Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Handle with Care: Empathy at Work


May 13, 2019

Injuries can leave employees sidelined and organizations flailing. As an employee recovers, is management demonstrating support and trust or neglect and suspicion? Liz Simpson shares the story of her laceration, the importance of communication and trustful gestures, and how NOT to deal with employees that are injured. 

 

00:04 – Opening quote, Liz Simpson

Liz Simpson

You're at work more waking hours than you're at home. What are you going to do with the people that have been put there with you? What are you going to do with this? What are you going to make of it for people? Are you going to make people where they don't want to come in? I mean, I've had many days where I was, when I was, this kept going on, there were so many days and I was like, “Oh thank God, I cut my fingers! Now, I don't have to deal with them.”  And, that's crazy!

 

00:36 - Intro

I think he's been sick. She just seems sad all the time. I think something happened at home. What should we do?

 

You want to help someone when they're going through a hard time. But it can be difficult to know what to do or what to say. Hi, I'm Liesel Mertes and this is the Handle with Care podcast, where we talk about empathy at work.

 

On each episode. I welcome a guest that has lived through a disruptive life event. We cover topics from death to divorce to that scary diagnosis and in each story, we give you actionable tips on what you can do to show empathy and give support as a manager a co-worker or a friend.

 

01:26- Injury in the workplace

Liesel Mertes

Today we are talking about workplace injuries and the way we treat our co-workers when they don't seem to be pulling their weight my first introduction to workplace injuries was in the pages of Upton Sinclair's classic book, The Jungle. Perhaps you had to read it as required reading in high school as well. The Jungle is set on the fetid floor of the meatpacking industries of Chicago just around the turn of the 20th century. Workers died in alarming numbers while working on the slaughterhouse floor and Jurgas, the Lithuanian protagonist, finds himself thrown out on the street without a job after an injury. And the book continues to devolve from there.

 

Now, American workplaces have definitely improved from the days of The Jungle where you were thrown out after being injured but there's still ways that companies mishandle their employees.

 

02:29-  Meet Liz Simpson

Liesel Mertes

Today we're talking with Liz Simpson about her injury in the workplace. Liz is a dentist here in Indianapolis.

 

We sat next to each other at a networking event about a month and a half ago and I was instantly drawn to her quick laugh if we were in high school. I wanted to share a locker with her or a lunch table. She's pretty quick with the story and there's something about her that puts you at ease. After graduating from college Liz worked as a bilingual aide in Indianapolis Public Schools and it was there that she decided to make a career shift

 

03:10- Why Liz became a dentist

Liz Simpson

A little kid came up to me, I'm pretty sure that's how a little kid came up to me and asked me like, "Who are you?" And they had these little silver teeth that I had never seen before. Yeah. And do you know, the more the school year went on and I would just see kids with these teeth. And finally one day I asked one of my co-workers like what's the deal with this. Yeah. She was like, "Sometimes their teeth get so rotten that they have to get these caps put on." And I found that the whole school year I would think about it a lot, and I had been premed and undergrad and wanted to be a doctor from the time I was three years old. So this wasn't completely out of the realm of what I thought I wanted to do.

 

And the final straw was that spring. So you know the school year starts in like August 20th. That would have been in 2003 and that spring. I think Miss America was on and I was watching and the next day I was at work and I was talking to my co-workers and we were talking about how they always have that platform and they're like I am a proud sponsor of whatever it is. And I told them, "Man, if I was on Miss America, my platform would be to go to, like, third world countries and like teach kids how to brush their teeth." And when I was driving home that day I was like if I want to teach people to take care of their teeth, maybe I want to be a dentist

 

04:37- A pivotal conversation

Liesel Mertes

But, at the time, Liz thought that dentistry looked easy and a little gross. However over the course of the year she kept returning to this desire to help kids take care of their teeth through being a dentist and an early conversation with her mom shaped just the sort of dentist she wanted to be.

 

04:59- A pivotal conversation continued

Liz Simpson

I took my mom out to lunch. I was like, "Well I think I want to be a dentist. I think when applied to dental school" and she said, famously, "Listen, people hate the dentist." And she went on this long tirade about how people don't like dentists about they don't like how the dentist makes you feel better if you are flossing enough. And she went on and on and on and then she stopped and went, "This is great!" And then she starts talking about how good it was and blah blah blah but that was my that was my introduction to telling somebody I want to be a dentist, is the first person I told, I got a negative answer right off the bat. And that was that lunch.

 

Liesel Mertes

You just said I shall not be. 

 

Liz Simpson

I think I think my mom thinks I'm kidding. And I think patients think I'm kidding but I've told many many patients that when they're scared and I'm like listen this my own mother this is what she said to me when I told her that's what I wanna do. And I was like, I don't I don't take this lightly that people don't like it. So you know I think it I don't know what I would have been like if that hadn't been what somebody first said to me, you know, the person who I came from

 

06:11- The injury

Liesel Mertes

And it worked, she became that dentist. She loved her work and her patients loved her. And then this last December, her injury occurred.

 

Liz Simpson

I was washing dishes and I think I was sort of looking up at the TV and I picked up a glass and they didn't really look at it and I stuck my sponge in swoop swoop. And then my fingers felt like it was on fire and I took it out and I had sliced into my left index finger and I'm left handed. And I sort of rinsed it off to see like how deep down in there. It was just like him or was it it felt like it was burning like I had never felt anything burning like that before.

 

And I don't even think I looked at the glass that I might have looked and there was this huge gash in it that I just didn't see. And my a couple of my friends at the time lived in my apartment and so I called my friend and I was like I cut my finger like something's going on.

 

And she came over with a little bottle of Neosporin and I was like I don't think I'm going to help this.

 

07:20- The hospital visit

Liesel Mertes

Yes, this was a job that was much bigger than Neosporin and a Band-Aid. Liz rushed to the hospital where they took an x ray and had to give her numbing medicine. A lot of numbing medicine.

 

Liz Simpson

He was there, they took an x ray to make sure there was no glass and it got me numb. It took more anesthetic to get me now which I look back at now and I'm like That was sort of indicative that there was a problem and they put some stitches in it. And you know when, when you're a dentist or anything where you work with your hands you it occurs to you if something happens with my hands I won't be able to work and I don't really know that many dentists where something has happened where they haven't been able to work.

 

And so even you know sitting there in the E.R., before they discharged me and I was texting my mom and she told me to tell the doctors, like, make sure you tell him you're a dentist when he does those stitches and I'm like, OK thank you. And you know, they put the stitches in and I'm looking at it sort of like this is gonna be really uncomfortable. Not really thinking of any more implications than Oh man I'm going to take off a couple days.

 

08:33- It still hurts

Liesel Mertes

So she did take a couple of days and tried to go back the following week but there was a lingering numbness and this made it really difficult as she tried to handle her instruments.

 

Liz Simpson

You know we hold our instruments and I'm left handed. It's like everything's resting on this thing that I can't feel it's in someone its mouth. Yeah. And so I ended up being off of work.

 

08:58- The first day back

Liesel Mertes

Can I ask you a little bit about that day so you go back? And, you think, "I'm here, I'm ready. But, you're in the workplace and suddenly you're realizing, oh my gosh this is more than I bargained for

 

Liz Simpson

And that's why I was crying.

 

Liesel Mertes

Right. So you started crying.

 

Liz Simpson

Oh I was sobbing.

 

Liesel Mertes

Tell me more about how that played itself out. Did you go? Was it in between patients? Did you cry after? Was there anyone there for you?

 

Liz Simpson

So, at the time, we had dental students from the dental school that rotated through our clinic. So fortunately I was able to have one of them see the patient that we were working on when I realized how bad it was. And so I went out and told my manager who happened to be there that day. And I was just like this numb it hurts.

 

I was like I can't even because of where the Band-Aid was and I still had the stitches and at that point I couldn't even really get my gloves on correctly. And it's like OK well do I wear a bigger glove. Well then I can't hold things because the gloves. And it was just it was a big ordeal.

 

10:01- Feeling overwhelmed at the office

Liz Simpson

And I do tend to blow things out of proportion. So it's like I'm never going to work again. This is it for me. And you know I'm sure there's many people that in the same situation would be like, What if this is like this forever? Right?

 

And it's very hard to calm down and say OK this was six days ago.

 

Liesel Mertes

It's this cascade of emotion because you don't know. You've never, you've never lacerated your finger. You don't know

 

Liz Simpson

Right. And even if it had been my right hand you know the glove part would have been frustrating but just knowing like and even you know I like to paint I have other things I like to do and it's like everything I like to do. I need this to be working I need this to be 100 percent. So it was sort of this moment of what is my life gonna be like now. And so that was that was scary

 

10:55- Judgment of co-workers

Liesel Mertes

So, Liz is feeling all of these emotions at work wondering about implications for the rest of her life. And this is where I'd like to take a brief divergence from the flow of Liz's story. We'll get back to the tale of her recovery I promise. Because if you've been in an office setting before you know how these things go when a co-worker is out there the logistics of having to pick up their workload. But there's also the office talk the wondering, does this person really need to be off of work? Is it really as bad as they're saying it is? Now, maybe you've never had those kind of thoughts, but Liz certainly had.

 

Liz Simpson

I think a lot of times because I've been in positions at a job where somebody has something happen and you're like they're exaggerating and I'm sure I had a job a while ago where somebody and I mean I hate to say supposedly because I had something happen but slipped and fell on some ice and then was off for a really long time with back pain and I remember we all were sort of like yeah right whatever. And so then and you know I feel like I'm a Christian so I feel like God the Universe whoever you believe in puts you in these situations and for me I think it's really helped me be a lot more empathetic because I remember so many days thinking back to that co-worker and thinking, Man I feel so bad and I never I think, I probably reached out at some point but, do you know, for a very long time it was, yeah right. And now I was like, yeah, I'm in this position and

 

Liesel Mertes

You're worried, perhaps in that moment, based on your own experience, how are other people perceiving me? Which is its own thing to carry.

 

Liz Simpson

And its not like I had a big cast on I had some stitches and a Band-Aid and all you can do is tell people like this is how it feels

 

13:03- Still out of work

Liesel Mertes

And how it feels is not good. Liz tries to go back in January. It's still a no go:  really painful. And at this point she's coordinating with doctors and specialists and physical therapists doing exercises to try to stimulate these nerves and injuries working to show the feeling of vibrating instruments and build up a tolerance. She wants to get back to work.

 

13:32- Back and forth with HR

Liz Simpson

Because they had had to cancel patients a lot because they'd be like OK I think I can work next week and leave them off then I'd be like What's the doctor. They wrote me out. So it was this thing where I was like I guess I could never I could never give an amount of time how long I would be off work which listen that's not fun for me. I don't like having to call my doctor every few days and I like having to drive out to get a doctor's note.

 

I don't like my body not being right like this is not some fun, Oh, hahaha like I'm still off work. I don't know. And I like my job. You know I like doing good work. I've had...and this isn't to brag, I've had so many patients that are like, "You're the best dentist I've ever had." Or I give them a shot and they're like, "I didn't feel that at all." This is what I wanted for myself. That's what my mom wanted for me and to be in this place, and listen I've been working, I've been working seven years total. I've been six years here do you know, I'm a young dentist, you know. This isn't the end of my career. It's not like, you know, let's just pack it up. This is the beginning. And to have this thing where it's like what is this going to be like, this is really, really hard.

 

14:50- Poor response from the boss

Liz SImpson

I can remember when it was but at one point I e-mailed I think my manager and my boss and I had been texting emailing all along the way like I've got another doctor's letter. And so, there was a point when I think they said, make sure you let so-and-so and H.R. know. And so I would email her and tell my manager well then my manager sort of stopped responding. So then it ended up just being me communicating with H.R. lady and at one point she said make sure you let my boss know.

 

And so I emailed him something, and, and this made me so mad because keep in mind this was now maybe February and the email was something like, "Oh thanks for letting me know. I was a physical therapist before I was a dentist. And so if you have any questions let me know I could be of some help" and bubble bubble blah and I almost lost my mind because it was like first of all I've been seeing my doctor a hand surgeon an occupational therapist who focuses on hand issues I've already been seeing her we've been doing things through my hand please like don't give me a break like and if you really felt concerned three months ago why didn't you say anything.

 

That was the I was the only time I heard from him when I texted my manager and my boss December 4th or 5th or whatever day was say, "Hey I'm headed to the E.R." when I text them when I got out and was like, "Hey I'm gonna be off tomorrow you know with my because I have to keep my bandage dry for 24 hours" and I think when he wrote back that day like thanks for letting us know. I didn't hear from him again until February. In that email, and this is a person who's a fellow dentist, this person is my colleague, even if we never work again we're colleagues we have the same degree...and the very idea that you couldn't ever reach out on your own, not responding to something that I've sent to explain, like, I'm still off with another doctor's letter...not that, but just as a fellow human being as my colleague to say, "Hope you're getting better...never."

 

 It was something where...and I do need to add in that the company that I worked for they were sort of relocating where I was working and so they had given me my notice that I was going to be done with them from the day that they told me I was given six more months there. So, then it was very awkward to have like this last six months and then be off and part of it. But I don't know it was just it was always the shock..

 

18:02- They don’t care

Liz Simpson

And then there's part of you that's sort of like, they don't care that I'm really scared. They don't care that I'm scared. They don't care that this, and I mean it wasn't, thank God, I've since gone back to work. This could have been career ending and they don't care.

 

Liesel Mertes

This is a theme that list comes back to you a few times in the interview. This lack of empathy and engagement:  what would it cost her employer to have reached out? Why would you not extend yourself to someone who's in such obvious pain? Liz offered some of her thoughts on the matter.

 

18:46- How to show empathy

Liz Simpson

Be the bigger person. Just put that out in the atmosphere that you are concerned about this person and let the chips fall where they may. Do you know, if they're lying, something will happen and they may not even realize whatever, whatever happens, happens something will happen that they are paid back. But you will be rewarded too. Like what loss would it have been for my boss to be like,  "Hey,  man," like, months ago, not in response to an email that I've sent on your own, to just say, "Hey, hope you're getting better." What would that have cost him? You know?

 

Liesel Mertes

What I hear in what you're saying...even you said a few minutes ago:  "I've never been a manager. I've never run a practice", but you do bring to it, right, you've been a human being for a couple of decades right? And even even on the playground you know, when you're young like my kids, they realize what it means when somebody's skins their knee to come over and say, "Are you okay? Can I get the teacher? And when there are all these levels of bureaucracy or process our own hang ups that we get we get distanced from that very human impulse to say, so somebody's skinned their knees or lacerated their finger. You should, you should pause, you should intersect.

 

20:19- The impact of empathy

Liz Simpson

And you know, I think it's really hard. In the couple of years that I worked this particular job, one of my co-workers was going through a divorce and you know we're not supposed to be our phones at work. And if she listens to this she knows I love her. She would be on the phone all the time, all the time, and there would be many days when I would sit there, but be just listening to her, waiting for her to get off the phone to set up so that we can get started on something.

 

And sometimes I would sit there and think, "What is this going to hurt next week, In the next, I mean maybe our schedule get behind. We'll fix it. But what is this going to hurt if for this season I've got to let her do this? What is it going to hurt?

 

21:26- You can’t turn off your emotions

Liz SImpson

We have this idea that you should be able to go to work and turn that off. And I think it's very American that it's like you're going to go to work and you're going to shut that off and you're going to take care listen produced for the night you're going to be produced for the next eight hours. And then when you hit the door you can then turn those emotions back on. And that is not real life for many people. There are people that can do that. Good for them. I'm not one of them and there's people who they get to work when they can getting engrossed and everything in they are OK. But at some point we have to say there are people who are going to be at work and may need to step up and cry about something or are going to have to be on the phone dealing with stuff the work will get done. And I think if you've taken the care to choose good people you won't have people that will take advantage of that.

 

Liesel Mertes

And what it can do on the other side, also, you mentioned this friend going through a divorce, is that you're still good friends. When you extend care to someone at their moment of need...you know, how much different how would the story have felt different for you if you had been so supported along the way felt reached out to you felt cared for? There still might have been perhaps a work transition but you would be telling a different story.

 

22:57- A story of showing care

Liz Simpson

I wouldn't be here. And even you know I look at my co-worker that was divorced and just how I tried to support her in my own way. You know, not as her boss because that's not how it's set up when you work for a system. But I remember, I had a family friend who's a doctor and one time I was visiting her at work and one of her assistants made her coffee for her. And I was like my assistants have never made coffee for me.

 

And it was so funny because one day I had gone to like see a patient or something. I came back in my office and my coffee was sitting there and my assistant she had made it for me and I just remember thinking like, "oh, my god, I've reached that point" you know? And I think she knows I cared about her. So it wasn't this servant thing or as I call me Dr. Simpson's coffee or she's going to get mad at me. It was this thing where it was like she cares about me I care about her. Let me go ahead and just make this coffee really quick. And I just thought it was such a sweet sign that she saw that I cared about her and so she was willing to do that.

 

24:11- How does the story end?

Liesel Mertes

How does the story end? Well, Liz continues to improve and has returned to work, although not with this employer. After feeling mishandled and overlooked in her work, Liz decided to cut ties early with her workplace. Moving on to another dental practice and reflecting on her experience, Liz offers these closing thoughts.

 

24:35- Liz’s reflections

Liz Simpson

You're at work more waking hours than you're at home. What are you going to do with the people that have been put there with you? What are you going to do with this? What are you going to make of it for people? Are you going to make people where they don't want to come in an hour? I mean I've had many days where I was when I, as this kept going on, there were so many days and I was like, "Oh thank god I cut my finger! No I don't have to deal with them!" That's crazy! It's like, is this what you want for your the people you've hired? Or do you want people who feel like this coworker was a godsend. You know, this person was there for me when I needed them.

 

25:23- Action #1, communication matters

Liesel Mertes

Here's some closing action points after our conversation. Number one:  communication matters. As a manager or a co-worker or friend, your silence can speak volumes. Reach out with a call, a text, an email.

 

25:44- Action #2, be aware and sensitive to emotions

Liesel Mertes

Two:  be sensitive to the emotions that an injured person might be feeling. Liz felt scared, worried about when and if she would ever recover. In showing that you're aware of their feelings, try offering a simple observation: "This seems really hard. I imagine that it might be scary or overwhelming or sad..." When you say something like that, it gives the person a chance to respond or not to respond and shows that you are considering their feelings in the midst of an injury.

 

26:24- Action #3, reflect on your assumptions about workplace injury

Liesel Mertes

Three:  just a closing question. What assumptions do you make about people that are off work for injury? Do you believe them? Or, are you suddenly judging them? Wondering if they're making it up? Liz spoke about how hurtful these assumptions can be. Are you making them?

 

26:49- Outro

Thanks for listening to the Handle with Care podcast. Handle with Care is produced by Brian Wheat at Village Recording studios. Original music is composed by the talented musical pairing, Duo Futur.

 

If you like what you hear. Please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review the show. It helps other people find us. Thanks for listening. This is a Liesel Mertes and I will be back next time as we build empathy at work.