Coma Red

I am sitting in bed, listening to "Sleep", a CD made for the sole purpose of putting one to sleep. I took it from the nap room at Miniapple, having had constant battles with sleep whenever we put the CD on in our Discovery Room. Having an aquarium lighting up the room ever so slightly, the rest of the room's totally dark and silent with that CD going . . . it's a recipe for disaster. Every day I fought sleep along with my coworker. Eyes were heavy, heads would bob, we'd scare ourselves awake. So, having moved from the Discovery Room into another room, we've since changed CD's, and I took it home so that I could finally engage in the "Sleep" slumber I lusted for all summer long at work.

Now as I listen to it, it keeps me awake.

I think about work. I think about summer.

I think about a coworker who got fired because she succumbed to "Sleep", snoozing on the job. The director caught her more than once, and the coworker lied about it. "I was not asleep," she said. Well, it's kind of hard to lie when we all heard you snoring.

I even had to rat her out. Having been in this coworker's position of fighting sleep (although I think the coworker deliberately fell asleep, it wasn't just a sudden onslaught of food coma tiredness) I lessened the time she slept to a mere 10 to 15 minutes in my forced disclosure (which sucks, by the way, I felt like a snitch). She actually slept for a good hour with me sitting by waiting for the director or the administrator to come and catch her. And lo and behold, she was caught. Go figure.

She was on the higher ups' "list" for other behavior. She just didn't fit at a child care program. Anyway, I was present when the administrator and director decided to fire her. So I knew about a good week and a half before it happened.

The entire time, the coworker kept saying "You know something." She was super suspicious, seeing the administrator come around (she hardly ever comes around, but when she comes around more than two days in a row something's up), prospective interviewees were being led past the Discovery Room. It wasn't the nicest job on the higher ups' part. Personally, I think they were trying to frighten her.

I felt terrible. I was in on who were the favorite interviewees. Shit, I even had my say on who I wanted to take her place (she eventually was the one who got the job). The director fully agreed with me, not that I had anything to do with the final decision, but the point is the director was talking to me about the inner workings of the firing and the entire time I was smiling and pretending nothing was up in front of the doomed coworker.

It came to be the day when the firing was to take place. I went into work with a feeling of foreboding and queasiness. I even talked to Taylor about it. "I feel like a rat, man." Yet, when it came to be nap time, even after lying to this coworker's face about her getting to go home early because of being overstaffed, I was okay. I felt okay.

I tried my best to make her feel happy in her last moments of work. We actually had a lot of laughs, and I was trying to show her that I cared. She was supposed to be fired at 1:00, but the administrator came around at 2:15, so we talked a long time. Finally, the admin showed up at the school. Even before she asked to speak with the coworker, the coworker looked at me with such disappointment and disdain, as if it was my fault she was getting fired.

Thinking about this in bed right now: in my experience, when I've been nice, giving, and as altruistic as possible to people, those people have been the ones who have outright shunned my existence if we had come to a dire situation. The ones I never showed much interest in, having been 100% my fault they got canned or something, they just went on with their lives. I tried everything I could to sweeten this person's doom, and she hated me for it.

Bein' the nice everyman has its drawbacks. That's who I feel I am at Miniapple most days. I've gone from aid, to assistant, to day care staff. I've been all over. I'm the Everyman. I now meddle in all the different portions of Miniapple naturally. So, when shit happens (a child is misplaced, a parent is disgruntled, etc.) I take the fall or am blamed. A lot of that was happening today at work, even. I have to explain to parents and coworkers that we're a team with many different rooms and functions working at the same time, we're bound to make mistakes here and there.

You make an impact, show a smile, extend a hand, the receiver, feeling deceived, will feel nothing but the lowest contempt for you. You can't win.

Thom Yorke -- "Black Swan"