I work with a woman who, from what I've heard, had a stroke. It's obviously affected some part of her memory process because everyday of training her to do a rather stressfull and complicated job is like starting over.
She completely misses important details, even though we point out what to look for every day, if she has to do more than two things, she's completely lost, her computer screen gets cluttered easily, which adds to the confusion, her own notes are a mess she can't find anything she wrote down and on and on.
It's getting frustrating for everyone one here and we end up expressing it, which frustrates and stresses her and it becomes an out of control cycle.
The problem is, that we can't have her not do this task. Everyone has to be able to do everyone else's job here for redundancy.
Have any of you been through this, perhaps as a parent or working with people with physical brain disorders or some such, that you can give pointers? Eventually, it's going to blow up if we can't find some means of getting through and I'd rather she not be driven out or to breakdown.
I wish it was that easy LD. We don't have a tape vault any more. 95% of all tape activity is in self-contained silos.
In fact, our company is in the process of eliminating mainframe work altogether, which will pretty much leave this one task, but divded into smaller functions.
This situation sucks. I see the same thing with many of my clients. Despite the perceived "technical" nature of mainframe work, it was pretty easy for morons to do, as far as Operations went. Tell them what buttons to push and don't encourage them to think.
With the advances in Windows, Unix, client-server, distrubuted processing, etc. it became more complicated. Simple, these things aren't.
Tenured people, who've worked in a Data Center for years, have a hard time with the thinking that has to occur to merely survive on a PC. Try explaining that they don't have to close the terminal program when they want to open Outlook...
In my line of work, we often combine Copy Centers and Print Centers into one room. So my customer can do all the print work on the same big printers.
It's almost comical that the Data Center people think they are so much better than the Copy Center people. Yet the Copy Center people know how to use PCs, while the mainframe people just press buttons from their cheat sheets.
The Copy Center people typically end up mastering the new environment and running the show.
I had a frustrating tech day, as well. Can you tell?
I wish it was that easy LD. We don't have a tape vault any more. 95% of all tape activity is in self-contained silos.
In fact, our company is in the process of eliminating mainframe work altogether, which will pretty much leave this one task, but divded into smaller functions.
I think he meant lock her in the tape vault.
One of the offices I work in has a 66yo secretary that has started to "lose it". Her keyboard failed so I replaced it....the function keys on the new one were about 1/2" above the number keys....that almost destroyed her, she was unable to function because of it. The workroom that contains the copier was rearranged, requiring her to increase her walk to the copier from 86 to 88 steps - she was so upset she took a week off on doctor's orders because of it. Now she's taken to walking the hallways and talking to herself and laughing at odd times.
This is a new hire. She was a temp for 3 years and they felt like they had to hire her so they did - now they can't get rid of her. The person she replaced was hired on despite having a pretty bad bipolar thing going on - and left work after 3 weeks on doctor's orders. They knew something was wrong, they hired her anyway.
The supervisor who hired these persons ended up creating Word documents (with pictures) showing how to do certain tasks. It's scary to think that if your primary job for the past 3 years is to open a medical chart and insert forms in it (there is an index in the front explaining what goes where) that you'll need a document with pictures showing how to do this, it should be a rote thing since it's so mechanical.
My manager extended the contract of this one person who fortunately works on the day shift, but he is fcking weird!
He's loud without trying, has been described (by someone who's somewhat crass) as a cack blocker (talks you down in front of women your conversing with), makes borderline suggestive comments, yah!
A lot of people thought he was a nice guy in the beginning, even though I thought he was weird early on. Now, everyone shares my view.
It's a wonder the human race has survived this long
There's lots of good saying that cover this:
Some people are live because it's illegal to shoot them, push them in front of trains or feed them to rats.
But in reality, some people are alive because humans stick together. We're a highly social species, with a sense of not just self-preservation, but species preservation and preservation of others.
I work with a woman who, from what I've heard, had a stroke. It's obviously affected some part of her memory process because everyday of training her to do a rather stressfull and complicated job is like starting over.
She completely misses important details, even though we point out what to look for every day, if she has to do more than two things, she's completely lost, her computer screen gets cluttered easily, which adds to the confusion, her own notes are a mess she can't find anything she wrote down and on and on.
It's getting frustrating for everyone one here and we end up expressing it, which frustrates and stresses her and it becomes an out of control cycle.
The problem is, that we can't have her not do this task. Everyone has to be able to do everyone else's job here for redundancy.
Have any of you been through this, perhaps as a parent or working with people with physical brain disorders or some such, that you can give pointers? Eventually, it's going to blow up if we can't find some means of getting through and I'd rather she not be driven out or to breakdown.
It sounds like she's being groomed for a management position.
Now I sound like a cynic.
__________________ Yankee by Birth, Rebel by Choice
A guy who works for me has a similar condition. The company's personal trainer just about went out of her mind when she had to demonstrate the same exercises and explain the same set/rep schemes three days a week for six months.
What I've discovered now is that this guy will remember and follow instructions that are written out for him (not emailed, but actually printed). If we have a verbal discussion, though, he doesn't remember anything five minutes later.
He's been at the company for three years and nobody had discovered this yet -- they just thought he was rebellious and incompetent, never able to follow direction. He's been working for me since September and is doing better, although we still have issues from time to time.
Bottom line -- explore other learning styles to see if it might help.
__________________ Megaloi -- My Blog
"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."
- Mignon McLaughlin
While the woman with the stroke does not fall under this category, some of the other stories (the crass, suggestive man; the old temp who cannot do her work) simply amaze me. How can HR departments fail so badly!
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Renegade HR: Recruit great people. Inspire them to do amazing things. | http://renegadehr.net
I would suggest reading up on strokes and living with people with strokes. They will have some useful suggestions I am sure.
You could help her with organizing her work space, color code things and have colored boxes so that she knows where to put things. Strokes can be horribly debilitating for people. Depending on where the bleed was it can affect short and long term memory very differently. I would almost bet her long term memory is pretty good still. Find out what she used to do before this job, she if she can remember details about it and try to make a connection between that and the current job. It is a daunting task but I assure you it is much worse for her. She lives with the knowledge that she cannot function properly and that it is stressful for those around her. If she is going to stay at that job it is going to be very difficult for all those involved. I wish you the best of luck.
__________________
"My darling," she said at last, "are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?"
"I don't mind at all," I said. "It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like so long as somebody loves you."
I'm in a job where I can't physically be at the site 24/7 to help out my clients, and their admins who have been trained just aren't available to help out as much as they need to so I've made up cheat sheets for everyone. I explain the software, and make sure they can use it before i leave then hand out the cheat sheets, and go over them on my way out the door, just in case they need them. It's working so far! Some people are tossing them out as soon as I hand them to them, others have taped them to the walls in the reading rooms. Maybe they'll help her?
__________________ The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same. -- Carlos Castaneda
But under ADA, you need to give people reasonable accomodation. Many employers state that you need to be able to do your job with or without reasonable accomodation to stay employed. Think about it - you may have a handicap, but if you can't actually DO your job, why should i hire you/keep you employed. You don't serve any purpose.
__________________
Renegade HR: Recruit great people. Inspire them to do amazing things. | http://renegadehr.net
But under ADA, you need to give people reasonable accomodation. Many employers state that you need to be able to do your job with or without reasonable accomodation to stay employed. Think about it - you may have a handicap, but if you can't actually DO your job, why should i hire you/keep you employed. You don't serve any purpose.
So someone could hire a lawyer to argue about what is considered reasonable. Then the employer has to hire lawyers to defend their idea of what's reasonable. It's cheaper to the company in the long run to just keep the unproductive employee.
__________________ The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same. -- Carlos Castaneda
So someone could hire a lawyer to argue about what is considered reasonable. Then the employer has to hire lawyers to defend their idea of what's reasonable. It's cheaper to the company in the long run to just keep the unproductive employee.
Employers inherently do not like being told what to do, though. I think what you're saying is valid and plays a part of it - the company wants to make sure it's exhausted every last option before kicking bad employees to the curb.
I still blame management for not taking a more proactive stance.
__________________
Renegade HR: Recruit great people. Inspire them to do amazing things. | http://renegadehr.net
Employers inherently do not like being told what to do, though. I think what you're saying is valid and plays a part of it - the company wants to make sure it's exhausted every last option before kicking bad employees to the curb.
I still blame management for not taking a more proactive stance.
They have. The entire day shift of my dept/room from when I first started is gone. A combination of early retirements and terminations (one loopy azz was out for a year before the company finally canned him) helped clear the zoo once.
The thing is, it's just this one workstation she has trouble with. All others she's fine, but there is the cross training issue and fairness (everyone should be expected to do what everyone else does).
Sometimes you just have to let a person like that go.
15 years ago I had a guy working under me that was suffering from MS. He was in his 50's and had spent his entire career as a green's keeper. When the MS got so bad he couldn't do it any more he took a job with my company doing data entry. He was a smart guy and worked hard but as his MS got progressively worse he started missing days and often went home early or came in late. This was all understandable. But it got to the point where I was working an extra 20 hours or more a week doing his work to keep us on schedule.
Eventually I made the decision to let him go. He understood and made it as easy for me as he could but I knew how hard it was going to be for him. His wife was sick and he had no other family to support him. I was 24 at the time and I was an emotional wreck. Still to this day it's still hard to live with that decision but it was the right decision -- he simply couldn't do the job any more.
Maintaining patience with people...
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