yearly review. I went home that day, applied to a community college, and my life has never been the same since (I will be receiving my Bachelor of Arts this upcoming school year. The review was also corrected.)

My favorite part about being a supervisor was being an advocate for my team members. I cared for my team members on a personal level. They weren’t machines who needed to push Target’s insipid RedCard and its paltry benefits. I refused to coach and write up cashiers who didn’t push the RedCard. In fact, I did the opposite. Whenever a cashier would tell me that another executive leader was going to talk to them about not getting any RedCard applications, I would inform the cashier that the executive technically couldn’t. I would show the cashiers their core roles and point out to them that the core roles stated that the cashier should inform the guest about the benefits of the RedCard, not that the core roles required a quota of RedCard applications. A technicality.

Team members also learned to trust me in ways they didn’t trust the other leadership team. I learned about their issues at work, at home, and was even able to help transfer a team member to a warehouse, which is a very difficult thing to do.

Because of the 2013 data breach Target experienced, I suspect, Target restructured and began to clean house. They liquidated their highest paid executive team and hired young kids fresh out of college. At the time that I quit, at 27 years old, I was older than the store manager, the assets protection manager, and the same age as the human resources and sales floor managers. And these last two were the ones to fuck me over the worst.

I had a previous relationship with the human resources manager. She was once an hourly team member just like me. Together, more or less, we rose through the ranks. We grew up with the company together. When she promoted, she became brand new. I learned this a little too late. I learned that this new person, the one that got promoted, was not the girl I had fallen in love with, who I believed to be caring and special. I wont insult her here, but I still send her negative energy when I think of her. Because the store was underperforming, the district managers were looking for the explanation. The executive team, rather than questioning themselves, their daily three to five hour lunches in the back offices, their disgusting actions and improper communication processes with the hourly team, or the fact that they worked five to six hours a day even though their position called for ten hours a day, blamed the hourly team members for the state of the store.

I was one of those blamed.

I went from an “effective leader” to a “trouble performer.” My work center’s hours were reallocated to a different work center, my team members’ hours were reduced, and were expected to finish daily tasks while servicing customers. And although I was considered a “trouble performer,” I was expected to fill both the Cafe team lead and the guest services team lead positions. When it came time to yearly reviews, I was expected to finish reviews for the 25+ team members.

The sales floor executive, who was my manager, was the most disgusting person I have ever met in my life. He berated team members and hurled personal insults at them. One of my proudest moments was giving one of the team members this guy verbally abused a pep talk. The executive found it appropriate to tell him that this team member was the laziest guy he had ever met, that he was slow and didn’t do things right. The team member, who was actually hard working and provided amazing customer service, attempted the squash the entire situation. He reached out his hand and offered a handshake to the executive. The executive looked at his hand and walked away. During my pep talk with the team member I reminded him how amazing he was. He cried. He thanked me. He asked for a hug. It completely broke my heart to see him so down that I, a person who would usually cringe at the idea of hugging anyone, wanted to hug him back.

I began to become stressed as HR and the sales floor exec began the process of writing me up. I would cry for no reason. When my sister told me she was moving out, a happy occasion as she was moving in with her boyfriend and starting a life with him, I began to cry. Once, as I drove home, my favorite song on my iPod came on. I cried so hard I considered pulling over to the side of the freeway because of how blurred my vision became because of the tears. I got stress acne.

The day I quit was difficult. After 7 years, almost 8, Target had become my second home. The team members became my family. We always promise to keep in touch in situations like this, but I knew that this would be the end. I’m a Virgo. I’m realistic about life. And I never keep in touch.

After signing my resignation papers and holding back the tears, I said goodbye to one of my team members. She began to cry. She hugged me and thanked me. She said she didn’t know what she would do without me. She thanked me for helping her when her mother passed away.  And then my favorite guest services team member sought me out when she heard (this news always travels like wildfire). She was almost my strongest advocate and supporter. I thank God and the Universe for her. I still send her positive energy when I think of her. She always offered me advice when I needed it and a kind ear.

When I left the building, I turned around and looked back at what my life had been for the past 7-8 years. A bit dramatic, but it felt right. In the United States, our jobs and careers become part of our identity. It is one of the first questions we ask strangers. How could it not? At 40 hours a week, we see the people we work with more than some family members and friends. Target was an extension of who I was, my psyche.

As it is, I still have unresolved feelings, even now almost two years since I quit. I am angry at how disposable I was. I am angry at how I was treated. But, more importantly, I am angry at myself for giving so much of myself to the company. I gave up holidays, birthdays, special events just to be inconsequential, disposable chattel.

I did a short stint at an Amazon warehouse after quitting, but it didn’t work out. I have been unemployed since.

On Tuesday, I was hired at a major inventory company, and received my first day of training on Thursday. It was at a Sears. As I walked the sales floor, the shiny white linoleum reflecting the unforgiving fluorescent lights above, I experienced something I can only describe as an out-of-body deja vu. I followed my trainer through the sales floor, to the training room, at the same quick pace I used to get from one end of Target to the next. I was taken back to the things I loved most about Target. It felt good to be at a store again as something other than a customer.  I suppose I’m one of those strange people who genuinely enjoys customer service. I was surprised at myself as I put one foot in front of the other by the sensation I was feeling. I quickly pushed the feeling aside. I was not going to cry in front of strangers, my trainer, and the other person training with me.

I don’t know why I felt that way. Perhaps my subconscious mind was reminding me of my reacquired independence (I’ve been living off my student loans and my blessed sister.) Perhaps it provided the closure I’ve been in search of since I resigned. Perhaps it just felt good to be useful again. I don’t know what it was, but I welcome it. Incidentally, I won’t be giving so much of myself to this company. I will not allow it to consume me, usurp me.

I have lived my life backwards. When my friends went off to college, I began working in earnest. Now that they have graduated and have gained their careers (a dietician, a high school English teacher, an administrator at a bilingual middle school in Mexico), I am nearing the crossroads of my future. From the ages of 27 till now, I have been forced to find myself again. To find my identity. I write about my Saturn Return phase comically, but the truth is that this has been the hardest three years of my life. I look at how successful my friends and family are and wonder whether that will be me. The Virgo quickly shuts me up and reminds me that, of course it will be. As hyper critical of myself as I am, I also know how amazing I am. It comes off as arrogant, but I don’t care.

I. Am. Amazing.

I don’t believe things happen for a reason. That is insulting to the people who face some real shit in their lives. But when I look back I see that every moment of my life, every decision I’ve made, has led me here. When I graduate, I will chase my dreams in earnest. I will be unstoppable. I am amazing.

My entire life I have always followed the beat of my own drummer. Sometimes he plays a wonderful tune. Sometimes he’s off beat. And sometimes the mother fucker is playing a tambourine instead. But I dance along. He’s lost his drumsticks at the moment, but I’m still dancing. I wont stop. It’s what I do. Plus, in a world where Donald Trump is president, anything is possible.

[lindelwamamba]

OT IN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE

Prevention is better than cure is a longtime standing proverb I have heard being used as far as I can try to jog my memory and in its simple terms it refers to taking preventive steps to keep us away from harm and reducing the amount of time required to deal with the effects of danger.

Ofcourse you’re far too familiar with this proverb as well, and if not clearly you had a better childhood than me. I remember this one of the few phrases which was used to make me eat my vegetables and avoid all things nice (sweets, soda, ice-cream) as a child. So you can imagine how deprived I felt as a child (my mom is a nurse by profession), and wished I had all the luxuries other children. Little did I know,  that I would grow up and start appreciating such habits because they had already been instilled in me from a young age (I can safely say, sweet tooth issues have never been part of my problems). As an adult (and soon to be qualified health professional), I understand why my mother promoted developing healthy lifestyle habits from a young age, I come from a family that has a family history of type 2 diabetes and believe me when I say for the past 3 generations, not even one person has been  spared during their late 30’s . Besides the many reasons I am able to relate with this proverb, the aim of this post is to write about Primary Health Care (PHC), which I believe can perfectly be described with the proverb mentioned earlier. Now, why do I say this? The explanation of PHC according to the Alma Ata Declaration is provided as “essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country can afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self-reliance and self-determination” ("World Health Organization “Declaration of Alma Ata: International Conference on Primary Health Care, Alma Ata, USSR 6-12 September, 1978). See the balance scale image above, it compares the cost of prevention vs cure, which is PHC simplified for me.

The purpose of the Alma Ata conference was to create a PHC movement that consists of professionals and institutions, governments and civil society that would address health inequalities in all countries and one of its core principles were based on social justice, the right to better health for all, participation and solidarity. I personally believe that this would not have come at a better time as countries around the world had to bridge the gap between access to services that were being accessed by the poor and rich. PHC in South Africa has been implemented to some degree however it is still a model that needs a lot of work. PHC is important for South Africa because it is a country that has to still rise above the scars of apartheid whereby the distribution of services that include basic sanitation, food supply, and access to health care was unequal amongst different ethnic groups. The PHC approach of the Alma-Ata declaration encourages increased consultation with stakeholders in decision-making and for shared responsibility for health amongst individuals, community groups, health professionals and government ("The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion", 1986; World Health Organization “Declaration of Alma Ata: International Conference on Primary Health Care, Alma Ata, USSR 6-12 September, 1978).

The adoption or exploring implementation of PHC first began in 1996, with the proposal of the Whitepaper of 1996, which proposed a change in the health system, and shortly was followed by the development of the National Health Insurance whose key strategy is the emphasis on the delivery of a comprehensive PHC service to decrease the burden of the high public burden (Naidoo et al, 2016). While the NHI policy has policy guidelines for the PHC nurse and doctor, Naidoo et al (2016) explains that the is lack of publications for other organizations like non-governmental organizations and health professions organizations (e.g. the Occupational Therapy Association of South Africa) which discuss the role of the related PHC professionals and literature related to whether practice adheres to policy.

Despite all of these challenges of having difficulty to understanding the scope of practice for OT in PHC, at the end of the day we still have to be accountable for the posts we occupy. Institutions of Higher Education have addressed this challenges through restructuring the curriculum for student OTs to be in line with PHC principle (Naidoo et al, 2016). Some of these principles are understanding of universal and equitable access to health care, facilitating community participation in programs, Intersectoral collaboration, and designing population-based programs (Sibiya & Gwele, 2012). Looking at the community if KwaDabeka, some of this principles have been implemented, through using the KZN PHC model ‘Sukuma Sakhe’, an example of this is the war room, which is a monthly meeting that happens in each ward consisting of a team made up of community leaders, representatives from government departments, community health workers and youth ambassadors. Through participation in one of these meetings, as students we recognized a need for advocacy for rehabilitation services in the community as community stakeholders were not aware of the role of these health professionals in the delivery of PHC. This reminded me of a discussion I had recently had with my supervisor, whereby she was pointing out that as OTs, quite often we assume other individuals tasks and responsibilities, which results in our main role being lost along the way because we have become the jacks of all trade, with no special distinct of our own role.

The study by Naidoo et al (2016) continues to highlight findings that state that stakeholders perceived the role of OTs predominantly for impairment and rehabilitative focused services, which is totally different to the approach of PHC. As mentioned in previous blogs, our role in OT is the ability for individuals to participate in activities, Christiansen (1999) explains that, “Health enables people to pursue the tasks of everyday living that provide them with the life meaning necessary for their well-being”. In the discussion of the study done by Naidoo et al (2016) , some of the roles that can be included under the scope of OT in PHC include : role in disability prevention and health promotion in pediatric clients, working in schools and with teachers to identify and assist leaners with learning disabilities, community programs to address substance abuse and educational challenges, teaching life skills, assisting with constructive leisure and social programs, better relationship between OTs, CHWs and other teams of health professionals is essential in order to ensure carryover of therapy and better referral systems to rehabilitation service.

In the movement to reengineer PCH delivery in South Africa, one of the most important aspects has been the recognition that PHC in SA is not fully functional and some of the contributing factors to this phenomenon include geographic and physical access barriers to health services, especially to those that live in poverty. In an attempt to promote  public health and health promotion mass media campaigns have been widely used to expose high proportions of large populations to messages through routine uses of existing media, such as television, radio, newspapers and the ever rising social media (Wakefield, Loken & Hornik, 2010) . I remember the first time I received a chain message on WhatsApp about two years back which had been aimed at raising awareness for breast cancer month and we have seen this awareness being reinverted year by year. So what is clear, is that the media is a powerful tool that can be utilized positively to raise awareness, especiall social media. Remember the tie pod challenge last year, the backpack dance and this year’s Kiki + Level up challenge (if you’re reading this in the future-the year is 2018 ). So the question is if social media is on way of spreading messages, why not jump the same train, at the end of the day, Health is the most important treasure to have. Other forms of media have been used to promote health awareness and these include television, radio, and some examples of this include locally aired shows like Intersexions on SABC 1 which was aimed at raising awareness for HIV and Aids. Media has also been a great tool for raising for issues like Cervical cancer, TB, malnutrition through different media forms to cater for all individuals.

Although a great approach, a question that arises for such campaigns is whether they achieve the purpose they are initially constructed with, for example even though large numbers participated in the WhatsApp breast cancer awareness, only a few women got the meaning behind it and most ended up participation passively. This is similar to HIV/AIDS related sows, from a young age I recall shows like Soul City, Soul buddies, Tshisa which were all meant to promote developing caution with substance abuse, sexual relations and educate people on the disease, however Southern African countries still report a high prevalence for those issues. Despite the education, it is also important to note that some these issues have been perpetuated by culture and societal norms.

It is my opinion that PHC in South Africa still has a long way to go especially in relation to rehabilitative services provided in the country. The movement towards NHI is definitely a step towards a better future, but we cannot deny the challenges that come with this new model, and the government will require to make major shifts in the system to ensure is fully functional. By the way, this can only mean the beginning of a new era for Occupational Therapy, it will definitely get better. Our profession can only get better.

References

American Occupational Therapy Association. (2008). Occupation: A position paper. American Journal of Occupational Therapy

Naidoo, D., Van Wyk, J., & Joubert, R. (2016). Exploring the occupational therapist’s role in primary health care: Listening to voices of stakeholders. African Journal Of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine, 8(1). doi: 10.4102/phcfm.v8i1.1139

SIBIYA, M., & GWELE, N. (2012). A model for the integration of primary health-care services in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Journal Of Nursing Management, 21(2), 387-395. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2834.2012.01420.x

Wakefield, M., Loken, B., & Hornik, R. (2010). Use of mass media campaigns to change health behaviour. The Lancet, 376(9748), 1261-1271. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(10)60809-4

The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/previous/ottawa/en/

World Health Organization “Declaration of Alma Ata: International Conference on Primary Health Care, Alma Ata, USSR 6-12 September, 1978”. Available at < www. who.int /hpr/NPH /docs /declaration_almaata.pdf> Retrieved from http://www.sciepub.com/reference/12304

KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health. Primary Health Care Re-engineering in KwaZulu-Natal. October 2012.

[steamishot]

replaceable

yesterday, during our academic staff meeting (a team of 5 usually, but one was absent) my supervisor went on a spiel about how our department’s organization needs some restructuring. she noted how in other departments, they have a lot more manpower that correlates to the amount of work that is needed. their workforce is also divided into specific functions. here in our department, everyone works from a-z in their own speciality. we have people who are burnt out/overworked and things fall through the cracks, and others who really shouldn’t have a job there (due to lack of duties). with the new CAO, i think they are working on restructuring our department and making progress on budgeting efficiently. she told us that if we find something better (directed mainly at me) to just go for it, and not feel the pressure to stay loyal to the company. she said hard work goes unnoticed and people won’t remember you for the good job you did, but for the mistakes you made. and at the end, to stay loyal to yourself. 

she ended her little speech saying “okay i’ll need the last 10 minutes of the meeting to talk to connie”. my heart was pounding a little as the other two left, because i was brought back to old memories of 1 on 1 with my old boss that turned into a session of criticism. instead, it was a friendly conversation talking about what i’d like to in terms of career and if i’m applying for jobs in my field. i told her the truth- that i’m learning a lot here and i’d like to stay, but that i’m also networking in the tech field to get a taste of what’s out there. we talked about promoting me to the next level position (now that another girl on our team is leaving) and possibly incorporating some programming/tech/web development into my job description. i was really grateful for that. she noted how the postdocs, residents/doctors, and researchers that we work with all have mentors. however, the admin staff don’t get as much guidance on how to move up. she hopes she can provide that for us, especially because she feels we are hardworking. it’s awesome because the managers and director of HR are always looking out for the young people in our group to advance. they’ll promote us before anyone outside of our group, even though we probably aren’t as qualified haha. my supervisor has gotten criticism for promoting people who don’t know what they’re doing before (my current team). but i’m guessing that the benefits of helping her people outweigh a few criticisms. i’ll be meeting with my hr director tomorrow to see how to proceed with this. 

march 11 is a very sensitive day for matt. it’s when he finds out whether or not he gets into residency. because he attended a carribean (foreign) medical school, the chances of matching into a residency program is considerably lower than US graduates. whereas about 95% of US grads match into a program right after they graduate, only about 50% of foreign grads do. those unmatched grads can work on strengthening their profile and attempt again the following year. statistics say its even harder the second time around. so i think he’s looking at around 40% which is pretty nervewracking. as we get closer to the date, the more anxious he is. he can’t think about anything past that date and is like in “depressed” (but not really) mode. he said he wants to sleep more and lost interest in fun things. when i brought up that his sex drive seems normal (as a joke) he said yeah he has selective symptoms haha. i’ve been trying to be supportive for him by taking him out and doing things. 

this past weekend we were pretty sneaky and fun. on friday, i got out of work at 4pm and on my drive home, i was just like man, i have no plans tonight. i haven’t really gone out on friday nights for the past 6 months because i had class on saturday morning. so i was actually craving to do something. i went thrift shopping by myself and stopped by trader joes to buy a birthday gift and also picked up a package of salami and cheese. i took a pic of the salami and cheese and sent it to matt with a text “where my wine buddy at?”. he was at the gym when i texted him and i liked that he responded well to my spontaneity. he suggested a few places to go out to drink but i was like, how about wine in the backseat of your car and walk around at the mall LOL. i wanted something lowkey so i can just show up in a hoodie and jeans. so i parked my car at his place and he drove us to the mall, where i “pregamed” a little with wine before heading into the mall and getting uncle tetsu. we got cheesecake and then decided to eat a small dinner at din tai fung. it was yummy! then we went back into the car and chilled in the backseat with wine, salami and cheese, and my ipad with downloaded episodes of chefs table. after a bit, we decided to drive back to his house so that we weren’t parked in the parking lot drinking. we did more of the same thing in front of his place and got frisky. he ended up sneaking me into his room to do it lol. it was a struggle because he has a home security system called ring that notifies anyone who has the app when someone is on their property. he could only figure out how to turn off the garage camera, so we snuck through there. i used his restroom and then snuck into his room for a quickie and i had to leave at 2am because permits are required for street parking from 2-5am. 

then on sunday, we had a double date with a college friend and her boyfriend that i met for the first time. it was a nice time but i wasn’t sure how much matt or the boyfriend were feeling it so the whole post hike “should we get food together” was a no. turned out matt actually really enjoyed hiking with them. he was talkative and made them laugh a few times too. i think i was a little anxious about him hanging out with my “friends” because i’d feel responsible if they didn’t get along. i attribute this to how david acted. there were a few times when i brought david out and would feel embarrassed or odd because he wouldn’t say much or looked uninterested etc. i’d feel anxious thinking if he would “behave” (like a child/not get moody) and not embarrass me. now i’m thinking that was his problem and not mine, or it just highlights our incompatibility. i was pretty quiet in his friend group too, because i felt our social circles were worlds apart and we didn’t know how to get along with each other’s friends/family. after the hike, we went to get donuts and dinner, and then parked outside of my house thinking of what to do next. we went from my car to his to chill in the backseat. it was maybe 8pm. we found beer lounge place that looked cool, but neither of us really wanted to drink as it was late and a sunday. instead we started making out and stopping every time a car passed by lol. i also got a phone call from my mom which also put a pause to the making out. anyway clothes reluctantly came off finally and i was wearing my reusable cloth pad (i was finishing up my period). i unbuttoned that to detach it from my undies and threw it on the seat, while noting that it smells like discharge and how it was pretty gross. lol. after a few seconds he said he could smell it too but we proceeded and had penetrative sex. he only lasted a few seconds and ended up coming in his hand. the semen spilled onto the car seat a little and i gave him my sock to wipe it off LOL. i told him if i was smarter, i would have told him to come on my pad. with the vaginal discharge and his cum everywhere, i said that we’re disgusting haha. he thought it was really hot. 

anyway, after these two nights, he texted me thanking me on both days for being naughty/freaky, sleeping in his bed, eating din tai fung, enjoying backseat wine drinking etc with him. i like seeing him relaxed and happy during this stressful time and i enjoy being the reason for it. 

[canaryatlaw]

okay it’s late I’m tired you know the drill. today was alright I guess, court was somewhat unusual because it was the case we had to withdraw from which I was super unhappy about because I *really* wanted to help her, but thankfully we were able to set her up with new counsel who was on the call this morning and we smoothly transferred him into being the lawyer on the case now since there was procedural issues beyond my control. I did get to speak to the new lawyer before we got called into court since they put us in the same breakout room (which I had requested but I’m pretty sure they were already planning on doing so) so I was able to catch him up on what’s happened in the case so far and what our major concerns have been at this point, so that was good and I said I’d send him over any other documents we have that hadn’t been shared yet. He was a pretty nice guy, we started talking about more general legal aid things (as he was from another legal aid organization, and he was telling me one of the areas is covers are expunges, and how they were trying to gear up for the flood of marijuana based charges that have essentially been tossed by the new law, but so so many people have stupid pot charges on their records that they should absolutely be able to expunge, and it sounded like they were making good progress on that so that was good to hear. Not long before we got called into the courtroom I got a call from OC who was in a tizzy that there was suddenly another lawyer claiming to be on the case, despite me laying out our intentions very clearly last court date, but tbh it seemed like he was having issues getting things at that point either. So I briefly explained and he was a little grumpy he didn’t receive advanced notice (as in a filed motion) for a withdrawal or appearance, neither of which were required to be done in that situation, so I was just like okay whatever let’s just get through this case and hopefully I’ll never have to speak to him again. honestly I was really disappointed in him working on the case. whenever we get a lawyer on the other side of the case I generally google them just to see what their background is, because there aren’t any lawyers who specialize in OPs or really has them as a large portion of their work, so we end up getting divorce lawyers or criminal defense lawyers or whoever else wanted to give this a try. So I googled him and was actually really impressed with his bio, it talked about being a GAL (position from the office I spend a year interning with) on some child centered cases and all around sounded like a decent guy and a fairly competent lawyer, and even in my first call with him he seemed very concerned about things and just wanted to work them all out, only for me to go to my client and find out pretty much everything he said was straight up bs, and it just kept going there. BUT ANYWAY. we said all the necessary words in court to get everything done, and that was it. I had to run back to the clinic line then because I was supervising for the day (great timing, I know) and had to wrangle some volunteers onto a case that needed a translator which always makes everything that much more complicated, and at first it looked like none of our employees who can serve as translators were available, at which point we’d have to call the “language line” which is part of the DV hotline for IL and for situations like this they can provide a translator for really a huge amount of languages, several of which I hadn’t even heard of before, and they’re great but with multiple parties on the line figuring it all out I knew it would be difficult. thankfully one of our translators ended up being available to get it all started. it had a few bumps but looked good at the end, except when they tried to send the paperwork over the volunteer working the case’s laptop apparently crashed and she wasn’t able to send us the forms (we had the affidavit, though that also needed to be restructured because it was that intern’s first case to work on). Okay so whatever, they’ll just have to redo tomorrow, which sucks but it is what it is and technically  is not my problem at this point, but my work buddy is supervisor tomorrow so I’m not gonna just drop everything on him and tell him to take care of it. so we’ll see what tomorrow brings with that. we also had a case slide in between all of that, it was one of our very experienced and competent volunteer attorneys and the case was just 1 incident and no kids in common (if there are kids, the forms are legit twice as long to fill out), so she had it back to me in like an hour, which I’m pretty sure is the quickest turnover time I’ve seen so far so major props to her. After some confusion we got that filed by the deadline, but at 4:50 I got a call from the court saying they were backed up and there were already ten people lined up to do it right now so they pushed it to tomorrow morning, which I can hopefully make sure everything goes as planned. and oof I’m so dead I can’t keep my eyes open, curse my verbosity and attention to details. but after I finished work not much happened, I made ramen for dinner and watched more Psych and that was pretty much it, and I really need to go to bed so I’m going to do that now. Goodnight friends. Hope your week is going well so far.

[thefaeriereview]

Tour: Winning the Game of Work

https://ift.tt/2BVs8S8

Welcome to the blog tour for Winning the Game of Work, by Terry Boyle McDougall! Today I have an excerpt from the book, and a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card!

Winning the Game of Work: Career Happiness and Success

on Your Own Terms

Publication Date: April 10, 2020

Genre: Non-Fiction/ Career Coaching Guide

You can be happier and more successful when you learn to play the game of work. If you’re not currently satisfied in your career, it could be because you’re playing by the wrong rules. In Winning the Game of Work, Terry Boyle McDougall shares the rules she learned from wise mentors and coaches, as well as the lessons she learned the hard way. She entered the workplace as an ambitious “go-getter” and was confused about why she wasn’t advancing at the pace she expected. She learned that being smart and working hard aren’t enough. The reward for developing a strategy for the game of work is success and happiness with less stress and duress. This book will help you: * Get recognized for your value on the job * Develop and appreciate your unique “superpowers” at work * Cope with a bad boss without burning out or getting fired * Get the promotion you deserve * Deliver more impact on the job with some simple hacks * And more… Winning the Game of Work is the essential guidebook to help you develop your unique skills as a “player.” Now is the time to see the whole field, make the savvy moves and win the game of work on your own terms!

5 out of 5 fairies

Winning the Game of Work is very helpful. Whether you're just starting out or you've been in the workforce for a while but feel like you never get ahead, this book is for you. I was never good at office politics, and was shown time and again that just working hard wasn't enough. If you want to succeed and excel in your career, grab this book and set aside a few hours to absorb what it has to say.

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Excerpt

Chapter 5 

When You’re Dealt a Bad Hand: Coping with Toxic Work Situations

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. –Reinhold Niebuhr

Toxic Workplaces Are Common 

Workplaces can become toxic when the work demands, culture, and/or coworkers cause serious disruptions in the rest of your life. According to a 2019 research report published by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), nearly two-thirds of working Americans have worked in a toxic work environment at some point in their career, and 26 percent have worked in more than one. That’s truly astounding!

We spend a lot of time working, and most of us are dependent on work for income and a sense of purpose. When work becomes toxic, it can have a devastating impact on both job and life satisfaction.

Here’s a story of a toxic work environment that I lived through back in the late 1990s and the lessons I came away with.

In Comes Shelly the Screamer

About four years into an otherwise great job, I had my first encounter with workplace toxicity. My department was restructured and the department leader who worked in another city hired a new director for our office. Shelly left a global consulting firm for this role and moved to the Southern city where the company was headquartered.

Within the department, Shelly made us wary. Her direct style clashed with the gracious and courteous culture of the organization. Admittedly, when I moved there a few years before, I quickly realized that small talk in this culture was a requirement if I wanted to develop productive relationships within the organization. Getting directly down to business, which had been the norm at my employer in DC, was considered rude there.

Culture Shock

Shelly was fast moving and direct. And when she became upset, she tended to scream. (Yes, scream!) One day, I was unfortunate enough to hear her side of a phone conversation through the office wall I shared with her—at an incredibly high decibel, I heard her berate the dry cleaner in the building for allegedly losing the pants to a suit she’d dropped off for cleaning.

As time went on, I realized that this was not a one-time loss of composure on Shelly’s part. This type of unhinged behavior became shockingly common. I shook my head and could not believe this was my job and that she was my boss. I mean, who acts like that?

Shelly’s approach to management alternated between ingratiation, manipulation, and micromanagement of female subordinates and colleagues. With men, she also included flirtation, which I suppose is a form of manipulation.

Her frequent emotional outbursts tended to be confined to times when only subordinates on the marketing team were present, which meant that it took a while for her dysfunction to become apparent to her business partners, HR, and leadership.

Stress and Self-Medicating Behaviors

I began to dread going to work and encountered health issues such as insomnia, irritability, and anxiety. As much as I hate to admit it, I began drinking wine just about every night after work to relax and forget about the chaotic situation at work. Though I didn’t recognize it at the time, I was dealing with a toxic boss in an otherwise supportive workplace.

I was experiencing some of the common responses: depression, anxiety, weight gain, self-medicating behavior, a drop in productivity, and reduced ability to focus. Other common responses include self-harming behaviors, workplace absence, increased illnesses, raised blood pressure, and other negative health effects.

The Dangers of a Toxic Environment

A toxic workplace can leave you feeling trapped. Most people work to earn money for material needs and enjoyment. Work can also contribute to self-esteem and a sense of purpose. When you are in a toxic workplace, you can feel like your existence is being threatened, and that can cause you to retreat into survival mode.

You may stop doing the things that you enjoy, which disrupts your ability to relax and recharge. Stress increases, and you may become fixated on how to “solve the problem” of work. In my case, initially I had a hard time seeing what was really going on as I redoubled my efforts to avoid, then please, my demanding boss.

Coping with a Toxic Work Situation

Whether or not your bad work situation rises to the level of “toxic�� doesn’t really matter. If you’re finding that work has gone from enjoyable (or at least tolerable) to draining and dreadful, you can take three actions:

Do nothing and continue to endure the situation as it is,

Leave to find a better situation,

Stay and try to improve the current situation (including making changes in your own behavior, discussing the issues with someone who has the authority to effect change, such as HR or a supervisor, or other actions).

To help you decide which path you should take, here are some questions to consider:

How long has this been going on?

Is it related to a specific project or deadline? Can you see the light at the end of the tunnel? If it’s a relatively short-term situation, you may want to wait it out. The stressors may pass, and the environment may return to a state that you can tolerate or even go back to enjoying. If this is the “new normal,” you may be motivated to make a change.

What caused the change in the environment?

Was it sudden or gradual? Did the situation change due to new leadership or organizational structure, new policies, or a change in market conditions? If you can pinpoint when and where the situation started, you may be able to understand whether you can potentially change or adapt to it.

There’s a big difference between lobbying for a change to a poorly conceived policy and arresting the effects of a tanking economy. Some things you have the power to change, and some you don’t. Understanding the root and magnitude of the issues at hand is a good start.

What influence do you have over the situation?

Are those in leadership aware of the impact that the environment is having on you? How able are you to have a frank conversation about it with your boss or another person in a position of influence? Sometimes the issue is not with your boss. It could be coming from higher in the organization and your boss may have little influence on the expectations. Or it could be that your perception of what is expected is not aligned with your boss’s.

Getting clarity and bringing ideas to the table on how to do things better is often welcomed. After all, those in leadership may not fully understand the impact their decisions have on your day-to-day experience. Speaking up could result in positive changes. Give it a shot before deciding on more radical actions.

Are others in your organization having similar experiences? How are they coping?

Sharing your experiences with coworkers may help you to feel less alone. You could learn tips on how to better “manage up,” or build a coalition to influence leaders to make changes. Building alliances with fellow employees can help ensure management doesn’t perceive you as a “problem employee” in case a true structural or management problem is at the root of the issue.

Will opportunities at your organization allow you to leave the toxic work situation?

Is it your boss or department that is causing the situation, or is it a more systematic malady that exists throughout the entire organization? If the toxicity is confined to your specific department, you may decide to explore other opportunities to leverage your current organizational knowledge and network. If the toxicity is rampant throughout the organization, you may need to get out to save your health and sanity.

Is the environment unique to your organization, or is it a reality of the industry?

Can you consult people in your network at other organizations to find out? Your skills and experience may be in demand at another employer that has a better culture or is in a more favorable position in the marketplace. Getting a view of what it’s like at other companies can give you information you need to decide if you should stay, go, or try something completely new.

What does it cost you to remain in your current situation? Is your confidence waning?

How is the situation affecting your health and relationships? Sometimes people will stay in a situation for much longer than they should. It’s hard to consider leaving without another job, but sometimes it can be the best option before their relationships, health, or confidence are eroded to the point of not having the energy to look for another job.

Sometimes hanging in there can eventually lead to being fired by an unreasonable manager or pegged as the scapegoat for mistakes. Both of these scenarios can be hard to bounce back from. Though leaving a job without another job is not ideal, sometimes taking control of one’s destiny is preferable to continued suffering and abuse.

How egregious is the situation? Has it risen to the level of illegality?

Does blatant abuse, harassment, or discrimination take place? Are you able to document it? If the abuse is significant, you may consider consulting an employment attorney to explore your options. Some companies may be open to a negotiated exit, which could include a severance package.

Some employment attorneys provide free consultations, and, even if you need to pay for an hour of their time, it could be well worth the investment. Experienced attorneys often know a lot about specific employers. They may know whether your employer would negotiate or if they’ve been accused of other employment law violations. At the very least, they can advise you of your rights.

How much of this situation is based in reality and how much is your perception?

Sometimes people will label a situation “toxic” when it’s actually just uncomfortable because it requires them to develop new skills, adapt to a new structure, or learn new processes. Take a close look at yourself and ask whether your experience could be different if you responded differently.

If other people are not having issues with the situation, it could be that you need to learn some new skills to cope. It’s always helpful to get perspective on the situation. A mentor, coach, or experienced friend can sometimes help you see the bigger picture and help you decide what options you have.

What’s within Your Control?

Without going into too much detail about my role in the toxic dance with Shelly, suffice to say, initially I didn’t handle it well. As a manager, she sought to control me and I, in turn, tried to avoid her. Eventually, I realized that I would hurt myself if I didn’t begin to respect her position as my boss.

Because the department leader was in another city, he wasn’t witness to her worst behavior, and she was able to control the narrative with him. Any complaints to him from her direct reports were seen as the team getting used to the new structure.

Taking Control of What I Could

I finally woke up to the fact that I would need to proactively show my support for Shelly even if it meant I had to grit my teeth and paste a smile on my face when I checked in to say hello to her each morning. What I found was that she relaxed and actually began stopping by my office to get my opinion on things.

My job became easier, as I was no longer the target of her vitriol and frustration. Once I turned over this new leaf, I found acceptance of the situation took less energy than the resistant stance I’d previously taken. When I approached the situation differently, Shelly’s response to me changed. However, that didn’t mean she was reformed.

Shelly Finds a New Target

Unfortunately, a colleague soon became the new target for Shelly’s nitpicking and bullying. Though I knew nothing of it at the time, Shelly’s bullying of my coworker was the proverbial “last straw.” She had finally overstepped the boundaries between poor management and documented abuse (with witnesses) so that the HR department could take decisive action.

One evening as I sat in my office finishing up a project, the voicemail light on my phone suddenly blinked red. As the message played, I realized my fervent prayers had been answered. The departmental leader stated that effective immediately, Shelly was no longer employed by the organization. Shelly’s ten-month reign of chaos had ended.

Lasting Lessons from a Horrible Boss

As painful as that episode was, I am glad that I went through it. I realize that both despite and because of her poor management skills, I learned several important lessons that have served me well since then:

If you want to lead change, you need to know where you’re starting from. It’s important to understand the situation you’re entering, communicate a vision, and gain buy-in before trying to lead a change. Shelly had been hired to lead a team that was already high-performing, close-knit, and collegial. She approached the team as if it were in need of a turnaround rather than a basic tune-up, and because she neglected those steps, she met resistance. More open dialogue would have gone a long way to gaining buy-in with the team.

Regardless of the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of a supervisor, it’s imperative to respect the role. Avoiding interactions with my boss served no purpose for me or the organization, other than to make me insubordinate. It wasn’t my place to pass judgment on her effectiveness. I was also obliged to ask her for what I needed—such as reminding her to provide feedback on the projects she was reviewing so I could keep them on schedule. I needed to be fully responsible for my part of the projects, regardless of whether she was delivering on her side. Though her style was frustrating to me, I had no excuse not to keep up my work commitments or to respect her authority as my manager.

Have a contingency plan. While it wasn’t my place to judge, it would have been wise of me to take note of her lack of effectiveness and document my own actions so I could explain project delays caused by her slow review and approval of project deliverables. If there had been an accounting for why projects were not being completed on time, the blame could have easily been placed on my shoulders, even though the delay was caused by her failure to provide timely feedback. Though documentation can be time-consuming, sometimes it’s a wise insurance policy if you foresee the situation taking a bad turn.

Keep some perspective. Nothing is forever. During that time, I allowed myself to become highly stressed, and then suddenly one day, the cause of my stress (Shelly) was gone. At that moment, I realized that I’d been walking around loaded for bear, but suddenly the bear was gone. All at once, those big guns were heavy and unnecessary. At that moment, I realized that it had been my choice to be defensive and resentful. In fact, I was the cause of my own misery due to my beliefs and how I chose to respond to Shelly.

Working through personnel issues can take some time in the corporate world. HR issues are confidential and only those who need to know will be privy to what’s going on. It may seem like the abusive employee is getting a free pass and that no one in authority is taking notice when, in fact, due process may be moving along behind closed doors. For several months, as Shelly continued to bully and cause mayhem, I believed that the HR department had left me and my coworkers at the mercy of a madwoman. That’s what it felt like. I later found out that the department leader was aware of the problem and was working on a resolution with HR.

Beliefs create mind-sets, and we have control over our beliefs. This is the big takeaway—I was stressed and overwhelmed not because I had an ineffective boss but due to my own beliefs. I was capable of being happy. I could have chosen to leave work behind when I went home at the end of each day. Instead, I chose to bring the troubles home with me and whine about my situation over a few glasses of wine. When Shelly was gone in a wink, I realized I’d been resisting harder than necessary, and it felt strange when suddenly I had nothing to resist. A huge weight was lifted from my shoulders with that realization!

Working for Shelly wasn’t a pleasant time in my life, but I learned some extremely valuable lessons from her, for which I’ll be forever grateful. So, to Shelly, wherever you are, thank you for teaching me these lessons. And I hope you found your suit pants.

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About the Author: Terry Boyle McDougall is an executive coach, speaker and best-selling author of Winning the Game of Work: Career Happiness and Success on Your Own Terms. She works with managers, executives and professionals who want to draw upon their greatest, most authentic abilities to positively impact their organizations. She supports clients who are creating change, driving innovation, and navigating transitions. Terry relies on both her formal training as a coach and firsthand experience as a corporate leader to support her clients as they work towards their goals. In coaching engagements, Terry serves her clients as a partner and encourager as they break new ground; as a sounding board, supporting them as an objective listener; as a scout, who sees the larger context, their possibilities and potential; and, as a catalyst, helping to spark their commitment and action. After 30 years of corporate business experience, 15 of which were in senior managerial roles, Terry chose to become a coach to concentrate on helping leaders step fully into their potential to lead satisfying careers. Though the majority of Terry’s professional experience is in financial services and marketing, her work exposed her to a wide variety of industries, business climates and corporate transitions such as mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and restructures. Areas of leadership skills development include: Goal setting Prioritization Staff management Delegation Strategic thinking Decision making Project management Facilitating meetings Change management Effective communications Customer relations (internal/external) Onboarding & career transition She has worked with clients from: AbbVie ACCO Brands BMO BMW Chubb Ernst & Young Four Square Hyatt JLL JPMorganChase Kendra Scott MediaCom Mindshare Motorola Newsela Nuveen Univar Solutions USG Corporation Wells Fargo Zillow EDUCATION CERTIFICATIONS University of Maryland, MBA College of William & Mary, BA, Economics iPEC, Coach Certification Training ICF, Professional Certified Coach iPEC, Master Practitioner, Energy Leadership Predictive Index, Talent Optimization Partner

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[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 25/6/2019

Good MORNING  #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Tuesday 25thJune 2019. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a DailyNation Newspaper (DN).

$97M BOOST – BARBADOS’ COFFERS ARE IN for a near $100 million top-up. This is as a result of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Executive Board’s approval yesterday of this country meeting all the programme targets in the first review under the Extended Fund Facility in March. The review is part of the conditionalities of the IMF loan, which include meeting a number of fiscal targets. This approval means US$48.7 million (BDS$97.4 million) can be immediately disbursed out of the US$290 million IMF loan committed for the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme. This would bring the total disbursement of IMF funds to US$98 million.(DN)

DEFEND US –Minister of Energy and Water Resource Management Wilfred Abrahams has condemned “fake news” from unofficial sources, being used to discredit the Government.Abrahams, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Christ Church East was addressing party members attending a Barbados Labor Party (BLP) branch meeting in the constituency when he declared, “the attacks have begun”.Referencing numerous untrue social media messages about the actions and movements of cabinet Ministers, Abrahams accused power -hungry opposition forces of attempting to destabilize the Government.“A year has passed and the attacks have begun. You all would have seen the stuff circulating about the Attorney General being in Disney World and all sorts of foolishness,” Abrahams said.Instead, he explained: “The Attorney General was attending a meeting in Orlando dealing with the crime situation in the Caribbean. He was at an official meeting sanctioned by the Cabinet of Barbados. He was not out there on a frolic of his own. He was not shaking hands with Mickey Mouse, but the reports are coming in.”In response, he urged members of the BLP’s branch to defend Government’s reputation.“All I am going to tell you is that when you see those [messages], look at what is in there and reconcile that with the person that you know and you would know this is just a whole set of foolishness and fake news by a desperate set of people who are now out of power and are desperately trying to lay the ground work to get back in.“The attacks have started and you need to defend the people that you know and you believe in. You all need to defend the people that you walked around in the hot sun with and knocked on doors with and told Barbadians to vote for because you believed in them.“When people come with foolishness, do not sit down and say nothing. Represent your MP in the same way you want your MP to represent you. When you sit down and say nothing, people feel emboldened and feel that what they are saying or reading is right,” Abrahams stressed.During the Sunday night meeting, Abrahams responded to complaints from some constituents, who said their interests are being placed secondary to his ministerial portfolio.To the contrary, Abrahams argued that the country’s 27-member cabinet has been busy trying to “get Barbados working”.“Somebody recently told me, ‘Mr. Abrahams, I saw you in St. Joseph helping the people with water. I saw you in St. Thomas and St. James. I saw you during a fire at the dump…. I didn’t elect you to help them, I elected you to help me,’” the MP recalled.“The reality is that we are stretched as Ministers and MPs are trying to correct Barbados on a national level. If we don’t get Barbados working, then the constituencies are not going to work either. I am asking and pleading with you, who are my eyes and ears on the ground, to help me.”Abrahams also discussed with constituents the need for well-coordinated efforts to prepare for the possibility of hurricanes.“I would like you to keep checking on those in your area who are vulnerable, who have children and cannot feed their families. That is the sort of information I want on a continuous basis,” he said.(BT)

CALL FOR RADICAL CHANGES –OPPOSITION LEADER Bishop Joseph Atherley says it is time that several critical factors affecting Barbadians’ standard of living undergo radical reform. “We need to take a serious look at land policy in Barbados. In a circumstance of small size, we need to relook building policy. We need to review foreign land ownership privileges. "We need to re-examine the matter of land concentration in the hands of a privileged minority,” he declared during a service at First Baptist Church on Constitution Road, The City, yesterday to mark the establishment of the People’s Party for Democracy and Development (PdP). The new party, which Atherley previously said was formed last November, was officially launched on June 8.(DN)

STRAUGHN: PENSION MONEY WILL KEEP COMING –Pensioners have been reassured of the financial viability of the National Insurance Service and its ability to pay them. It has come from Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn as he spoke Saturday night at the annual awards ceremony of the National Insurance Department, which is marking its 52nd anniversary. “This department has received Government paper which will facilitate the repayment of monies owed by the Government of Barbados and ensure that the fund is no longer endangered by the kind of recklessness that obtained before,” he said during his feature address at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.(DN)

NIS CLAIMS UP SHARPLY, FINANCE MINISTER SAYS – The National Insurance Department has reported a sharp rise in claims for the first four months of the year, when compared year on year with 2018, Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn has disclosed.Straughn reported a 45 per cent increase in claims across all benefit categories, with the largest increase among claims for sickness benefits. “These statistics do not bode well for our goals of maintaining the health of the nation, and this trend does not augur well for annual expenditure projections across all benefit categories. “With respect to the increase in sickness claims submitted, steps are being taken to identify causes and have action taken to halt, slow or reverse this trend.As he spoke at the NIS’s GEM Awards Ceremony, at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, he commended the staff for diligently expediting these claims in a timely manner.“The impact of the increase in claims has been an increased workload for the staff of the department, who have been called upon to process more claims and face the increased demands of the public.“The staff’s response has been commendable, and they are keenly aware that the department is the nation’s lifeline.”In a wide-ranging speech, Straughn also said Government was working with the NIS to introduce paternity leave, as was recently announced by Prime Minister Mia Mottley.He said: “This is but one of the many social improvement strategies that the National Insurance Department will be able to extend to many a family in Barbados. “I certainly look forward to working with your board and your members of staff to be able to bring that policy to fruition in the soonest possible time.”NIS is currently collecting the Health Services Contribution payroll tax to pay for the operations of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).The NIS, he said, had been partly responsible for tens of thousands of dollars being distributed to the QEH since late 2018.Straughn said: “This funding will contribute to a substantially higher standard of healthcare in the country. “In addition, the improvement of primary care in the island’s polyclinics, through the implementation of a 24-hour service at a number of polyclinics, improved security and an improved staffing complement will add to this multi-pronged approach of strengthening the health of the nation, one Barbadian at a time.” = The Minister gave the assurance that Government was committed to ensuring the National Insurance Scheme was “never again” jeopardised by the actions of a few.He said that since the beginning of the IMF-sponsored economic restructuring plan the Mia Mottley administration had committed to staying current on paying NIS contributions to workers, and had put in place a structure for recouping the Government’s own unpaid contribution to the NIS over the last several years.“The department has received Government paper which will facilitate the repayment of monies owed by the Government of Barbados and ensure that the fund is no longer endangered,” Straughn said. NIS Database Administrator Christopher Cox was awarded Employee of the Year, while the Director’s Award was presented to Claudette Moore and the Supervisor of the Year title went to Lisa Wood.  Gloria Haynes, who worked 40 years at the department, received one of the many long service awards.(BT)

FLOW GRANTS LEAVE FOR MEN AT CHILD’S BIRTH –Men working at Flow are now entitled to paternity leave, while women would be getting an extra month of maternity leave.This is because Barbados’ leading telecommunications provider has unveiled a groundbreaking parental leave policy for all full-time staff.Officially introduced on June 1, employees of Flow can now look forward to benefitting from paid maternity leave of 16 weeks and paid paternity leave of eight weeks.The new policy, which was developed by parent company Liberty Latin America, will also provide paid leave to employees following the birth of a child via surrogacy.Thirty-eight-year-old Flow employee Janelle Waterman, the first worker to benefit from the extra month maternity leave, said she was looking forward to spending those extra weeks home with her three-month-old son Chance who she described as a bubbly, peaceful child who only cries when he is hungry.“I am back at work now, but I can’t wait to be back home, spending time with him. You see when we do the 12 weeks; you have to try to wean the baby off of breast-feeding from very early to prepare him for when you come back out to work. And, you miss a lot of important developments in the baby’s life. So an extra month for me, feels great,” she said.Waterman explained that returning to work after a three-month maternity leave after the birth of her first child, was tiring because her body was just not ready to be thrown back into work, especially since she was a first-time mom.“So I think this is great. I think that other companies should join with Flow and give this to the parents,” the Flow employee of four years who works in the Quality Assurance Department said.“Evolving our parental leave policy, quite simply, is the right thing to do,” said Kerry Scott, Chief People Officer, Liberty Latin America.“We recognize that diversity drives success, and family dynamic and structures have changed. Our new policy demonstrates our commitment to a culture of diversity and inclusion and one that puts our people at the heart of our success,” Scott added.Meanwhile, Jensen Sylvester, Country Manager of Flow Barbados welcomed the new policy and described it as a seminal moment for the company.“As a business leader, I’m very proud that we’ve introduced such an innovative and progressive policy. Equally, as a father myself, I know the value of creating special moments with your newborn, so I’m proud to be part of an organisation that truly values its people,” Sylvester said.“The same way we create moments that matter for our customers each day, we also want our team members to enjoy the special moments in their life and there’s nothing more special than the birth of a child. It’s initiatives such as this that make us one team and demonstrates our unique company culture,” Sylvester added.Flow’s Corporate Communitions and Public Relations Manager Marilyn Sealy said that Flow implemented the parental leave policy because it was the right thing to do.“We would have had parents, mothers and fathers who would have gone off on leave and they would have wanted more time to be with their children before coming back out to work, and our parent company Liberty Latin America recognizes this.“This policy puts our people at the heart of our success.”(BT)

RAISE THE AGE LIMIT –President of the Barbados Road Safety Association (BRSA) Sharmane Roland-Bowen has renewed her call for the age limit for the purchase of alcohol to be raised. The road safety advocate this time is calling on Government to raise the age limit to 18, saying 16 was much too young.She first made the call three years ago to the then Democratic Labour Party (DLP) administration, but at the time suggested it be moved to 21.However, addressing a media conference on Monday to launch the BRSA’s annual campaign against drunk driving, Roland-Bowen said as Government makes changes to the process of obtaining a liquor licence under the Liquor Licence Act, it should also consider increasing the age limit.“The Barbados Road Safety Association is making an appeal to Government to rethink and seriously consider the minimum age allowed for persons at the young and tender age of 16 to purchase alcohol in this country,” said Roland-Bowen.“The BRSA is making a recommendation to this new administration that one of those changes be raising the minimum age to purchase alcohol to 18 years old,” she said, adding that if Government cared about the young people it would “do everything within its power to save and reduce potential harm to those vulnerable persons in our society”.She also called on Government to move with haste to implement the promised breathalyzer testing.“What is currently preventing the training of our police officers in the utilization and administration of the breathalyzer devices along with the needed refresher training in drink drive laws?” asked Roland-Bowen.Adding that training for the use of the devices could be carried out over a two-day period, Roland-Bowen said: “Why up to this time is there no form of educational campaigns conducted by the Ministry of Transport and Works to inform the public of the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol and how the breathalyzer testing will be conducted in an effort to deter and to increase compliance with this new regulation?”Stating that she was concerned about the delay, Roland-Bowen said she hoped it was not a case where Government was changing its mind on introducing the measure.In November last year, 12-months after the Road Traffic Act was amended to accommodate the breathalyzer testing, then acting permanent secretary in the Ministry of Transport Mark Cummins reported that stakeholders were meeting and getting ready to implement the measure.At the time, Cummins said once the number of breathalyzer testing devices needed were confirmed they would be ordered and training would be carried out.However, Government is yet to say if the training was done or when that section of the law would be enforced.The island recorded 27 road fatalities from 25 accidents last year. However, it is not known how many, or if any, of those accidents were as a result of individuals driving under the influence.“This is a critical time, the devices are here, the law is here and the police officers are here, but still no enforcement of this law through the testing of impaired drivers especially at such critical time of the year – the Crop Over season,” said Roland-BowenShe said while she welcomed the paved roadways and patching of several potholes across the island, “things need to start happening that will make our roads safer”.In relation to the association’s 2019 drunk driving campaign, which is being held in association with Banks Holdings Limited (BHL) under the theme Designate One, Roland-Bowen said the initiative was intended to encourage individuals to appoint someone to drive them prior to going out to parties this Crop Over season.She explained that a designated driver should be someone who would not consume any alcohol prior to, during or after a party.Residents will have an opportunity to win several prizes this year during the campaign, which runs until the end of the Crop Over season in August.(BT)

BOARD WARNS COMMUTERS ABOUT FAKE SMART CARDS – Unknown perpetrators have begun to photocopy the Transport Board’s Travel Smart Cards and the police may soon get involved. Acting general manager Lynda Holder said they had recorded a few instances of counterfeit cards up to yesterday, when a man brought in a $32 card without the board’s security features. “There has been an influx of counterfeit Travel Smart tickets in the public domain and the Transport Board is urging commuters to be vigilant. Authentic Travel Smart tickets are laminated and can be easily identified by their watermarked logo and the embossed seal of the Transport Board,” she said.(DN)

NO LIAT TALKS YET – Within the next two weeks Barbados is hoping to start negotiations with Antigua and Barbuda regarding the sale of its LIAT shares. So says Barbados’ lead negotiator Attorney General Dale Marshall, who has revealed that Government is currently awaiting word from the regional airline carrier on when those negotiations can be held. Earlier this month and amid much speculation, Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced in Parliament that Barbados would be giving up its majority ownership of LIAT to Antigua and Barbuda. She however did not disclose if Government would be selling its entire 49.4 per cent stake in the cash-strapped regional airline. Antigua and Barbuda is the second largest shareholder with 34 per cent ownership of the airline which serves 15 Caribbean destinations with almost 500 flights. Speaking to members of the media today, Marshall said he was hopeful he would be able to meet with authorities from Antigua and Barbuda before the start of next month’s 40th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government. “Negotiations have not commenced yet. We indicated to LIAT dates that were convenient for us a few weeks back and they didn’t respond. “We’re now trying to see if we can get those negotiations commenced next week. We’ve sent another communication to LIAT to say that we’re available next week and next weekend and we can jump right into it and we’re once more waiting for them to respond to say whether it can be accommodated or not,” Marshall said. “But we’re hoping that before the Heads’ conference, July 3 to 6, that the negotiations would have begun in earnest.” Mottley has maintained that Barbados simply was not in a financial position to support LIAT due to the country’s current economic position and as a result had made a decision to “take a step back”. Suggesting that the regional airline was in a need of an overhaul, the Prime Minister promised Barbados would continue to support intra-regional travel. “The current model which LIAT has within the 1974 Limited is not an attractive model and what is needed is significant restructuring. Indeed a new model of governance, a new financial model and a new operational model in order for it to be able to extract greater benefits and provide the services which it does,” Mottley said at the time.(BT)

RESIDENT WATCHES ‘SHOULD TEAM UP’ FOR NATIONAL SECURITY – Local neighbourhood watch programmes and residents associations were urged to unite in the interest of national security.Radio journalist Stetson Babb, speaking as chairman of the Graeme Hall Residents’ Association and Neighbourhood Watch,  made the call as the new body launched at the Maurice King Sports Complex on Sunday.Crime in the Graeme Hall area has been low over the years, Babb said, but he told the modest gathering that no citizen is excluded from the ongoing scourge of crime and violence. In the presence of nearly a dozen police officers, Babb encouraged residents not to view the worst and most violent manifestations of society as only limited to certain individuals and communities. “Barbados is too small for that, too interconnected and too interrelated.“I propose that we seek to establish a national coalition of residence associations and neighbourhood watches that don’t just function as disparate entities, but as a network of active and activist communities that shall support and assist law enforcement and be a catalyst for initiatives at the national level that build strong, positive communities.”While promoting the Graeme Hall Neighbourhood Watch as being integral in pursuing the residents’ common interest, he insisted that the nation’s economic and societal challenges required a collective anti-crime response. Babb said: “We cannot and must not import and copy the worst values and attitudes of other places. We must cooperate with, aid and assist the authorities in the fight not just to solve crime but also to prevent crime. “Each of us, accepting our individual responsibility as citizens to act, to assist and contribute and not be made bystanders. That is the call to duty for each of us today as residents of Graeme Hall and beyond, but also as residents of a nation.“Beyond any economic turbulence or fiscal challenges, is a crisis of culture and values that represents an existential threat to our traditional ways of life. This was traditionally characterised by an abiding commitment to and respect for the value of life, decency, honesty, thrift and hard work.” The veteran journalist and Graeme Hall resident also pledged the community’s support to the “agencies of the state, including and especially the RBPF”, whose vital work, he said, must be assisted by right-thinking Barbadians.RBPF Superintendent Elfine Moore meanwhile underscored the central role of community policing in the fight against crime and disorder and praised Graeme Hall residents for their commitment.She said: “I am honoured to be among you and it gives me great pleasure to know that you are launching your neighbourhood watch. Kudos to you, this is one of the better decisions you have made in the group.”(BT)

‘STOP, FRISK’ TO FIGHT CRIME – A former detective is advising the police to step up its stop-and-search tactic in a bid to drive down the wave of violent crime And Valman Thompson has suggested bringing soldiers into the act “if we need to”, as he spoke at the launch of a new anti-marijuana pressure group. “I am not saying that we have to go so far as bringing in soldiers to help us, but I am saying that if we need to we should. “But I think it is time for the police force to step up and do more stop-and-search and go into those areas where we see that there is a hype and use of this marijuana drugs in Barbados,” he recommended. Thompson, who spent 18 years in the force until 2009, put forward the suggestion on Monday as he threw his support behind the newly-launched Coalition For a Safe, Healthy and Productive Barbados at a media conference at the Co-operators General Insurance office. The coalition has been introduced primarily to educate residents about the dangers of using marijuana should a referendum be held on the use of the weed for recreational purposes. A date is yet to be announced. Thompson recalled that during his police career, most of which was spent as a detective at the Central Police Station, he gathered information that suggested that most crimes on the island were as a result of the illicit drug trade. He said: “I used to be in the Orleans, Chapman Lane, and all around The City areas, and the majority of these areas you go where fellows are smoking the marijuana. After smoking the marijuana you see the effects. “Some of them become very slow, then some get in the habit of begging… and they start stealing and committing crimes just to get money to buy drugs, or they get involved in some other illegal activity – the bad behaviours that are taking over the entire communities and then you have this block culture.” He continued: “A lot of the crimes people say were due to when they get high…or they commit these crimes to get money to buy the drugs.” So far, there have been 30 murders this year, two more than in all of 2018. And while authorities have been giving the assurance that they were doing all they could to combat this scourge, there have been increasing concerns from residents and tourism industry figures. Thompson told reporters there was currently a school of thought that there is a link between the high murder rate and “the drug culture in this country”. He insisted: “Some people are saying ‘no, it is not a drug culture’, but if you check it carefully the majority of them have some relation or link to drugs in this country. I know the police force has a rough time to deal with the drug.” But recalling that the late Inspector Anderson Bowen would mount regular stop-and-search operations both day and night, as well as carry out search warrants “at places that we know used to have these drugs”, Thompson suggested the time had come to get back to those methods. On the proposal to hold a referendum for the recreational use of marijuana, the coalition’s members said they were concerned that this could lead to even more crimes, road fatalities, and even more children using or being affected by people around them using. Reverend Paul Leacock of the First Baptist Church, a member of the coalition, told journalists while he could not speak on behalf of all churches in Barbados, he believed several questions must be answered before a referendum for the recreational use of marijuana was even considered. He questioned if the country had a social safety net to cater to any “fallout”, the manpower in the form of psychologists and psychiatrists, and if there would be changes to the education system in relation to duties of teachers and the number of guidance counsellors to handle any impacts. Leacock also questioned if the island’s lone psychiatric hospital was capable of handling any likely increase in the number of patients from marijuana usage or if the island was prepared for any loss in people from the labour force. “These are just a few of the questions that need to be raised, and if we as ministers of the gospel are interested in the well-being of our people, which we are, we have to ask. “We ask them so that those responsible for policy formation may do so and be aware that we are interested, and that we want to see the good of our people and of our land.”(BT)

NO BACKDOOR BUSINESS – A new campaign group, opposed to the eventual legalisation of marijuana use, was launched on Monday, issuing a sharp warning to patients to source medical cannabis drugs through legal channels.Pharmacist Paul Gibson, a member of the Coalition For a Safe, Healthy and Productive Barbados, declared there were already several individuals engaging in “suitcase trade” in medical cannabis and urged the Ministry of Health to police cannabis-based drugs entering the island.He was speaking at a media conference at the Co-operators General Insurance on Monday, where the Barbados Road Safety Association (BRSA) officially introduced the coalition along with its annual campaign against drink driving.Gibson, a former president of the Barbados Pharmaceutical Society, said he was gravely concerned that individuals were sneaking items into the country without knowing if the contents were legit.He said: “We are suggesting that we, through the Ministry of Health, continue to manage the gate of entry. I want to warn Barbadians of something – everybody is starting to bring in these oils illegally or illicitly, through different ports of entry, suitcase trade, post offices and so on.” The pharmacist was unable to say exactly how widespread was the alleged suitcase trade in products containing Cannabidiol, the marijuana-derived substance sought for its medicinal properties. But he said he was “mindful that this is something that is happening a lot and we have to be very careful of it because you are not sure what you are getting”.Just last month, while announcing that five medical cannabis products were to be added to the national drug formulary, Minister of Health and Wellness Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic revealed that some food stores and health shops were already selling items containing cannabis extract.Besides a hefty fine, Gibson warned today that there were other consequences associated with using medical cannabis products that were not prescribed by a medical doctor here and that were not purchased through the correct channels.He said: “How do you know that the content in those brown bottles are what they say they are? You have absolutely no way of knowing that somebody went on a high-quality computer, printed a label, stuck it on a bottle and sent it here to you. We really don’t know.“We are also warning persons, do not engage in the use of cannabinoids that are being sold across the country. There is a fine of $250,000 for it. It is not authorized and you are not sure what you are getting. You really could be getting anything in those bottles. Because it is popular people want to jump onboard [but] we are urging people to be very careful.“There is also the issue of being poisoned. You don’t know what is in some of these things. This is a grave concern.” Through the coalition that was officially introduced, the BRSA is advocating its opposition to legalisation of marijuana for recreational use in Barbados.The  Labour Party administration has already promised that while laws would be changed to accommodate the implementation of a medical cannabis industry, a referendum would be taken to determine if the country should go the route of legalizing a certain amount of the weed for recreational or sacramental use.President of the BRSA, Sharmane Roland-Bowen, a vocal critic of marijuana use, said she believed the medical cannabis introduction was “a strategy” to “soften the attitude of persons before they go about implementing recreational marijuana use”.As such, she said the coalition was established to educate Barbadians on the use of the drug, adding that no facts would be held back.“It is therefore in the interest of the public that any decision, either for or against, be carefully considered with all the information on the dangers associated with this form of use of this drug,” she said.The alliance is made up of the BRSA, and representatives from among private Public Service Vehicle (PSV) owners, the pharmaceutical society and the Church. (BT)

GOING LEGIT – Legislation could soon be coming to put an end to accused persons sitting in jail for prolonged periods without a court hearing. Three weeks after it was revealed Winston Agard had spent seven years in HMP Dodds without attending a court hearing, Attorney General Dale Marshall said he was pushing to have Criminal Procedure Rules put in place. The 50-year-old Agard, who had been charged for theft of a handbag and its contents, only appeared in court after a prison officer highlighted his plight to the relevant authorities. He was subsequently given bail to return for sentencing. While describing Agard’s situation as “unfortunate” Marshall said measures needed to be introduced to ensure there was no possibility of such a recurrence. “That was an anomaly, an embarrassment to our country, but it is not a state of affairs that you would consider to be rife. But the important thing is that we have to take steps to make sure if they are any others in the system, that we deal with them immediately,” the Attorney General maintained. “We are now considering the passing of Criminal Procedure Rules which will help to codify all of the arrangements that have to be made in respect of those things. I expect to be able to move to Cabinet within the next few weeks and seek their permission to put rules in place. We already have some draft rules under consideration but I think that piece-by-piece, we’re going to get all of those things ready.” The Attorney General said once he became aware of Agard’s case, he spoke to Minister of Home Affairs Edmund Hinkson who subsequently provided him with a list of persons on remand at HMP Dodds for two years, as well as persons on remand for over six months. He said both lists had been provided to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for review. Marshall said initiatives were already in place to address similar issues in the short term. He pointed to the recent move by Justice Randall Worrell, who suspended matters in his court to hear the status of some prisoners on remand and their intentions. “Judge Worrell has begun a process that we had actually agreed on in a meeting that I had with himself representing the High Court Criminal Bench and the private bar and also the DPP. We sat down and we looked seriously at the issue of what structures we could put in place in an administrative way to get people down to deal with bail issues,” the Attorney General said. “Often people will apply for bail, but when they get to court they say to the judge ‘Well Sir I didn’t really want bail, I just wanted an opportunity to come to court to plead guilty’, but that is not a feature of our system.” Marshall said he believed the backlog in the judicial system would eventually be relieved once these systems were put in place. However, he admitted it would not happen overnight. “When we add new Criminal Procedure Rules to additional High Court judges, it is a slow process, but I think we’re moving in the right direction,” he said. (BT)

BRITISH BACKLASH OVER DEATH – The United Kingdom Government has announced that it will be complaining to the Mia Mottley Administration for local heart specialist Dr Alfred Sparman, following the recent death of a British citizen at his privately-run clinic here. The issue was debated in the British Parliament last Thursday after being introduced by Member of Parliament Alec Shelbrooke whose father-in-law Gordon Spencer died at the Sparman Clinic on February 13 this year, 26 days after his arrival for treatment. Under-Secretary for Transport, Minister Nusrat Ghani said the matter would be taken up by her Government and relayed to the Barbadian authorities. Minister Ghani was responding to Member of Parliament Colonel Bob Stewart who intervened during her speech and stated: How can we actually allow this man to be continuing to do his work in Barbados? What can the British Government do to stop it? Are we going to report the man to the Barbadian Government? And are we actually going to complain about the way the port agent dealt with this case? Because actually, that’s something that I believe is very practical and might stop another family going through the hell that the Shelbrooke family have been through.” The Minister assured the MP that the since the matter was raised on the floor of Parliament it would be reflected in all the government agencies “and I do not doubt for one moment that this message would be reaching Barbados, especially once the meeting takes place with the IMO (International  Maritime Organisation) as well.” She pledged to immediately lobby the IMO to change the law to ensure that passengers are sent to a “fit and proper” facility and that cruise ships carry out their duty of care to make sure such action is taken on behalf of their patients. Due to possible future legal issues, Barbados TODAY is constrained from going into the details of the circumstances surrounding the death at the Sparman Clinic. However, MP Shelbrooke informed the British Parliament that his father-in-law became ill with a chest infection and cough while on a cruise with his wife Jackie. “Jackie took Gordon to the ship’s doctor who diagnosed double pneumonia and high blood pressure and started treatment through antibiotics. The doctor also performed…tests and categorically confirmed that Gordon did not have a heart attack,” he told the parliamentary debate which was streamed on Facebook. Shelbrooke also quoted the ship’s doctor as saying that Gordon “was improving at the point of medical disembarkation.” The parliamentarian also criticized the port agent in Barbados for referring the patient to a private clinic when the nearby Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) was the preferred primary acute care public medical facility for visitors based on a 2013 report which he quoted entitled: Caring for non-residents in Barbados, authored by the Medical Tourism Research Group. “Within the Caribbean, Barbados is regarded as a favourite destination for regional patients, particularly for those smaller islands lacking advanced diagnostic and treatment facilities and a capacity to offer to treat high-risk patients,” the MP cited the report as saying. “It goes on to say the Queen Elizabeth Hospital serves as the main referral hospital for the entire Eastern Caribbean. Consultants at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital have the ability to admit private patients, such as ill vacationers not covered by the island’s public health system.” He added: “Therefore Mr Deputy Speaker, on Friday the 18 January, with a major hospital available just two miles away from the port with an 86-year-old man with double pneumonia, who according to the ship’s doctor, was improving at the point of medical disembarkation, the port agent in Bridgetown decided to send Gordon to the privately-run Sparman Clinic some three miles away from the port which is owned and operated by Dr Alfred Sparman.” When contacted late tonight, Dr Sparman promised to get back to Barbados TODAYwith a comment but up to the time of publication there had been no response.(BT)

SPONSORS SCAMMED – Efforts to defraud people in the north using a sponsored card earned a 21-year-old man a mere $9 and his first criminal conviction. The dishonest actions of Shakeel Ricardo Antonio Alleyne, of Bedford Lane, Roebuck Street, St Michael will also cost him a $350 fine. The amount must be paid in one month or he will spend three months at Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds. Police went to Queen’s Street, Speightstown on Saturday after receiving information that Alleyne was asking persons for donations on a sponsored card. On arrival he was taken into custody and during a search to which he consented, the card was found tucked in his waist. A further probe revealed that the card was a copy and Allyene had not been given permission to collect the funds. When asked to account for it he admitted to police that he collected the donations for his personal use but denied manufacturing the copy. Alleyne explained to Chief Magistrate Christopher Birch today that he was travelling on a bus when he found the card and concealed it since he knew who it belonged to. “I asked three people for a sponsor and get $9 . . .  . I concealed the sheet . . . and the police came soon after. I concealed the sheet because I was on probation. I get sentenced to community service,” Alleyne said. He denied being “a person in need”. The Chief Magistrate chided him for preying on the charity of others. “When someone genuinely comes to get a sponsor the person is going to think twice because they will think they are like you. When they hear about this – thieves and vagabonds – they will not be willing to open their wallets because of people like you.“You were given a break but you can’t get a second break. All of that for nothing,” the Chief Magistrate told Alleyne before imposing the fine.(BT)

TEEN MUST FOLLOW RULES –Restrictions on Internet use and other house rules are apparently causing trouble at a St Lucy residence. Sixteen-year-old Misael Melero-Ramirez, of No. 40 Aqua Avenue, Husbands Development, St Lucy appeared before Chief Magistrate Christopher Birch today charged with unlawfully damaging a motorcar belonging to Ambrose Johnson – his stepfather. The two live at the same residence and prosecutor Station Sergeant Peter Barrow informed the Chief Magistrate that tensions there have been ongoing. However, the stepfather said he did not wish for the secondary school student to be remanded to HMP Dodds “at this time” once he gave the assurance that he will follow his rules until the two appear before the District ‘E’ Magistrates’ Court on June 27 where the case will be heard. “There are some matters that need to be addressed . . . [and] he has some issues he needs to deal with,” Johnson told the court. Melero-Ramirez was not required to plead to the charge but admitted “I have caused some problems in my house . . . because of some restrictions . . . [pertaining] to the Internet.” The Chief Magistrate made it clear to the teen that he was a child and as such did not make the rules under his stepfather’s roof. “Your end of the bargain is to be obedient. You don’t like it, fair enough. The world is not fair. The faster you get that through your head the better you will be . . . until you are 18. “He restricts the Internet, so what?” Birch questioned, even as he warned the teen to “button your lip and humble your self.” The teen replied: “I tried to behave a little better than I used to. The restrictions are still there . . . . I could not contact my friends . . . . The car was taken away . . . . It ended up being very stressful at home.” However, the Chief Magistrate told him he had a fast and profound decision to make – either adhere to the rules or be remanded at Dodds. “I accept the deal. I promise I will keep my word,” the teen said before he was granted $1,000 bail with one surety.(BT)

MOTORCYCLIST MUST PAY $2,000 IN FINES – When Abdullah Akoojee realised that law enforcement officers were driving behind his unlicensed motorcycle he “panicked” and took them on a chase from St James to St Michael. The 22-year-old cashier from King Street, St Michael was riding the motorcycle around 4:58 p.m. yesterday when police who were on duty along Prior Park Road observed he did not have a rear number plate. As they continued to follow, Akoojee looked back and on seeing the officers, speeded up and drove in the direction of the traffic lights, at Hinds Hill Road, which indicated that he should stop but he never did. Station Sergeant Peter Barrow said police turned on the siren and followed Akoojee onto Grenville Way where he again failed to stop at another traffic sign. He then proceeded on to St Stephens Hill, Grazettes Main Road and Pembroke Road where his motorcycle and the police vehicle collided. Investigations by police discovered that he did not have any insurance or licence and was not registered with the licencing authority. “Officer I know I was wrong. I got frighten and panic and that is why I ain’t stop. I was planning to pay the insurance and the tax next Wednesday,” Akoojee allegedly told police when he was detained. He was charged for not having insurance or a licence as well as driving without a rear or front licence plate, failing to comply with a traffic sign, failing to draw his vehicle as close to the left as possible and not stopping at the sound of the police siren as well as proceeding beyond the stop line on a carriageway. When Akoojee appeared before Chief Magistrate Christopher Birch today he pleaded guilty to all the traffic offences. For proceeding beyond the stop line on the carriageway he was fined $500 to be paid in two months or two months in prison. For failing to stop at the sound of the siren, a fine in the sum of $500 in three months or two months in prison was imposed. Akoojee’s lack of insurance will cost him $1,000 in two months or two months in prison. He was convicted, reprimanded and discharged on all the other offences except the charge of failing to comply with a stop sign for which he was reprimanded and discharged. All licences held by Akoojee for any other vehicles have also been suspended for a year.  He must hand those licences in to the District ‘C’ St Matthias Magistrates’ Court by 9:30 a.m. tomorrow. (BT)

GIRL SENT TO GIS – The island’s top magistrate today chastised four female minors telling them that their focus should be on school at this time and not on “having your names appear on charge sheets”. Chief Magistrate Christopher Birch scolded the 14-year-olds this afternoon in the District ‘C’ St Mathias Magistrates’ Court where they appeared on several assault charges. They were not required to enter pleas. The four, all students from the St Michael area, was sent to the Government Industrial School (GIS) after a probation officer gave Birch a brief school report on them. “They have not been in school long enough to be getting into fights. The only fights they have are with the books. That’s the only fight that they should be having, getting into their education, wrestling that knowledge down to the ground and making sure that . . . they get some good grades that is the only fighting that they should be getting into,” the Chief Magistrate said. The probation officer also informed the judicial officer that in one case threats are being made via social media involving a parent. “They certainly should not be involved in any social media feuding, aided and abetted by the parent. That is not what our taxpayers’ monies are paying for.” Birch went on to tell the accused teens they should be mindful of their other actions as anything captured on social media was permanent. “You’ll be 20 years down the road and it is still there to be seen when you go to apply for community college, the polytechnic and the university. When you all go to jobs, some officious and ill-minded person will bring it back up. Are you all learning nothing from all that has happened with other people?” He said at this stage in their life the focus should on pending examinations and summer vacation. “All of you at 14 should be getting ready for your first round of school-based assessments, for your CXC’s not having your names appear on charge sheets. “At 14 you should be getting ready to enjoy your summer vacation. It’s very hard to enjoy summer vacation when you are at the Government Industrial School. “I find that a lot of us in this society aren’t thinking ahead of the consequences. We only think of actions in the moment. Words, blows, bullets – three things that once you throw them out there they do not come back,” the concerned Chief Magistrate stated before remanding the girls to the GIS until Wednesday, June 26. They will appear before the Juvenile court judge on that day.(BT)

DOUBLE DEATH AGONY –The desperate cries for help from 82-year-old Barbara Forde from inside her burning home will forever haunt the residents of 1st Avenue, Alleyne’s Land, Bush Hall, St Michael. Late Saturday night, Forde’s timber and concrete house, which she shared with her 53-year-old son Carlton Forde, was destroyed by fire. They both perished in the blaze, the origin of which remains unknown. When a DAILY NATION team visited the neighbourhood yesterday, the scent of smoke still lingered in the air, the charred remains of Carlton’s white taxi remained at the scene, and the solemn looks on the faces of many of the neighbours told the tale of the tragedy that took place just hours before.(DN)

INJURED RUSSELL OUT OF CUP – West Indies lost their gamble with Andre Russell’s fitness on Monday when the injury-plagued all-rounder was forced out of their beleaguered World Cup campaign after failing to recover from a long-standing knee injury. The injury-plagued 31-year-old managed just four games of West Indies’ six outings in somewhat of a farcical experiment and will now be replaced by batsman Sunil Ambris, who was a part of the side’s pre-tournament camp in Southampton last month. Russell’s withdrawal comes as little surprise despite West Indies’ insistence he would continue to feature in the World Cup campaign.(DN)

SPRINT DOUBLE FOR JACKSON – THERE WERE a few sparks but no real fireworks as no-one blazed the track at the National Stadium on Sunday night’s low-keyed finale of the National Athletics Championships. Ariel Jackson completed the women’s sprint double and it was redemption for Burkheart Ellis, but there were no additional qualifiers for upcoming meets even though some athletes were a heartbeat away. The 24-year-old Jackson sped to victory in 23.91 seconds, edging fellow United States-based athlete Lisa-Ann Barrow (23.93) in their 200 metres home stretch duel. With Mario Burke, Ramon Gittens and Shane Brathwaite missing, Burkheart Ellis easily retained his Men’s 200 title in 20.79 seconds beating fellow United States-based sprinter Brandon Parris (20.89) and Nicholas Deshong (21.32).(DN)

HUSBANDS LANDS TRIPLE WINS – Veteran Patrick Husbands reminded his rivals he was still a force to be reckoned with at the Woodbine track when he reeled off a triple on Saturday’s 10-race card. The Barbadian ace jockey, who turned 46 last month, won with 4-1 bet Rosemere in race two, partnered with another 4-1 choice Winandyourin to capture race three before taking race seven with 3-1 bet Bet On Mike. The outing once again reiterated Husbands’ return to full fitness following a couple of recent surgeries to rectify injuries sustained in a bad fall last November. A seven-time Woodbine champion, Husbands opened his account in a 6-½ furlong sprint when he guided the four-year-old brown filly Rosemere to a length win over the three-year-old and upward fillies and mares. He forced the pace set by Adelle’s Princess before duelling with Silent Mistake and then grabbing the lead in the upper stretch. Husbands followed up when he made all the running with bay filly Winandyourin to beat the three-year-olds over seven furlongs, reaching the wire a length clear. And his third win of the day came in another 6-½ furlong trip when he partnered with five-year-old bay gelding Bet On Mike to dismiss the three-year-olds and upward by a length.(BT)

GRYNNER TO BE ‘KING OF SPRING GARDEN HIGHWAY’ ON SATURDAY – Government has finally released details of plans to honour seven-time Road Marchwinner, Mighty Grynner, after details leaked in a viral social media photo.Grynner – real name MacDonald Blenman – is to stake a permanent claim to the title of ‘king of the road’ with the renaming of the Spring Garden Highway as the Mighty Grynner Highway on Saturday, it has been announced.A sign bearing the new name was briefly installed and later taken down after the photos prompted a wave of congratulation and speculation.A lavish unveiling ceremony is to be held at the mile-long tarmac stretch’s junction with the Exmouth Corner. A monument designed by two-time Crop Over Festival Designer of the Year, Kevin Small is to be erected on the highway and three signposts with the new name are be installed along the stretch, it was revealed.The event which is to be streamed live, is to feature live performances from the Red Boyz Band, of which the Mighty Grynner was a founding member, as well as the Royal Barbados Police Force Band, the Barbados Defence Force Band, the St Leonard’s 100 Boys Choir and a cast of noted Barbadian calypsonians who are to to honour the revered calypso stalwart.Minister of the Creative Economy and Culture John King in unveiling plans to journalists at a news conference today,stressed that cultural practitioners should be recognised and honoured by the public before they die.“The time has come when Barbadians and Barbados must celebrate people when they are alive and not wait until they are on the other side and then talk about how great they are.”Grynner has claimed fame from the early 1970s with hits such as Crop Over Bacchanal, Ah Coming, Leggo I Hand and most recently, Turn On De Speaker and King O’ De Stage.The veteran calypsonian-turned-culture Minister contended that the 78-year-old legend has waved “the flag for Barbadian calypso” over years.King said: “I remember in the early eighties and late seventies there were not a lot of people recording music and you could depend on Grynner to provide you with that infectious music that everybody wanted to dance to and touring with him you could see the respect and love that he would gather from people all over the diaspora.”The Ministry of Information is to disseminate all updates on road closures and traffic diversions via social media, and on radio and television for the two-hour ceremony, which begins at 4:30 p.m. (BT)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 189 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles# dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

[theconservativebrief]

For 60 years, Toys R Us was a company that offered full-time employment with benefits. It was a place where many made careers, spending decades as salespeople or cashiers who were able to provide for their families and also save money for retirement.

But, in 2005, things changed. Private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Bain Capital and real estate company Vornado Realty Trust bought the company, saddling it with so much debt it started slimming down, eliminating positions and cutting back on benefits. With so much money going toward interest payments, it had little left to invest in the upgrades it needed to keep up with the times. In March 2018, the company announced it would liquidate all of its U.S. stores as part of its bankruptcy process, offering none of the more than 30,000 people losing their jobs severance pay.

It’s rare that laid off employees become more than an obscure number in a headline, but the Toys R Us severance debacle garnered national attention. In a time when workers have little leverage and unionization is at an all time low, it helped bring focus and urgency to a growing movement to protect the retail labor force.

Retail jobs have become a backbone of the American economy. In early 2015, retail salespersons and cashiers were the most common jobs. The so-called retail apocalypse, which last year saw the closure of nearly 7,000 stores, thinned the ranks, but there are still nearly 16 million people who work in the industry.

Still, these jobs are also a bellwether of how precarious work has become. Retail workers’ schedules usually change week to week and they often don’t find them out until a week or less in advance. Some are asked to be ready to work at virtually any moment. Many don’t get enough hours to be full-time employees and therefore don’t get benefits like health insurance. Pay is paltry. In a national survey of 1,000 retail employees, only 8 percent had a full-time job that paid at least $15 an hour and offered them health insurance and some paid time off.

Retail employees are now reeling from the effects of technology — a shift to online shopping driven by Amazon alongside automated checkouts — as well as disruption from Wall Street investors like private equity firms that have left a trail of bankruptcies in their wake. Corporate consolidation has reduced the number of retailers, which has been found to keep pay down across the economy. Retail “really tells a story around what’s happening in America” and “the forces that are transforming people’s lives,” said Andrea Dehlendorf, co-director of OUR Walmart, a union-backed organization that helped organize the mega retailer’s employees.

So a new campaign, dubbed Rise Up Retail, had launched to fight for decent pay, predictable schedules, and stability for the country’s million-strong retail workforce.

“What Rise Up Retail’s about first and foremost is about good jobs that can support your family in today’s economy,” said Carrie Gleason, policy director of OUR. “Second, it’s about having some kind of voice and taking on these big corporations.”

Pilar Barragan has spent most of her working life in retail, starting over a decade ago when she got her first job at the age of 16 at a gift shop on a quiet main street in Missouri. “I really enjoyed it,” she recalled. Then the recession hit hard and after seven years of existence, the store disappeared.

In more recent years, the industry that offered her an easy path into work has led her into more unsettling territory. She worked stints at Michael’s and Office Max, but when she saw that Walmart offered higher pay, she decided to take a job there. Her hourly pay may have been higher, but she was thrown into the deep end with little training and an ever-changing schedule.

Then she got a job at JCPenney in late 2016. She was supposed to be trained to eventually become a manager, but her supervisor kept putting the training off. In March she was brought into her supervisor’s office and told that the company was “restructuring” and eliminating her position. The brand would eventually announce that it was closing 138 stores.

Reached for comment, JCPenney would not speak to “individual associate HR activities” but said, “Earlier this year, JCPenney implemented a store staffing model to simplify processes, improve productivity and reduce overhead expenses, impacting approximately 2,200 store positions nationwide. The new structure redistributed tasks and responsibilities more efficiently among store associates to support company growth initiatives, resulting in substantial cost savings while maintaining our commitment to delivering excellent customer service. The vast majority of associates impacted were offered alternate positions within the store.”

For the last few months she’s worked at a Gordmans department store. But she’s already seen around six or seven employees leave in that time. The company never seems to hire anyone to replace them, which means everyone else is picking up the slack. “There’s just no bodies, no workers,” she said. (Gordman’s did not response to requests for comment for this story.)

“It’s just a really scary time to be working in [retail].”

She’s wary of what the future holds at Gordmans. After the brand was bought by private equity firm Sun Capital Partners in 2008, it filed for bankruptcy in early 2017, selling some of its stores to Stage Stores. She worries that it’s still on shaky financial footing

She has reason to be wary. Her decade in retail encapsulates the changing industry landscape. She’s watched smaller stores disappear as big box companies encroached on more and more territory. She’s watched retailers fail to contend with the shift to selling products online. “Even four years ago, I wouldn’t have thought so many retailers would be closed,” she noted. She’s seen companies decide to hire fewer employees, loading responsibilities onto fewer people, and make their schedules less and less predictable.

“It’s just a really scary time to be working in [retail],” she said.

All of the factors that have made jobs in retail so much more precarious have also pushed Barragan to start organizing her fellow retail workers. She’s now part of a growing movement demanding that employees be treated better.

The Rise Up Retail campaign is a melding of the Center for Popular Democracy, which is a nonprofit that advocates for a variety of workplace issues, and OUR (Organization United for Respect) Walmart, which is now going by OUR and branching out beyond the original retail behemoth. Most of the work consists of retail workers reaching out to other retail workers to organize and mobilize them, much of it done through social media.

OUR Walmart’s decision to expand came out of its original theory of how to change the retail sector: by changing things within Walmart, industry standards were likely to shift, thanks to how large the company is. (Walmart is the single biggest private sector employer in the country.) It also notched some important victories: after workers started going on strike, it increased starting pay to $10 an hour and expanded paid family leave. “Every win we’ve had at Walmart has rippled across the industry and others have followed suit,” Dehlendorf said. Both Target and the owner of T.J. Maxx and Marshalls raised base pay to $9 an hour shortly after Walmart said it would raise its wages.

An OUR action in Bentonville, Arkansas. Organization United for Respect

It’s also part of a wave of worker-focused organizations that have cropped up outside of the traditional labor movement at a time of declining unionization. “We are not a union, we’re not aiming to unionize,” Dehlendorf said. “We are building new forms of organizations for people to come together and support each other to improve their work lives and work towards industry-wide change.” It joins the ranks of other, similar initiatives in different industries that are similarly pushing for workplaces changes without unions: the National Domestic Workers Alliance that works with nannies and housekeepers, Restaurant Opportunities United that organizes restaurant employees, and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network that reaches out to day laborers.

It also helps that many OUR Walmart members have left the company and gone to work at other retailers, where they can carry on organizing. “We have a network of 150,000 people spread out across the country,” Dehlendorf said. “As people move into other jobs, they’re bringing their experiences [with] our organization with them.”

That was Barragan’s experience. After an OUR Walmart organizer contacted her through one of the employee Facebook groups, she realized “I wasn’t the only one this happened to,” she said. “It wasn’t just my store, it’s the whole company.” But she was also eager to go beyond the retailer’s walls. “I kept being like, ‘Hey, when are we going to…organize other retailers?’” she said. “The same issues are in all retail, they’re all happening beyond Walmart and beyond Target and beyond Gordmans… We need to make change in all of them.”

The campaign is focused on retail in part because they are the canaries in the coalmine of our economy. “People working in the retail sector are on the frontlines of the crisis that working families are facing across the economy,” Gleason said. Retail has long suffered the symptoms of a larger problem now infecting the economy: jobs that offer low pay, unpredictable schedules, and few benefits.

At Walmart, Pilar said she got “nothing” in terms of training, including watching someone use a cash register for five minutes before working it herself. She never knew when she was working — although the company handed out schedules ahead of time, they frequently changed, as late as a few days ahead of a scheduled shift. Hours fluctuated wildly from week to week — some weeks 30 hours, the next week three.

Barragan had been in a car accident that left her with nerve pain and she had to miss some days of work to see a neurologist, who signed paperwork to excuse her. But any time she failed to come to work, either because of a last-minute schedule change or the doctor’s visits, she was given a point, and after four points employees are fired.

Those experiences are now following her to her new job at Gordmans. When she started she and her manager were able to work together on her schedule to accommodate her needs. Now she has to offer completely open availability —meaning she can get scheduled to work at any time. “I never know what I’m working,” she said. She only gets a copy of her own schedule a week in advance. “It’s hard to make appointments, it’s hard to go get groceries,” she noted. She can’t even plan ahead to attend someone’s birthday party because she might not end up with that day off. “I have no control over it.”

The company is now rolling out the same scheduling software that Walmart uses, which has meant it’s cutting hours and disrupting schedules. The new system will mean workers have their hours set by corporate headquarters with little ability to change them.

And then the Toys R Us layoffs happened; more than 30,000 works losing their jobs without severance. OUR members saw what was happening and wanted to do something. Joanna Chambers got her start organizing with OUR Walmart when her own Walmart store closed and she was demoted after starting in a new store. “When I found out Toys R Us stores were closing I felt passionate about that, because I also had worked in a store closing,” she said. “I know what it’s like to turn in the keys for the last time, I know what it’s like to check out the last customers.”

So she and other OUR leaders reached out to Toys R Us workers and offered to help them start petitions, speak to the press, and even lobby members of Congress. Toys R Us proved to be fertile organizing ground, particularly as everyone was on the verge of losing their jobs, and managers got involved alongside lower-level employees. “People were so heartbroken, they overcame their fear and built a channel [for their] anger,” Gleason said.

That collaboration, and the desire of Toys R Us workers to keep fighting, was the fuel that lit the Rise Up Retail fire. The organizations involved didn’t plan to launch it as early as they did, but they sped up the timeline to meet the demand of workers. “The Toys R Us campaign has been a pivotal moment to demonstrate what’s possible when we activate the women working in the service economy,” Gleason said.

Since that campaign launched, Toys R Us employees have secured a vow from the private equity owners to contribute to severance pay for laid off workers and a number of politicians–including Senators Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, Bob Menendez, and others–have joined them in their call for relief.

A Rise Up Retail protest of Toys R Us. Sarah Marie Mayo

The success of the Toys R Us campaign offers organizers optimism that they can wield influence in an industry that faces so many challenges–even in the face of liquidation. Social media and people’s personal networks allowed them to reach a number of employees who were ready to do something very quickly. Workers themselves were eager to fight because they had been promised severance pay, a promise that was then broken. “There was an immediate betrayal that then moved folks into action,” Gleason said. And that action made people pay attention and turned Toys R Us into a “tipping point and a breaking point,” she said.

It also helped that consumers had an emotional connection to a brand like Toys R Us. “We all know these companies,” Gleason said. “We all participate in making these companies grow.” That’s a key point in retail workers’ favor: these are names that the public is familiar with, that may garner attention and empathy.

They hope what happened with Toys R Us sets the tone going forward with other struggling retailers, too. “We’re about to set a precedent [of] what happens with the next wave of job losses,” Gleason said. “We actually have found a pathway to respond.”

Meanwhile, not every corner of retail is in danger of going under. Walmart is the country’s largest private employer; Amazon keeps growing. “These jobs may be changing, but they are continuing,” Dehlendorf said. There is “an urgent need…for working people to have a voice in shaping the changes in the industry.”

The campaign is now casting a far wider net, talking to workers in workplaces as varied as T.J. Maxx and Victoria’s Secret, Home Depot and Lowe’s, Dollar General and Target. “We talk to anyone,” Gleason said.

The day before the July 4th holiday, in fact, Target employees who are organizing with Rise Up Retail went on strike at a store in Maryland. A big issue they’re fighting for is a fair workweek — a lot of employees say that their hours were cut after the company raised its minimum pay. They’re also protesting what Erica Feldenzer, who has taken a leadership role among her coworkers, says is racism and sexual harassment in the workplace. She herself has been sexually harassed by a coworker who still works at her store, she said. “On days that I know that he’s there, I just feel very uncomfortable because I don’t know what he’s going to say to me or try and do something,” she said.

As a result, one of their demands was that the managers they accused of racism and sexism be fired. Next they demanded that everyone be given enough hours to make a living while also not being scheduled outside of their availability. “It’s definitely a vast, wide variety of issues, and we’re trying to tackle as many of them as we can,” Feldenzer said.

In a statement Target representative Jenna Reck responded, saying, “We want everyone who works at Target to feel valued and respected and take any allegations of workplace misconduct seriously. We worked for several weeks this summer to address issues brought forth by team members at the Timonium store and took swift actions to address them. We continue to work closely with the store’s new leadership team to ensure the team member experience meets Target’s workplace standards.”

Management didn’t really respond to the strike, Feldenzer said, so they’re contemplating doing another one. But it hasn’t been easy organizing her coworkers. “People are very scared,” she said. She felt she had no choice but to take a stand. “I got to do something or no one else will,” she said. She also thinks the next one will be easier. “Once we did it, I think more people are actually willing [to] be on the frontlines with us.”

“We really see a ripple effect,” Dehlendorf noted. “Every group of people who are stepping forward to speak out and telling their story are inspiring people to come into the network and start to share their stories.”

Generally the Rise Up Retail campaign wants to see change on a few key issues: higher pay and minimum wages (they aim for $15 an hour), a guarantee of paid sick and family leave, and more humane schedules that both allow people to achieve full-time status while also giving them set hours ahead of time. It wants a guarantee of severance pay for people who are laid off. It also wants to see “guardrails,” as Gleason puts it, in place for how private equity operates in the sector to limit the damage on jobs.

“If [workers] can’t get policymakers to raise the standards, then they know what they need to do when election time comes around.”

“There’s a tremendous confluence of issues,” Dehlendorf said. “If we can change these sectors, it really can make a massive shift across the entire economy in terms of how working people are being treated.”

The idea is to push individual employers to change their policies while also pushing lawmakers to raise standards for everyone. “Workers know they can win either way,” Gleason said. “They can get companies to change or move policymakers. If they can’t get policymakers to raise the standards, then they know what they need to do when election time comes around.”

Rise Up Retail plans to let the workers lead the way on what kinds of tactics to deploy. “I think you’ll see some growing militancy from these folks…as they feel more power,” Gleason predicted. That could even include more strikes. The campaign is also setting its sights next on the midterm elections, planning to organize members to turn out and vote.

Barragan isn’t sure if she can stick it out in the industry. “I’ve been in retail a very long time… It’s what I know. It’s what I’m good at,” she said. She loves helping customers find what they need. But she doesn’t want to go through another restructuring like at JCPenney or work for another employer like Walmart who throws her life into chaos. “It’s Russian roulette,” she said. “You don’t know who’s going and who’s coming.”

Still, she’s heartened to see her fellow retail workers speaking up as part of the new campaign. “That’s empowering,” she said. “We will not stand for the injustices.”

“People are just getting fed up,” Chambers said. “They’re tired of being underappreciated and disrespected.”

Original Source -> Retail workers are more vulnerable than ever. A new campaign wants to protect their jobs.

via The Conservative Brief

[dandelliongirl]

Time in-between

And an impromptu road trip.

On one hand I dread the upcoming loneliness, but one the other I want to move on with my life and get this year over with. This in-between-ness is super mentally taxing and I need structure in my life.

I’ve been spending as much time with my guy as possible and basically neglecting all my studies/work stuff whenever he’s home. This means I have no routine and no structure to my days, and thus I have a hard time recalling which day of the week it is or what I’m supposed to be doing tomorrow. My orgnaized self is suffering, but I’ve scrapped timetables on behalf of time spent together. Today I had to work on my timetables/to-do lists just to get out of a depressing slump of worthlessness.

The last weekend of August was spent working on some extra JLPT stuff and planning for my dance students. On Sunday we had our fun little idea seminar/training day for new teachers, where we got to know each other and learn new stuff to teach our dance/gymnastics students.

I started going to ballet classes again. Our new teacher is awesome, she’s a tough lady with a lot of skill in both ballet and teaching. It’s going to be a good year. We got our gym shifts sorted and it feels good to go and exercise regularly again.

I managed to get the key for the dance studio I teach in. It’s above the skating rink and I feel happy that it’s close by and an actual facility with janitors etc.  on duty and no alarms on rather than a school that’s closed for the night. It’s going to be fun teaching there. It seems like I’ll be getting two groups to teach. It isn’t a lot but it’s something. I emailed my students some instructions and I can’t wait to meet them tonight. I’ve had issues with one girl and her mom in the past, and now she’s signed up for my ballet for 7-9 -year-olds.. I’m kind of dreading her but I just have to try to be strict and kick her out if she can’t focus enough. I feel like ballet isn’t for her at all but what can you do.

I finished going through source material for my MA thesis. What’s left now is restructuring and placing all the new stuff to appropriate places, and to write write write. I also probably need some new research literature but I’m so glad I’m finally moving to a new stage. I’ve felt so unmotivated regarding the whole thing it’s going to be good to have something new to work on.

Me and my friend signed up for JLPT this Wednesday. However the next day it turned out that the embassy people had conveniently forgotten to write down that instead of the sign up email, this year all the paperwork had to be at the embassy by 8.9.! So Thursday was a chaotic day, scrambling around for passport photos and receipts of the exam fee. I also had housing cooperative meeting to go to, and ended up ditching ballet class. On Friday (the deadline the paperwork had to be submitted) me, my friend and my boyfriend took a roadtrip to the embassy. Luckily my guy got his exchange student visa, so that the three of us all had to visit the embassy regardless. We left at 6am, were there at 10:30 when the embassy opened, filled in the required paperwork, handed it in and left at 11:30. We stopped once to eat some lunch on our way back and were home around 2pm. Efficient. It was hilarious but at least we signed up on time. Barely. I would’ve been so pissed if - having spent all summer working on JLPT stuff - I had to wait until next year. Thank God we had a day’s notice to get ourselves to the embassy. I wish they’d update their website to where it says “sign up via email by XX.XX.XXXX, and submit required paperwork by mail or in person by XX.XX.XXXX” rather than just “sign up by XX.XX.XXXX”. Last year the email had to be sent during September, the paperwork was sent over in October and the test voucher came back in November. I wish they’d have notified us of moving the process ahead a month... Anyway it’s done and we should be good for this December’s exam.

The impromptu trip to the embassy meant that I couldn’t go to the office on Friday, and had to postpone a lot of work stuff. I did make it to my ballet weekend course on time however. We did barre work, pointe work and were introduced to two variations on Friday. I had a little sleepover with mum where we went to the sauna, ate some burritos, girl talked, filled in crosswords puzzles and I got to sleep in my own bed for the night. On Saturday I went back to ballet at 11am. We did some character dance barre work and variations from Don Quixote and Giselle. My toes were still hurting from Friday evening so pointe work was awful, and I got super tired about 1½ hours in to the point where no matter how much I tried I was always half a count late because my body wasn’t responding. I struggled my way through and was pretty exhausted for the rest of the day. However it was super interesting and I learned a lot over the course of the two days.

Mum and I went to go get groceries and I bought mr. Bunny a hay holder that goes outside his cage. This way he hopefully won’t sit on his hay or move it to his poop pile causing me to carry it into the bio waste all the time. It might stay edible for longer unless he figures out he can pull all the hay out of the holder through the bars of the cage... We’ll see. He seemed to like the thing. He’s been super affectionate lately. I don’t know if he feels at home or has accepted me or what, but he keeps following me around and really likes to be pet. Last night I sat on the floor for half an hour finger combing through some of the beginnings of the more stubborn mats in his fur and he was fine with it. I’m not complaining, I need him to be cuddly because I’m going to get so so so lonely. My guy has been at his parents’ this weekend and I keep thinking this is how it’s going to be for almost an entire year...

I finally got my ects from some courses I took last year. It’s almost been a year since the first one started and so I sent a passive aggressive email (the 5th one) to the person responsible. I guess she got tired of my constant emails and the ects were in my account within 24 hours of the email.

I’m about to go teach my first dance classes this year. In the evening I’ll probably just chill out. I’ve been working on JLPT stuff twice as hard now since our little extra trip certainly added motivation. I’m going to be so pissed if I don’t pass and we took that trip for essentially nothing lol. Anyway next week I’m going to work on thesis stuff and email my supervisor regarding my progress, do a bit more JLPT stuff than up until now, do all of my office stuff that’s been dragging behind. I also need to pack for my work trip (eek). I’m leaving for the airport on Saturday, and the plane leaves early Sunday. My guy’s leaving on Tuesday and I return on Wednesday so that’s a bit of a bummer, but at least I’m not here to cry and feel like shit and make him feel like shit for leaving. I guess it’ll be a good thing. I’ve kind of scheduled the following Thursday to be a crying/JLPT day since those two generally go hand in hand but that’s still two weeks from now.

I’m going to get ready for dance teaching.

September is well underway although I’m not doing too well. Hopefully it gets better.