Healthy Truths

I love my boss. I have to start off this by saying that. If I didn't, I would have been working for her all these last twenty years and I sure as hell would have given up on her long before this. Between the 3-5 months late in paychecks for the last two years and everything else, any so-called sane person would have given up.

I didn't. And I probably won't.

Mainly because I believe in her, but there are some days when it gets really hard. Like today. Yesterday, I gave her my opinions about something I felt was inappropriate behavior on her part. In specific, driving her van to work and then yelling at someone else for not moving it before it got a ticket. I feel that the driver of a vehicle is responsible for parking it and making sure it gets moved if it is in a 90 minute zone. Not require someone who doesn't drive the vehicle to keep track every day to see if you actually drove into work and to move it if you did.

I also worry about her health. In the two decades I've been working, I've seen her health continually nearly constantly. She walks with a cane and weighs more than me, despite being a foot shorter. This worries me and, since I'm quite fond of her, I want to help her.

Lately, she's been telling me that she's averaging 4,000 steps according to her pedometer. Since I programmed it, it is set to 66 cm per stride with the national average being 61 cm for women. That comes out to 2.65 km per day average. The nearest parking lot is a block away, actually if you want to call it, 1.5 blocks away. According to Google maps, it is about 144 m away from the front door or 218 steps. This is, according to her, too far for her to handle at this point. She claims, and I consider this a claim, that the extra 400 steps required to go to and from the parking lot is just too much. Despite her 4,000 step claim, the extra 400 is just simply too much for her frail body to continue.

I need to point something else: I know she's lying. I don't know a single instance of a human who can consistently walk 2 km and is somehow unable to handle an extra 400 m. The human body is capable of going far and beyond its accustomed limits. I don't ask that she match me meter for meter, she isn't up to that point.

I also know she's lying because of the same thing that anyone who deals with children will know. She "accidentally" resets her pedometer as she hands it over. She makes a big deal of looking down at it and writing down her goal, in the middle of some piece of paper and proclaiming its beauty. She doesn't actually show the pedometer except on Mondays, where I suspect she hasn't reset it since Thursday.

I know she can do it. I watched her play football when I was a child. I watched her climbing over things and I have a lot of fond memories of digging rocks out of mines and running through airports with rock hammers (apparently security thought it was a weapon, go figure). I've been all over the world with her and somehow, in the years that have passed, she can't walk 400 meters... when someone is watching. No problem if no one is there, hell she'll do three kilometers on a good day without witnesses.

It hurts to see a friend that you care about doing this to themselves. I believe that the body follows the mind. One of those aspects is honesty. The same thing they tell you at Weight Watchers. You can't estimate your points, you need to actually look them up. We (read I) have a weight problem because we can't make good estimates, we can't tell ourselves the truth unless we tell them to.

So, I brought this up to her. Yes, it probably wasn't the best battle. We just had a critical project in, one that she made a big speech about how important it was and how much she didn't want to do it. That should have been the key point. After that speech, demanding that employees give it there all, she did the one thing that I am truly saddened that she even considered:

She went home.

A rousing speech, asking for them all, and she goes home four hours early. This morning, I heard that I "pounded" on her and she just can't handle it. She even pulled out the crocodile tears for others. Actually, she tried it last night, but after a few years of crying wolf, I have trouble believing those tears. They come too easily and only when she is trying to avoid some topic.

I worry about her and all she hears is attacks.

I'm going through the same thing. I wasn't honest with myself and I sure as hell wasn't exercising. As of today, I am 1.91 meters tall and weigh 145 kg. I am obese in every sense of the world. On the other hand, I can still do a 22 km bike ride without a struggle, pick up 50 kg easily, and can do 5 km on a treadmill in 40 minutes without struggling. I couldn't say that a year ago. The main reason I can? I finally got honest with myself. I realized I had a problem and started working on it.

I worry for her just as I worry for myself. And when I get punished for telling her that, it hurts. She didn't hear my concern, all she heard was attacks. All she heard was me beating on her for something she insists is outside of her control. I got a huge list of tasks, that must be done by the end of my day, plus a demand that I make international phone calls this evening. There is no question why, she is upset at me for telling her what I see is the truth. Instead of being willing to face it, she choose to view it as an attack against her personally, my own selfish desires and nothing else.

You can never make someone see the truth, but you can hope eventually they'll at least listen to it.

It just hurts to wait for that time.

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