Jenna's Journey

The small Alberta town became quiet in the fall season, especially right before November. The leaves diminished, declined, and dropped to the dead icy grass that was still free of snow. The days became gloomier than each preceding day.  The trees became barren, sad, and the cold temperatures were starting to become more evident in the mornings now, but it didn’t feel exactly like any fall season that Jenna had known before.  This season was different because she didn’t have to work in that miserable grocery store she endured for seven years.

Jenna’s golden retriever Jake didn’t care about any weather, he loves the winter and is so excited for snow. This fall season has been longer, and the walks have been sunny, beautiful, warm, and simply fantastic. However, this day is different.

The wind is picking up and howling, and the geese seem to be having their final meetings about heading south for winter. Jenna believes this is what they are thinking. She always can imagine what the birds are thinking, what her dog is thinking, what the weather means on any given day of the week. She is empathetic to most situations, and this has always been her blessing and her curse she realizes at the age of 48.

Jenna is thankful that her golden retriever is doing so well for his 10 years of age almost. She worries too much about everything. She has been made to believe all her life that she wasn’t really worth much to most people. She needs him every day to get thru this.

The psychologist has diagnosed Jenna with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Jenna feels most people will treat you different once they find out, it’s why she hides it.  She never wanted people to know her secret. So, she acts quiet, shy, reserved at first to see how other’s act. She is quite outgoing normally, and enjoys talking to people a lot, a skill she has learned in customer service. She always creates a character to survive any situation. She learned this from her past.

Her last job just taught her that she has either gone thru child abuse in the brain or inherited it. What a thing to get thrown in your face from people? How can a company be so cruel?  She now must find herself again after she believes being subjected to these; cruel, mean, manipulative, heartless, sinister co-workers that turned everyone in the store against her, and she has suffered from Workplace Harassment.

She believes this after researching for almost the entire year in her old college books, and receiving, counselling, cognitive behavioral therapy, and medication for her brain. She does finally feel like she has the answer with what she thought was wrong with her. She is not going to thank a grocery store for hurting her so bad she must file human rights complaints to feel redemption.

 She assumed because her mom passed away before her kids were born when she was 30, that she was so sad, but now she knows she just has been like this her whole life and that trauma has done this to her. The last contract job of working at a treatment facility for young boys outside of town as a Maternity Office Administrative contract also might have set off things. The boys were in there for behavioral issues. Her desk was right next to the room they would put them into once they had escalated. So, I guess it was normal to listen to boys crying “I want to kill myself". She was not really trained to deal with those kinds of children. She would hug her small boys frequently after work and drink wine in those days.  Her mistake then was taking it home with her, always her mistake once again. The stories were imprinted into her brain. She doesn’t remember them now, and that is a good thing.

The only answer to get better is to focus on her sons and husband and repair the relationship with them that the store seemed to try and destroy in her. She didn’t want to lose them too now. She knows the dogs are helping her almost better than any therapist could. She did learn from the boy’s treatment place that the psychologist used a dog for the boys to heal. That is when she purchased and agreed to a dog, right after the job she miraculously survived. Now sitting here thinking of that she forgot why she got a dog. Jake has always been her savior it seems, her constant friend.

The medication has helped and finally is working. The seven years she spent there does seem like a complete waste of her time. She feels like the job was a complete wash on her resume.

She felt sorry for them most of the time, that their lives were so sad and pitiful that they had nothing better to do but make others feel down too.   All they ever did was gossip about each other in there always try to They hurt her feelings so much. She felt it was her duty to survive and didn’t want to fail again which she had already many times.   She would tried to hard, and she was often called a "Keener".  

Her co-workers made her feel guilty for being married for so long and having a house, 2 sons and a dog because they didn’t have that.  Jenna’s house is not even fancy.  It’s old. It was built in 1957 and has a character of its own. The backyard is huge, and the front yard is also, so she can garden any day away in the summer. She loves gardening. It was the one hobby she and her mom shared together and that her mom taught her all she knows. It makes her happy to be in the sun and grow flowers.  She feels upset with herself that she let that man call her “Engineer Jen” on a daily basis for year and years just because she had some stupid attraction to him. He really was the only reason she stayed. She feels guilty for being attracted to him.  He was the assistant supervisor in the produce section and 15 years younger. So, she felt he was in a higher position in the store then her and she wouldn’t want to get him into trouble. 

When he first started calling her names she did get him to stop, but once she was moved to the back of the store after the construction was over she gave up and was tired and let him. So she blames herself once again.

She saw him in the summer, the young man who harassed her the entire time she worked there practically. He was doing the grounds works for the City on the lawnmowers.   “Well, lucky him, at least he has a job”. She wondered if he saw her walking her dog all summer and the new puppy.” She hoped he did, so he would feel worse about what he did in that store. He doesn’t deserve that job after harassing women and being a jerk to others, especially her. It really isn’t normal to wish others pain or to feel good about that, Jenna knows her brain has been abused.

She put in so much effort with them, she cared about them all so much.  She would watch the tv shows they liked, read books, look up stuff they were talking about just to understand them.  She just didn’t realize what was happening to her at the time, and now they all got away with it.  What a true waste of her time and theirs’s for that matter and the companies.  And she keeps asking herself over and over “Why did I not say or do anything”, she says this out loud to Jake.

She truly has no friends in this town, except her husband and sons. It is very lonely because she believes the store spread terrible lies and rumours about her in this small town that has a lot of crime and drugs as Alberta does have this after the pandemic still continues.

“Well, I know why now”, she says to Jake. “Because I was attracted to that young man in there, I’m always attracted to dark haired, dark eyed, handsome young men, even if I am too old.” Its my one weakness and for that, I guess I am guilty. But that’s all it ever was, a simple attraction.  They must have known, and the managers used her disorder and weakness to their benefit.  Jenna never told her husband until the end when she felt like she shouldn’t be alive anymore. She did tell him that she had been attracted to him, to which he responded, “That scruffy bastard!!!”. She felt guilty because she had stayed so long, 7 years and did enjoy working with them, she just never really appreciated the verbal abuse, insults, mean comments but she put up with it to keep a job. And as the years went by, she just got used to it, which was sick. But she just kept telling herself “I can do this”.   But once they shut her out so much, she shut down and couldn’t speak. The not speaking sent her spiralling…. when she thinks about it now, she doesn’t know that person anymore.

So, she decided to put her heart and soul back into the house and her sons. She decided to do all the things she loved and never had the time before: gardening, outdoor walks with Jake, purchasing a new puppy for the boys “Finn”, a retriever crossed with something. Signing up for dog behaviour classes level 1 and 2 have kept her all busy. She keeps thinking he’s mixed with St. Bernard, but her husband won’t buy the DNA kit from Amazon. She wishes they could, but then remembers they now have to watch the money. They should only buy food and necessities, no more holidays or fun stuff she is thinking until she is ready to really get out there again.  

These tasks kept her busy all summer and she finally could get into to shape. It helped her get out of the house and get her communication skills back after being isolated in the cold room at the back of the store chopping fruits and veggies in a 10-degree work room.  Jenna mostly blocks out the fact that they isolated her from all the other people. She thought it was her reward, but it wasn’t. She was always kidding herself.

This summer has been the busiest ever, then when she worked at the store. She realized she has come out of a major depression, and the dogs, garden and house have healed her soul.

She still can’t forget it each and every day she walks Jake, as her favorite spot to walk is right behind the store where the old fort museum is. She loves that walk and by the old bridges and parks. She is not going to give up her walks. But she is triggered all the time she get’s closer and closer to the store.

Jenna had gone completely mad in there from working with them. They had driven her so crazy she couldn’t speak by the way they had hurt her. So, she would go to work in a daze and just listen and try to work, while still being harassed. It was like she really had turned into a zombie sometimes.

So, all she can do now is wait for the human rights complaint to go thru and for them to recognize that what they did was wrong. Now she must wait again, just like she did during the pandemic for 2 medical procedures while all the hospitals were in back log of surgeries.   She just shut out all the harassment. She just wished and prayed every day that these people would just care a little more then they did. But they never did. They never could. She had so much sympathy for them and tried to believe all their stories. But now she believes that they all lied about who they were.  She endured heavy uterine bleeding for months and months waiting for a procedure while her coworkers harassed her continuously. Then she waited even longer for a much-needed surgery to fix a pain issue from a surgery she had had prior to starting the job. This is why they harassed her. They didn’t care. They wanted her gone and would do anything to get rid of her. She thought the opposite and needed to keep the job because even her husband was waiting for a pacemaker surgery also and she was concerned she wouldn’t have work and he would die. All she ever thought about were what ifs? This company was the cruelest company she had ever worked for, and she had even done time with Safeway who at least did their job and let you go or gave you no hours and told you up front you weren’t good at the job. 

She truly believes that these people were lying to her the whole time, because they just wanted her to quit. This was a mind game played on her brain the whole time. It felt like she had been brain washed, manipulated, distracted, to forget what was really going on.  They played music all day in the room to distract her from seeing that they were harassing her. No one else in the store really knew unless they came to the room. She was a secret, kept hidden. She can’t play music as much now on the trails because it instantly takes her back to the room, a side effect of PTSD she also had coming out of the job. She instantly is reminded of the hurt, its like they hypnotized her brain to get what they wanted out of her and the rest of the workers who are all victims. She still thinks they are victims too.

She believes this is how management gets what they want. But you see her brain is that of a child that never got loved enough, so they used and abused her to get what they wanted. And I guess they succeeded. But for now, this story is not over really because as she has been standing up for herself the moment and ever since she escalated from the hug from a co-worker towards the end after she was crying, and she really believed she needed one. A tactic to get her to be more upset than ever she now believes. That is when her mood crashed, and she escalated like the boys on the ranch she remembered.  She had not signed anything with the company or agreed to be silent. She has all the medical documents to proof her innocence, and she fully intends to follow thru with these mean, vindictive, cruel, and hurtful managers. 

Her husband is a smart man and works for a large company out here. Occupational Health and Safety. He has helped her every step of the way with emails and providing support. He is the only one she can trust now forever until she figures this out.   She felt good about getting the other employees the help they needed to get better. If they choose to stay in the store, that is on them she thinks. The fact that she knows that at least 4 people quit or were fired was enough for her to believe that the company recognized something. It is not enough to her; the company did not admit to what they did to her. They still have not apologized for almost ruining her to the point of harming herself. She will wait as long as it takes for this. She has developed the patience she needs to stay strong and fight for the rest of the workers who have endured this terrible treatment.

As she walks back to the house with Jake and brings him to the back yard to play with Finn she says to herself in the mirror:

“Why did they do this to me? did they think that I was so stupid that I would not realize how bad they were treating me?”

“Did they think I should keep feeling like I’m being persecuted for being attracted to someone in the workplace as a married woman?”

“Do they wish that I should be dead?”, “so that they can feel better, and their actions are justified?”

“Are they having people follow me around and watch my whereabouts all summer now, and Fall and now leading into winter and I wait again from the Human Right’s people?”

She honestly doesn’t know who she is anymore. The woman she started out with at the grocery store was quiet, reserved, shell shocked from trauma, she went with the flow and did what was expected of her. Like a robot really. That seems to be what these retail stores want now a days. They want robots who have no hearts or souls to them.

Well Jenna realizes she has too much of that. She is tired of all the delusions and pushes them away again.

“I am going to be so strong that they can just come and get me if they want to”, Jenna says to the mirror.

“I am going to walk Jake down the trail and do the happy things to be better, just like Forest Gump did in that movie”, and “I’m not afraid to run into them anymore”. “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

“I am not going to let some grocery store chain ruin my family, when all they had to do was their dam job from the very beginning.”

This story of psychological abuse has left Jenna with many unanswered questions, but she has found that she enjoys spending her time the most with animals, gardens, her sons, and husband more then the abuse she endured. She knows that whatever job she decides to do next will be along these lines from now on. She has an empathetic heart and that will never change.