Handicapable
I've been working as a testing coordinator this summer. I am responsible for the adminstering of an ELD (aka ESL) test to all English language learners in the district. I have a team of ten testers who I coordinate, or lead, as the job description goes.
The other day, I was doing just that. We were finishing up for the day as I was doing a count for how many students we would have to test tomorrow. During this time, I asked my team members to each carry a box to the counselor's office to be secured. Each did, except for one—a girl in her early twenties. Her dyed black straight hair falls just over her shoulders, her skin pale with the exception of burgundy accented lips. She usually wears a long skirt and long sleeved shirt, mostly dark colors, that day accessorized with a black satin choker.
Seeing that one cardboard box was left, an empty one that would only be filled with thirty test booklets (flimsy 10 pagers) and a one-inch three ring binder.
I turned to the girl and asked with that hinted command behind it, "Once I'm done with this list [the binder], could you take this over to the counselor's?"
Softly, she said, "Uh, no."
I paused. My team members froze. Eyes hopped back and forth between the girl and myself.
It didn't help any when one of the team members, a friendly acquaintance of the girl's, laughed and said, "This I gotta see."
I laughed and tried to take it as a joke. I slid the box closer to her. "It's the last one. There's not much in it. I have to initial everyone's timecards." I said it pleasantly, a gentle voice.
She smiled nervously. "I, uh, don't do manual labor."
I scoffed. I had to. Did I ask her to carry all the boxes, the full boxes? Did I ask her to mow a lawn, dig a trench, pick strawberries? There's an older man on my team, his left arm paralyzed from the elbow down, carried a full box of testing materials willingly.
This was ridiculous. My team members knew it was too. Their silence, their eyes on her told me so. I was rendered speechless, a sympton of being stupified by the sheer asininity of this young capable woman, who in the amount of time she contested my request of her could have been back getting her timecard initialed and sent on her way home to her Wicca ceremonies and 152nd watching of The Crow. The most I could get out was a shake of my head, and then a young guy spoke up, volunteered to do the powerlifting it would take to move the box out of the room.
I knew I had to talk to her. I was annoyed, tempted to be a smartass to her the next day. I would carry her examiner's manuals, pair of number 2 pencils to her desk for her. I would move a student desk for her, pull up a chair. I'd do all the "manual" things for her that she and all my testers do everyday. That would show her.
Then I chickened out the next day. I'm such a pussy.
I pulled her aside into the hallway, away from the testing rooms. I talked with her, trying to make it clear that this is a team effort, where everyone pulls some weight so we can get in and out of each site in this school district, the third largest in the state. I made it clear that what I asked of her was not something that was not asked of others on the team, not out of line.
She said she was embarrassed, feeling that everyone was watching her, like I singled her out. I agreed. I did single her out, but she had to know, somewhere deep down, that she embarrassed herself.
She tried to explain, "You see, you don't know me very well. And after you get to know me, you'll know I don't like to do manual work."
I realized my point was not clear. I emphasized the team again, teamwork, the task being minimal, etc. My final words were, "And when I ask you to do something, if it will help get things done, you should do it."
I doubt the words got through. Maybe I couldn't say anything right to persuade her otherwise. I said what I could. I wouldn't be able to change her. She would probably have to learn on her own, or grow up a little bit more.
The other day, I was doing just that. We were finishing up for the day as I was doing a count for how many students we would have to test tomorrow. During this time, I asked my team members to each carry a box to the counselor's office to be secured. Each did, except for one—a girl in her early twenties. Her dyed black straight hair falls just over her shoulders, her skin pale with the exception of burgundy accented lips. She usually wears a long skirt and long sleeved shirt, mostly dark colors, that day accessorized with a black satin choker.
Seeing that one cardboard box was left, an empty one that would only be filled with thirty test booklets (flimsy 10 pagers) and a one-inch three ring binder.
I turned to the girl and asked with that hinted command behind it, "Once I'm done with this list [the binder], could you take this over to the counselor's?"
Softly, she said, "Uh, no."
I paused. My team members froze. Eyes hopped back and forth between the girl and myself.
It didn't help any when one of the team members, a friendly acquaintance of the girl's, laughed and said, "This I gotta see."
I laughed and tried to take it as a joke. I slid the box closer to her. "It's the last one. There's not much in it. I have to initial everyone's timecards." I said it pleasantly, a gentle voice.
She smiled nervously. "I, uh, don't do manual labor."
I scoffed. I had to. Did I ask her to carry all the boxes, the full boxes? Did I ask her to mow a lawn, dig a trench, pick strawberries? There's an older man on my team, his left arm paralyzed from the elbow down, carried a full box of testing materials willingly.
This was ridiculous. My team members knew it was too. Their silence, their eyes on her told me so. I was rendered speechless, a sympton of being stupified by the sheer asininity of this young capable woman, who in the amount of time she contested my request of her could have been back getting her timecard initialed and sent on her way home to her Wicca ceremonies and 152nd watching of The Crow. The most I could get out was a shake of my head, and then a young guy spoke up, volunteered to do the powerlifting it would take to move the box out of the room.
I knew I had to talk to her. I was annoyed, tempted to be a smartass to her the next day. I would carry her examiner's manuals, pair of number 2 pencils to her desk for her. I would move a student desk for her, pull up a chair. I'd do all the "manual" things for her that she and all my testers do everyday. That would show her.
Then I chickened out the next day. I'm such a pussy.
I pulled her aside into the hallway, away from the testing rooms. I talked with her, trying to make it clear that this is a team effort, where everyone pulls some weight so we can get in and out of each site in this school district, the third largest in the state. I made it clear that what I asked of her was not something that was not asked of others on the team, not out of line.
She said she was embarrassed, feeling that everyone was watching her, like I singled her out. I agreed. I did single her out, but she had to know, somewhere deep down, that she embarrassed herself.
She tried to explain, "You see, you don't know me very well. And after you get to know me, you'll know I don't like to do manual work."
I realized my point was not clear. I emphasized the team again, teamwork, the task being minimal, etc. My final words were, "And when I ask you to do something, if it will help get things done, you should do it."
I doubt the words got through. Maybe I couldn't say anything right to persuade her otherwise. I said what I could. I wouldn't be able to change her. She would probably have to learn on her own, or grow up a little bit more.
posted by matty at 6:30 PM
10 Comments:
Wow, the nerve. You should let her know that working means doing some type of mental or physical labor. I'm sure that her duties were outlined or described to her before she took the job. She’s just lazy.
You should work on description and akward sentence structure.
burn the witch
you should tell her that you "...uh, don't deal with people like her. It's either work or collect your final paycheck." But the first thing you should've done is told the idiot who though he/she couldn't miss what was about to happen to leave. Best to confront an employee in private.
Anonymous? do you suffer from MPD?
anon1: I agree she is certainly lazy. What she has going for her is she is one of my more efficient testers. and it isn't my responsibility to fire and hire people. i just sort of coordinate. i guess i could report her to our boss, but saying "this girl wouldn't carry a box" doesn't sound terribly convincing for action to be taken.
anon2: could you describe how and where my description could be improved?
and i'll keep an eye out for my aWkward sentence structure. thanks.
anon3: i think the burning of a witch is sort of passe. a hanging is the wave of the future.
anon4: thanks for the suggestion. the idiot caught me off guard. of course so did the lazy girl. it all happened rather quickly. but after that day i thought about it, i did pull the lazy girl aside and talk to her in private.
Even though this piece makes a good story, I don't think it's one of your most well written entries. I agree that some of the phrasing is awkward and more description would make it more engaging.
Describe the room. Describe the boxes (how big are they? how many tests in most of them? how much to they weigh?). Okay, people are surprised and go silent--was there a lot of noise before? How long is the walk to the counselors office? What does her friend look like? The girl is in her 20s--is that much younger than most of the group? What does the hallway where you talk to her feel like (seems to me like a good place to describe the emptiness of the school during summer)?
There are some awkward sentences. I would change the last sentence in the first paragraph to "I coordinate [or lead, just pick one] a team of 10 testers," and maybe combine that with the previous sentence, to keep it from being too choppy.
Try reading other sentences out loud: "I would carry her examiner's manuals, pair of number 2 pencils to her desk for her." Out loud, doesn't it seem like an 'and' in place of the comma would work better?
"There's an older man on my team, his left arm paralyzed from the elbow down, carried a full box of testing materials willingly." That's awkward. Take out the "there's" or had "who" before "carried."
These are just examples. Some of this could just be proofreading. Other bits are a matter of style, I guess, so you don't have to change things. It's just stuff that I think would make the language flow more smoothly.
Here's a weird, little, picky thing: put hard returns between your paragraphs. It would make it so much easier to read.
First: I am not Anonymous #2, who was critical without attempting to be constructive. I also don't have any particular qualifications. I'm just a reader (3-4 books of fiction per week) who was offering suggestions. I don't really care if other people think my suggestions are valid. If Matt thinks they are useful, he can take them. If not, fine, my feelings aren't hurt. I like the stories he tells here, and I'll keep coming back.
I know this is just a blog. But my impression from Matt's very first entry is that he wants to get back into doing more creative writing. I think an important part of the writing process is to get feedback and try to improve. Certainly, some of the entries are your standard bloggy updates. But others, like this one, are stories, and I thought feedback from readers on content (as much as possible, given that these tend to be real-life experiences, rather than fiction), structure, and language might help Matt as he develops as a writer. He did ask Anonymous #2 for specifics, although perhaps that was sarcasm. I didn't mean to be mean. Just offer some suggestions, since I didn't think Anonymous #2 would.
Most of it a matter of style, which I said in my original comment. Description is not just a matter of unnecessary adjectives, which most of the time don't actually do much. It's more a matter of setting the scene. It's something I've noticed in past entries as well on this site. The scene outside the Counselor's house for instance--reading that, I thought more description of the scene would be nice, and make the reader really SEE what was going on. I suppose some people might like to just leave that up to the reader to imagine, but I enjoy writers who help me see things as they see them.
Gee, Victoria, way to overreact! Matt asked for specific citations and he got them; that's fair. I agree with Anonymous the Critic: writers with a public forum should be prepared to endure comments/criticism. Whether said comments/critcisms are heeded is entirely up to the author. I think Matt excels at description. In fact, my OPINION is that at times he gets so caught up in description that he relegates the exposition to second place.
A blog is a place for him to experiment, and I would think that the comments and reactions of others would be welcome. We can all benefit from constructive criticism - people who praise us just because they like us, their opinions soon lose value.
the cnslr
Hey Victoria - I agree; you take the time to comment and I think that means that you have enough of a reaction to the piece to be motivated to write something, which is valuable. I didn't mean to sound dismissive, just flippant.
-the cslr
anonymous-with-feedback:
thanks for taking the time to respond and give me comments. for some, i'd have to say it's a style preference. for others, i see what you're saying.
thanks again.
Post a Comment
<< Home