Managing to scare the crap out of me

I arrive at work at 9:50 A.M., ten minutes before my schedule says I am supposed to be there. It had originally said 11:00 A.M., but I received a call from the second shifter (on his cell phone, after work) telling me my boss had changed it late in the evening so that she could write me up the next day for being late. At home, I have written down what time she did it, because she was dumb enough to do it on camera. In the meantime, she doesn't expect me to be there yet.

I walk in, take a moment to purchase something to drink (which I always do because at the register, I'm talking almost nonstop with greetings, how-can-I-help-you, and the like) and then head into the backroom to clock in. My boss, having forgotten that she changed the schedule, yells at me for being early. I tell her that the schedule says 10:00 A.M., or rather 1D:00 A.M. after she changed it last night. She insists that I changed it, and I'm not supposed to be in yet. Two other employees are in the room, so she can't really go back on what she's saying. I point out that the spot where the schedule hangs is on camera, so corporate will be able to see who touched it and who did not. She glares at me.

I ask if she wants me to go home (just down the street) for an hour and return at 11:00. She says no, and actually says it's so I can't write to my rep at the labor board about the discussion. I point out that since it happened right when I walked in the door, I'm going to remember what time it was. I can just write to him when I get home.

She has me clock in at 9:59, and tells me that since I'm here for an extra hour, I can get some of the grunt work done. She sends me to clean the restrooms, with the admonition to knock first.

I grab the cleaning equipment and head that way. I walk directly from the office, out around the cash registers, and back to the restrooms. Our store is small, so the office and the restrooms share a wall and some plumbing. There is a big sink against that wall in the office. In the restrooms, the toilets are against that wall.

I decide to do the ladies' first because someone is in the men's. I prop the door open and work in the tiny room. I never let the door shut while I'm working in there because the chemical smell gets to me. The ladies' room is never too bad. The worst we usually see is someone not wrapping a sanitary napkin, but I've gotten good at using the end of the broom to scoop that into the trash without touching it. There is nothing like that in here this time.

As I'm finishing the ladies', I hear the occupant of the men's getting paper towels to dry his hands. The dispenser is really loud when you're on the other side of the wall from it - sounds like someone's trying to bang their way through. I bring the equipment out of the ladies' and wait in the hallway. The guy comes out, shuts the door, and walks out past me. Out of habit, I knock anyway. Of course, there is no answer.

I open the door to the men's room, but instead of the sink, toilet, and paper dispensers that should be there, there is a stone stairway going down into a dark hole. Smells of waste and musty dampness waft up from below. I feel a sense of trepidation. I don't want to go down there. I'm looking for a light switch in the doorway, but it's gone. I ask my co-worker for a flashlight, but she ignores me and makes light conversation with a customer instead. Everyone is giving me sideways glances, like some kind of a prank has been pulled and they're waiting for my reaction.


I decide to start down the stairs. As soon as I set foot on the first step, there is a loud roar.

 

I can't tell what it is. It goes right through me and down the hall to my left, then disappears in the sunlight from the windows. I jump back to get away from it. Everyone is looking at me now. Another co-worker tells me, "You shoulda knocked!" 

I reply, "I DID knock. That wasn't some guy in the restroom. Come and look at this!" I point into the cavernous stairwell, only to realize it's gone. There is no stone. There are no steps, no dark cavern below. There's just an ordinary restroom, with all of the expected facilities. It's a horrible mess. The last user has left waste on the floor, the seat, the back of the toilet, and the wall beside it. There is wet toilet paper everywhere, and something gooey-looking all over the sink and mirror. My coworker ignores me. 

I prop the door and grab a bucket of hot water and some paper. I put up a sign that says the men's is temporarily out of order. Thank goodness there's a drain in the middle of the floor!

I start using the bucket to rinse down the wall and the toilet, using the mop to keep the water flowing down that drain. I continue in this manner until the debris is gone, then glove up and scrub the offending areas, including the sink and mirror. I try to do this without looking at the reflection, because I still have a weird feeling about this room. I mean, I really have the heebie-jeebies. I know if I look, I'll see something bad, or something bad will happen.

Once I'm satisfied that the place is clean, I spray the whole room down with sanitizer, then pour some sanitizer-water down that drain to follow the waste and keep it from smelling. Finished, I turn to leave the room, only to see a hand move my doorstop. The door closes. I hear the light switch click, and suddenly there is no light.

I am not claustrophobic, but in the darkness in this room that has changed, I am terrified. Certain that there is something in here with me, I stumble toward the door. Instead of finding it, I hit something low with my foot, trip, and fall onto a set of stone steps going up. 

Oh, my God... I'm at the bottom of the stairs! I shriek and start climbing. I can hear something breathing behind me. Warm, dank air blows across the back of my head, and there is a horrible, low growling noise. Far away somewhere, I can hear someone yelling that the power is out, and the registers aren't working. Somehow, I know that it's happening because of the evil thing that is chasing me.

I scramble toward the top of the stairs, hoping that the exit is there. I can hear something moving behind me, and then there is that roar again. I feel something sharp hit my shoulder and slice down my back. At the same time, I see the door. It looks like always, a bland colored, enamel covered door with a metal handle. I grab the handle, turn it, and shove my way through. As soon as I am out, the lights come on and the restroom goes back to normal. Someone shouts that the registers are working again.

I walk through the store toward the back room. No one seems to have heard me scream, or at least no one is paying any attention to me now. They're all trying to rush through checkout and get on their way. In the back room, I start to put the equipment away, but am interrupted by my boss yelling at me. She's accusing me of having deliberately walked in on her, and says she's going to complain to corporate. 

I point out that since she was in the backroom when I headed for the restrooms, there was no way for her to go past me without my knowing, and, since she had just sent me in there, it was dishonest of her to say I walked in on her. She wasn't in there, and if she'd gone in there, she'd done so knowing she'd just told me to go in there. Not only that, but I'd knocked, and no one had answered. I remind her that the back room is on camera, the part of the store she'd have had to walk through is on camera, and the hallway is on camera. She tells me that the camera to the hallway has been taken out. 

She shows me a door in the wall between the restrooms, and tells me it goes to the men's. Momentarily ignoring the senselessness of that, I repeat that even if she went through that door, it still amounts to deliberately setting things up so I would walk in on her, and it would still be on camera. Also, jumping out at me like that was rude and unnecessary. I tell her that I should be the one complaining to corporate, because putting me in that position is a form of sexual harassment. As I turn to walk away from her, I hear the same growl I heard in the transformed restroom. I turn back, and she says, "You might want to check the back of your shirt. It's a bit torn."

I go to the ladies and turn my back to the mirror. I turn my head as far as I can to see four huge slices in my shirt. Beneath them, I can see that my back is bleeding. As I am looking, I can see that monster coming up beside me in the mirror. I turn to face it, but there's nothing. I hear banging in the men's room again, and the door to the ladies' starts to swing shut. I jump toward it.

I wake without finding out if I get out of the restroom.

After waking up, I laid in bed for several minutes wondering what the heck that dream was for. My boss hasn't been too grouchy the last few days since the district manager talked to her and then ordered me to stop documenting the harassment. I suspect that he ordered her to tone down the abuse. She did give me all of the heavy work yesterday, something she's been doing a lot since I reported the store to OSHA, but she hasn't changed my schedule without notice since that day.

Also, I'm really not that bothered by cleaning up messes in the men's room, and sadly, the mess in the dream wasn't some bizarre nightmare image. It's actually quite common for there to be a mess that bad after one of our male customers has been in there. Only the dungeon-like setting was abnormal. I have no idea where that came from. With the way I feel about work, I'd think I would be more likely to associate it with the back room, where the boss spends most of her time.

The claws are easier to explain. My back is still sore this morning from the heavy work my boss had me do yesterday. There really is no ergonomic way to lift full, heavy bags of trash out of 39 gallon cans. The few other female employees who sometimes (rarely) do the trash get help with this, but I do not. According to my boss, it's because I'm stronger than the other girls. When I point out the danger of injury, she "reminds" me that to apply for the job I had to say I could lift 70 pounds. I then have to remind her that when I applied, the app only said 50 pounds, and that the suction in the trash cans acts like more weight than the trash actually has. 

Since I'm not allowed to lay the can on its side (she calls that beating up the can) so that the bag will settle and air can get in around it, it feels like I'm pulling 100 pounds of dead weight out of that can. She has all ready told me that if I get injured "doing the trash" she's going to put in the paperwork that I've refused assistance with it, even though in reality I've been asking for assistance and she's refusing my requests. I feel like she's deliberately trying to injure my back so I'll have to file another Worker's comp claim, and she can say it's a habit or something. Either that, or she is using "crap duty" to retaliate against me for defending myself against the discrimination I've been facing on the job. I know she is not trying to get rid of me, because she is aware that I cannot just quit. In this economy, there is no place else to go.
I've concluded that the harassment is more of an attempt to dominate and control than to repel.

Yesterday, she did set me up like in the dream, but not with the restroom. She told me to work in the cooler, knowing that doing so required a jacket, then she yelled at me for taking the time to put one on before going in there because she wanted privacy in the back room for a phone call to corporate. I pointed out that I was in there because of her order, and that everyone wears a jacket in the cooler. She got mad and stormed out of the room.

I guess the stress is really just getting to me. This has to be one of the strangest work nightmares I've had yet. I guess now I'm dreaming that my boss is the boogie man.

Prison Escape

I'm in a truck that's normal sized, but souped up to do tricks like a monster truck. There is a battle taking place in an arena between myself and an authority figure who is chasing me. She is piloting a giant robot called a mech.

Somehow, I've gotten my truck onto the top of a tall, narrow, flat tower of rock so that I'm up as high as the mech. I intend to jump the truck onto the mech, but the device that does that malfunctions, and I end up on the ground at her feet. I dodge in and out and shoot, but the authorities decide that the battle has been won by the mech, and I have to go with the woman inside.

We leave the arena through a normal sized door, leaving our vehicles behind. She takes me into a building. It's a familiar place. I've escaped from here before. I ready myself to escape again.

We enter the room where I'll be kept, and I'm told I'm considered guilty and dangerous, and I'm to be executed because I cannot be held for a full sentence. I accept the ruling without any struggle, because I know I'm going to escape again. I'm not going to permit this; I've done nothing wrong, and these people have no right to do this to me. They are not the real authorities, just people who have the arrogance to think themselves that important, and behave like it. The woman speaking to me is put off by my attitude, and says she doesn't think I understand the gravity of the situation. She tells me I won't escape this time. After that, sge and everyone else leaves the room.

I know the layout of the part of the building from which I previously escaped. The room I'm in has huge bay windows, but the glass is unbreakable. However, everyone driving by can see inside. Outside my door is a hallway stretching away from the room, with two other doors immediately to the left and right, then a receptionist's station on the left after the first door. That opens into kind of a lobby with an exit, and there is more building beyond that.

The door to the right leads to offices and workrooms for employees of the prison. On the left, there are other cells, and another hallway that leads to the execution chamber. There are also supply closets and a couple of utility rooms. It was in one of those closets that I hid for several moments after my last escape, while the search fanned out from the facility.

An employee brings me a change of clothes in an overnight bag. I change in full view of the windows, (because there is nowhere else to change) but with my back turned to them and sitting down to prevent anyone seeing anything important. Even so, there is an immediate traffic jam as cars slow down because the drivers can see the back of a naked woman.

The employee returns, and helps me finish changing. She also gives me a magazine with an address in it for where my brother is being held. This gets my attention, as I did not know that "they" had him. Immediately, I am able to see into his room, and speak to him. I tell him that when I show up and say it's time to go, we have to leave without delay, so be ready. He agrees, and then it's time for me to leave this room. The employee leaves, but she leaves the bag with me, along with a bunch of balloons. Before she goes, she tells me to hurry, because they've rescheduled my execution for earlier. She leaves the door unlocked on her way out. She also did that when she brought me the bag, but the receptionist noticed and came to lock the door again. This time, I am able to sneak out of the room.

I walk down the hallway, right past the receptionist's desk. I hear the employee chatting with her, asking what activity I am scheduled for prior to my execution, telling her that she'll take me to it. The balloons hide my face, and the receptionist is distracted, so I am able to slip by. I hear her reply: "Gymnastics."

Gymnastics? Seriously? That's a new one on me. I figure they are trying to keep me too busy to try to escape. I also figure if I head in the direction I'm supposed to be going until I get to the exit, I'll have a better chance of getting out undisturbed. I spot several people in brightly colored (some fluorescent) gym clothes, and decide they must be headed for the gymnastics room. I follow along with them until I get to the big exit. Instead of continuing on to the room, I leave the building.

Several other people are leaving with me. They are completely uninvolved, and don't know who I am, so I'm unconcerned that they will cause me to get recaptured. As I hurry along, though, a tall, blond woman spots a cut on my cheek. She takes a tissue out and wipes off the blood, then wipes the excess not absorbed by the tissue on a pillar that supports the canopy in front of the building. Great. That'll tell 'em I was here when they start searching. Now they'll know which exit I used.

The woman is about to put the tissue in her purse, creating another DNA sample, but I politely thank her and tell her I'll dispose of it for her. I take it, fold it up, and put it in my back pocket. I can't get rid of the blood on the pillar, but maybe they won't see that.

I turn right and head toward the prison where my brother is being kept. The direction takes me across a courtyard with a fountain, gardens, and natural stone steps. From the outside, the building looks a lot like a school. The window pattern is especially similar.

People are coming from the direction I'm headed. I hear them talking, and someone says here She comes. "She" spoken with a capital "S" is how the entire staff refers to the woman who brought me in. Everyone here is intimidated by her. I am given to understand that she is in charge, and is kind of a bitch. I change direction and go up the other set of stairs closer to the building. At the top of the stairs, I find a setup similar to a camp. There are several poorly constructed little shacks. I know my brother is in one of those shacks.

Afraid the woman is following me, and that I will be discovered and recaptured, I slip in behind one of the shacks, the one I am pretty sure he is in. It has a lot of thin wood chips (the same type of wood the shacks are made of, as if the chips are pieces that have fallen off) on the ground behind it, and the back of the building bows backward. Since it's very close to the building I was in, it becomes difficult to get through. About halfway through, at the narrowest point, I realize I'm having to push really hard to squeeze in between the shack and the building.

At the same time, I see prisoners and guards sweeping up more wood chips. They are shoving them in behind the building. If I don't move, they'll see me even though it's dark back here. To hide better, I lay down on top of the chips, which are piled at least a foot deep. Down here, it's even darker. I can see them, but they can't see me. I notice that among the guards are some of my classmates. I'm glad they can't see me. They'd be sure to recognize me, and then I'd never escape.

My plan is easy. I'll wait a few moments until the guards have gone, grab my brother, and we'll run. There is a path from the yard into the woods, where there are carts we can use to escape. Once we've gotten a distance, we can abandon the cart. There will be another family member waiting to take us home.

The guards are just finishing up. As I wait, I can feel the wood chips digging into my side. I have the feeling of certainty that my plan will work, as long as I remain patient and follow it. The only big challenge now is going to be getting up from where I am laying, given how narrow the space is.

The feeling of the wood chips digging into my side woke me. I'd been sleeping on that side all night, and was feeling uncomfortable for real. On waking, I realized that several of the characters in the dream were familiar. Because of who everyone was, I think the dream was a manifestation of the anxiety I feel related to my work and everything that has been going on there. At no point in the dream did I actually feel that I was guilty of something and deserved imprisonment. Rather, the whole time I felt unjustly treated as guilty, and wrongfully imprisoned. I felt that my brother deserved it even less, because he was totally uninvolved with them, and I was angry that they'd taken him.

The "authority" who took me into the building had represented my boss at work. She didn't look like her, but the giant robot did. IRL, my boss is really authoritarian and very impatient toward me. Everything I do is either wrong, not enough, or not necessary, even though it's in my job description or what she told me to do and how she told me to do it. She drives me nuts!

The employee who helped me was a lady who had trained at our store before moving on to a management position. She had noticed that there was unequal treatment by my boss between me and the other employees; I had a heavier workload, wasn't allowed breaks, and couldn't even go to the restroom without getting questioned about it, while most of my co-workers get a break an average of once every two hours, plus restroom breaks, and have time to stand around doing nothing. Sort of mixed in with that identity was the identity of the person who has replaced me in that position as I have moved on to a new position. In my new position, I'll partly be working a different shift, and will not have to deal with my boss as much.


The receptionist was a co-worker who doesn't believe the position I'd been holding was that hard. She is also a gossip monger, and has the tendency to assign blame for anything that she thinks has gone wrong in the store. She frequently communicates that blame to the boss, trying to get people into trouble. It often works, even when the evidence shows that she is wrong. Once the boss has been told by her that someone did something they shouldn't have, or didn't do something they should have, it doesn't matter if it's true or not, that person will be in trouble for something.


The lady who wiped the blood from my cheek, I think represents the regional human resources manager for the company. A couple of months ago, I was injured at work. A doctor authorized me to return, but with a break restriction. Even though the company has allowed that of other employees, my restriction was rejected, and I was taken off of the schedule for a little over a week until the restriction expired. I believe that was done because I filed worker's compensation for the medical bills associated with the injury. I had to, though. I don't have any insurance, and I was hurt on the job. Anyway, it is the HR manager who deals with that, and she's the one whose decisions have kept me off of the schedule for so long.


The condition under which I was hurt has existed at the store for years, and is dangerous. I called OSHA, but found that the particular working condition which caused my injury isn't directly regulated. OSHA offers advice, but doesn't have specific policy. However, OSHA found two other serious violations in the store, and cited the company. The day after the inspection, when the citation was received by corporate, the company changed how my injury was being handled. They used odd paperwork and red tape to keep me off the schedule for nearly two whole months, and refused to allow me to use any of my vacation time to get a pay check during those months.


I fought back by applying for unemployment, and have filed a retaliation/discrimination complaint with OSHA making four specific points which demonstrate discrimination. Because I'd filed unemployment, the company had to put me back on the schedule. They tried to use part of the mandatory paperwork to claim I was on voluntary leave (I wasn't) and get out of paying unemployment, but I had kept a journal, and was able to cite phone calls in which I was ordered to fill out and return those papers and told I couldn't be returned to work without them.

In the end, the company has been left with the choice of either acknowledging that I was laid off, or putting me back on the schedule. In the meantime, they had me out beyond the date of the switch in position from one that comes in early in the morning to one that doesn't.


I've been left with the feeling of having checkmated my way back to work. I'm going to continue to see the OSHA complaint through to the end. Regardless of the outcome of that, it sets a precedent with OSHA and the company that I've felt retaliated against by my manager and by corporate, so that in the future, if they retaliate further, OSHA will be ready to handle it.


I think that my brother in the dream represented my son in real life. My family has been subjected to financial hardship because of what has happened, and it feels like my son has been punished for the company's attitude about safety and employee rights. Among other things, we've had to give up on allowing him to play the instrument he wanted in the school orchestra, because we can't afford to buy one, and we don't qualify for credit to rent-to-own. This is a direct result of my being kept from work. 

I want to make things better for him, and I am sure that will happen, but I'm going to have to be patient and stick out the time it takes for the OSHA complaint to go through, and for the unemployment case to be decided. In the long run, I'm leaving the company; my husband and I are going to move our family back to the area where he grew up after the end of this school year. We'll be able to get the instrument next year, and he'll be able to catch up. There are more and better jobs in that area than where we are. I think that is what the waiting in the dream represented. In real life, though, it's a LOT harder than in the dream!

Cornered

I get out of bed. It's still dark. I've gotten up because my alarm went off. It's early, about 3:30 A.M. and I have to get ready for work . I haven't gotten much sleep, and I am so tired that my head feels heavy. However, I have to get up, or I will be late for work.

Coffee!

I just need my coffee, and then I'll be okay.

I grab my glasses and my phone and head out of the bedroom to go downstairs and get ready for the day. I walk around the end of the bed and reach for the door handle in the dark, but instead my hand hits a wall. I hear my husband's breathing change, but he doesn't wake up.

I move along the wall, looking for the door handle. The room isn't that big, so I should be right next to it, but I can't seem to find it. Finally, I give up and open my phone to use the light it puts out. It's not very bright, but since I've been asleep, it should be enough for me to see. Oddly, somehow I've gotten into a corner. I see the door, and I head that way as my phone goes out. I reach for the handle, and boom! I run into the wall again. Opening my phone, I see that I have gotten turned around and run back into the corner.

What the heck? How did I get here? I put my hand on the wall, and start moving to the right, toward the door just two feet away from me. My phone light goes out again, and I am again in the dark. After a few seconds, my shoulder bangs into the wall. Turning on my phone light, I see that I am now facing as if I'd turned to my left. My fingers are in the corner, my shoulder is against the wall, and the door is behind me!

Now, I am really frustrated. I must be very sleepy, to keep doing this. How did I get all the way around the room and not realize it? I figure maybe I am sleepwalking.

I reach behind me. I am touching the door frame right now. With my fingers on it, I turn around. I can see the door. As I reach for it, my phone light goes off again. My fingers slam painfully into the corner, and I hear my husband's "half awake" breathing again. This time, I have not moved, and I know I did not go back to sleep. I turn on my phone light, and sure enough, I am back in the corner.

Now, I am a little bit scared. I say my husband's name. He sounds like he is almost awake, but he doesn't answer me. In a panic, I call his name again. He does not wake up. I put my fingers in the corner, and stretch to reach the door with my other hand. I can't quite get to the door handle, only the middle of the door... but I can feel the frame against my arm. With that to guide me, I slide along the wall, reaching for the edge of the door... and bang my fingers into the corner.

Now, it's no longer dark in the room. The sun is coming up, and I know I've been doing this for a couple of hours. I am all ready late for work. My phone rings, and my husband wakes up. He asks why I'm still home, and I start to move toward him so I can explain, but instead I run face first into the corner.

The impact of the corner on my face has awakened me. I have dozed in front of the computer. I woke early this morning and came downstairs before my husband left for work. I've been off work for a month, as my company has been dragging its feet with regard to getting me back on the job after a minor injury. I've been really frustrated with the process, and yesterday they sent me another item of paperwork to fill out that isn't even related to my injury. They had a whole month to send me that page, but they held it until a full work week after the last item was turned in for evaluation, and I am starting to think they are deliberately delaying my return as a means of retaliating against me for filing worker's compensation. Why else would they send me paperwork requiring a doctor to evaluate physical capabilities that were never in question, and why else (if this paperwork is so necessary) would they have waited until just now to make it available to me?


I think this dream is a function of my frustration and feelings of helplessness due to that process, and my feeling that I'm not contributing to the household because I'm not bringing in any income. I really do feel like my employer has stuffed me into a corner, and I can't get out. I think the part about slamming my fingers, though, had more to do with the fact that they are sore this morning, and my slamming face first may have been because I slumped down and hit my head on the desk . I'm fine, but the spot where my face impacted the desk is right where it hit the wall in my dream. (Don't feel bad if you laugh at this. I am!)