Co-workers with allergies?

Same

 

Your original post drew equivalencies between "tough comments" from those stating the allergy sufferer bears the majority of the burden of responsibility for their own safety to cruelty, ignorance, racism, misogyny, and hatred. You also assumed that they must not have experience with allergies in their own loved ones with the "I take it that none of your kids have a peanut allergy" comment. Then there's the condescending judgmental sneer that seems to drip off the "you have to understand that you’re trying to validate your comfort against someone’s safety" line.

That may not have been your intent, because text loses a lot, but that's what came through in the "tone" in your first post.


You say "you have to be flexible to the situation vs your beliefs in order to make sure everyone is treated fairly" but you don't seem to be showing any flexibility yourself. Who decides what is fair or right? You?

Some of the worst atrocities in history have been committed because people felt they could morally justify it as right/fair/a price worth paying. Be sure you're turning that "compassion" inward as much as you focus it on those you view as not having any themselves.

 

User name checks out.

 

Luckily, I haven't heard of anything like this before. Maybe that's because I work in places with enough toxic and hazardous materials around that strawberries are going to be the least of your concerns.

 

I do see lots of people misuse the word 'allergy'.

 

The wife had a time where she had a co-worker w/similar 'request' at work, but it was oranges. It started off w/no actual oranges in the break room; morphed to no food related items w/orange in them; morphed again to include nothing scented like oranges; morphed again into no real oranges or scented orange products anywhere in the building... (which was a 3-story building) and included all areas, floors, outside break areas and departments where this person never even stepped into... Funny thing is a counter grievance was filed by someone w/their union, and it ended up forcing a secluded, outdoor, isolated area to be designated for the consumption of oranges or food that contained orange. Kinda like a 'smoking area'; I think the person said their favorite dish to eat during their lunch was Orange Chicken and by not having Orange Chicken at lunch they were falling into a state of depression; they started calling sick and going home early citing that they were becoming depressed because of the new policies) Seriously, you can't make this shit up

Reasonable accommodation has already been mentioned, and this is generally the standard. However, we as a society have shifted our ways of dealing w/these issues from providing reasonable accommodations and from the person w/the ailment avoiding the 'trigger' to controlling the 99% of people and their behavior around them.

We see this in other aspects of society these days, and one of the frequent common denominators in these situations is that once the accommodation is made, another issue (requiring accommodation) manifests shortly after the first one has been addressed... Using root cause analysis in these types of situations would take us to the heart of the problem which is mental health. Maybe that's where we should focus our energies...

Not saying everyone who asks for an accommodations is mentally ill (as there are some w/singular or acute issues), but a large percentage of folks who are requiring it to THIS extreme...

 

What you said here is exactly right and really well written. I completely agree with that.

You are also right to say that I didn’t properly convey my intent. My hatred of bullying and mob mentality sometimes takes over. It makes me go a little nuts when I see someone casually dismiss another person’s cry for help, and then a few more pile on to further beat them down.

There is no simple answer to what the OP asked. So many personalities and so many opinions constantly at odds with one another. Who is right? This is a question that philosophy and religion have tried to answer for millennia. I think the consensus is that the honest person is the right one.

Not sure which world that happens in, but to your point- even the worst people find ways to justify what they want. Amen dude.

 

I will admit as an allergy sufferer to peanuts, shellfish, dogs, cats, pollen and dust mites (only peanuts being deathly allergic) that you become hypersensitive to the smell of it and it’s typically nauseating to smell even from a distance.

It’s hard for me to fathom that you can have a life threatening reaction from just the smell of it but I suppose it’s possible even though extremely rare.

 

It's entirely possible that he has the sensitivity to the smell that you describe, and that the hives are a psychosomatic stress response due to panic/fear of the allergy. I would lean this way for the scented stuff if it truly doesn't contain any actual strawberry components.

 

I kid you not, I once had a co-worker (never met her), who claimed she couldn’t come to the office to work due to her “allergies”.
When I had heard from my boss that she was “coming back” to our directorate I asked a few questions not knowing anything about her or her “situation”. Came to learn that she had been shuffled around from place to place for over a 10 yr period. She eventually ended up working for one of my employees. Right off the bat, she accused my employee of “harassing” her by asking her to come to work so that she could meet her in person to discuss her job/tasks. Turned into a literal $hit $how. This POS was a minority, and female and had been using this “allergy” excuse to avoid physically coming to work for over 10 yrs (Federal Gov’mt - Canada). Not only that, but she actually didn’t do any work. It brought my employee to tears, as she constantly came up with excuses to avoid any actual output/work. I talked to my boss, and recommended we send her to a “Fitness to Work Evaluation” at Health Canada to actually assess her “condition” as I had previous experience with other employees in another position who had health related work performance issues. He said absolutely not (didn’t want to deal with any fallout from “discrimination” being she was a minority and female). So, at the end of the day, this POS was shuffled off to somewhere else in the Dept just as had been done her entire career. Absolutely f’king mind blowing to me.

 

Happens in US all the time too.

 

entitlement is taught to folks over many generations.

it's not easy to fix.

We do our best to build systems to prevent these parasites from infesting our work environment.

 

I'll add:

NASA is rife with this kinda bureaucratic waste. 95% clock watchers & administrators.

 

(Stop putting needles in infants)


*shows self out.

 

Yeah, this stuff is sad. I've both seen it happen, and I've seen it 'solved' - thankfully, DoD pretty much boils stuff like this down to "Did you perform or not? Here's the CE's we both agreed upon when you started work here, that you are evaluated upon...and you're not meeting them demonstrably."

But I've also seen employees who for decades appeared to not do much other than

- walk around
- chat w/coworkers
- fart

And still have jobs.

 

Haha! Don’t get me started with perf reviews. We were actually “instructed” not to give any employee a “succeeded above avg” evaluation, and if we felt strongly about it, it had to be approved all the way up the food chain. Yep, everyone just “meets” their expectations in the Federal Gubment. Of course, you have the a$$ kissers, and friends/family members who slide upwards. Once had a boss who retired (military - Army), who became a silly servant (silver platter job offer), and within a few years advanced two levels, and then became the PM of a major Air Force capital procurement for planes. I was like WTF!?

 

When I was a Supervisor for Conrail in Pittsburgh the higher ups threw a female at me to deal with. Former NAVY so we got off on the right foot together. I did however have complaints from her co workers. Her language. The guys were all good family men with strong religious leanings. They were embarrassed when she dropped off F bombs like a B-52.

My opinion was she was just trying to fit in. After our discussion about the sailor type talk she fit right in. Didn't even require a separate restroom or even a lock. We just instituted a knock if closed rule for the restroom.

 

Yeah. Some more polio and smallpox plagues to thin the population would be great.

 

Ah yes the 2 that were "eradicated" 60 years ago. Not sure anyone is really concerned about those.

My concern is the dozen other ones they've since added to pre-6 years of age (that aren't eradicating anything) and now we have people that cant be in the same room as a strawberry. SCIENCE!

 

Correlation isn't necessarily causation.

But we could use a new plague.

 

Teach them self awareness and how to use an epi pen.

 

Correct on the C=/=C, but when obtaining a diagnosis, the best plan is always to remove variables, rather than add them. What's different from before, what changed? Etc.


(Also our food supply is shit).

/end rant

 

I think you're right about the food supply. It is a far more likely a culprit, IMO. If we transferred to a natural foods diet vs everything being ultra processed I think we'd see significant improvements.

 

Speaking of food supply, I was in Hershey, PA last fall for the annual AACA swap meet. Needed to get some socks/underwear as I thought I had forgotten to bring them (found them later in the dresser drawer of the hotel rm - Lol!)
Stop at the local Walmart, and was shocked to see almost nothing nutritious in the whole place. Junk food and pop stacked to the rafters. Nothing like the ones in Canada that I’ve been at. They are targeting groups of people, and literally giving them $hit to eat. I won’t even get into the fact that the socks and underwear were behind locked glass doors. I was like WTF did I just step into…

 

Wasn’t that supposed to be Covid? Or was that just a lockdown test?

 

What the fuck could that possibly have to do with anything?

 

That was a disappointment...

 

Just watched a segment with Robert Kennedy Jr. on the Shawn Ryan show. He talks about vaccines and how the EPA/CDC knew the vaccines were causing a whole host of diseases like auto-immune, autism, diabetes, etc. They decided to bury the info, but he got a transcript of the 2 day meeting held in Georgia off of the CDC campus to avoid any FOIA requests. It was attended by a whole host of international organizations, scientists, doctors, etc. He said as a 70 yr old, he only had 3 vaccines as a kid, and now kids were getting in excess of 70!
Let’s face it, big pharma is behind all this needless pain and death, and Convid was just the latest iteration to line their pockets.

 

Almost everything, actually.

 

Wanted to mention that one of my wife’s cousin’s youngest children was diagnosed with type 3 diabetes only 3 weeks after getting vaccinated at the age of 3 yrs. Told my wife to tell her it was the vaccine, and she did tell her, but her cousin didn’t want to make the connection. The poor kid had to have a pump, and it was a total nightmare for them as they both worked (her husband), and the daycare facility personnel were not equipped to deal with his dietary requirements and monitoring his insulin levels. They live even further in the country, so services were even more limited. Additionally, no one on either side of the family had diabetes.
So, going back full circle, I bet dollars to donuts, that all those folks with all these “food allergies” can trace their issue back to the vaccines they got as a kid. Kennedy said that it was 1989 that they (EPA/CDC) saw the spike in all this stuff.