Fixation

I’ve been fixating on this for over an hour. So, I’m hoping that if I put it down on paper (or bits of data, or ones and zeros, or whatever) that I’ll stop and actually be able to sleep tonight.

Yesterday morning, an injured worker (not necessarily injured now, but he was and that’s what we call all the people who come in who are trying to get money), without a lawyer, came in to schedule a walk-thru for this afternoon (we need at least 24 hours to set up a walk-thru). That, in itself, was odd because, as I’ve been told, 99% of the walk-thrus are scheduled by the defense. So, I go and speak with him, take his file and look his info up on the computer. There was no case for the date of injury on his form. That meant I had to create it, except he didn’t have any of the medical files which need to be there in advance. I told him, he called the lawyers for the defense. I spoke with the lawyers for the defense. They told me I was wrong. I told them I wasn’t. They asked if they could fax the 100+ pages of the meds. I said no, we can’t accept faxes from outside. They spoke with the injured worker again and convinced him to go home and let them fax the documents to him. He hung up and said he’d be back in the afternoon.

Around 3:15, he came back with the meds. A walk-thru can be scheduled for either 8:30 AM or 1:30 PM and needs to be scheduled 24 hours in advance. I went to the walk-thru judge’s secretary and asked her if it would be okay to set it up, she said it would. I had the injured worker fill out the walk-thru paper and said it’d be all set up for tomorrow. I went back to my desk, created a file, and gave it to the judge’s secretary.

Today, I got back from my lunch a little after two, since I didn’t start my lunch until a little after one, and my supervisor charged over to my desk before I was able to put my Tupperwarish stuff in my bag. She had the file I had created for the walk-thru in her hand and started to tell me things that the judge said that I didn’t understand. Finally, she told me what the judge wanted, which was a separate file for each DOI on the form. The problem was that five of the DOIs weren’t on the line that they should have been on, they were on the line where the injured body parts are supposed to be listed. After she got done frantically explaining the problem to me I asked her what I was supposed to do with the files when I finished, she said I was to hold on to them until tomorrow when the official address record would be printed out. Thirty minutes later, all the files were created and placed on my little thing where I put finished files waiting for OARs.

I took my last break at three, when it’s scheduled, even though I’d only been back for an hour, and got back at 3:15. One of the other OTs (that’s my title) told me that the judge had come and taken all the files I’d just created because they needed them right away. I said okay and finally started to work on the major filing that I offered to help one of the judge’s secretaries with. While filing, the judge who had me create the new files came out into the hall (I think he was taking a break from the people in the room) and told me that he doesn’t blame me for what happened.

“I don’t blame you,” he said.

And that’s where I get troubled. See, I don’t like the sentence “I don’t blame you.” I don’t like it because when you say it you’re at least saying that you considered blaming me for something. If you really don’t blame me, they why would you feel the need to say this damn sentence? You do blame me, don’t you? If you want to tell me that I screwed up, tell me I screwed up. I can handle it. I’m not fragile. In fact, if you were honest with me and just told me that I blew it, I wouldn’t be her obsessing about this stupid problem. Blame me. I don’t mind because that means I’ll ask you to teach me so I don’t screw up in the same way later. I learn just fine that way.

Okay, I feel a little better. Hopefully I’ll be able to forget about it this later and sleep will come peacefully and be restful.