Originally ran in California Job Journal, April 9, 2000.
by Robin Wortley Hammond
It was only day two of the new millennium, and I was already facing a monumental conflict. Should I go to work that Sunday and further risk my health? Or should I listen to my family and friends and stay home - even though I knew the company needed everyone's help to get through the crisis.
My heart sank as my microbiologist friend described the health hazards of mold. The mycotoxins emitted from mold, he told me, can cause all kinds of problems - respiratory infections, intestinal problems, even neurological damage. I lowered my croissant and set it back on my plate. Suddenly I had no appetite. The worst part was, while my friend sat at the table spelling out in clinical detail all the risks of mold exposure, I was thinking about all the time I'd already spent in the infested building. I felt doomed.
I was supposed to leave for work after breakfast. But the last thing I wanted to do was go back into that office. And I wasn't the only one who felt that way. While my friend and his wife advised me not to go back in the building again, my husband was all but adamant.
I was torn. As a supervisor, I'd been asked to help get everything organized for the decontamination process. I wanted to do my part, but I knew - for myself - that I shouldn't go.
Both alternatives turned my stomach - but that was nothing new. Work had been making me sick for some time.
It had taken me more than a day to recover from the last session. We'd spent the last two days of 1999 packing and moving files for the evacuation. Just being in the building made me nauseous, and I got a migraine-like headache to boot. It's a good thing we'd had a day off - I couldn't have gone back in there without a break.
In class just a few weeks before, I had nearly doubled over with abdominal pain. I had attributed my distress to some sort of 24-hour flu. But after weeks of eating little more than dry toast and chicken broth, I knew it had to be something else. Something weird. Really weird.
The last time I could recall anything like this was when I'd landed in the hospital with a case of paralytic shellfish poisoning that nearly shut down my respiratory system. That ordeal, experts informed me, was caused by a neurotoxin (most likely from clams or mussels in the cioppino I'd had for dinner). But even the sometimes-fatal PSP didn't keep me down for long - I bounced back in about a week.
This was different. Since that "intestinal episode" in November, I'd been plagued by a host of other odd ailments including severe headaches, chronic fatigue, mysterious skin rashes, itching, watering eyes, sore throat, sinus pain, and bloody mucus when I blew my nose. For someone who's not particularly sickly, that's a lot of symptoms.
And I wasn't the only one. Many of my co-workers had been complaining of similar problems - but we all wrote it off to some bizarre form of the flu. Then the nosebleeds started.
That's when the environmental scientist was called in. I remember feeling anxious when I saw him setting up his nerdy looking test equipment throughout the office. (Good God, I thought, what are we living with?) But part of me was relieved. Now at least we might find out what the hell was going on, and why we were all getting so sick.
Before long, the results came back and we learned the office air was saturated with toxins from mold which had taken root in our carpeting and walls. We had to get out of there, and quickly.
The next thing we knew a team of fast-moving men in HazMat "bunny" suits and gas masks were turning our conference room into a decontamination chamber - sealing it in plastic and fitting it with HEPA-filtered "air scrubbers." Before we could move to the building next door, every file, folder, pencil and paperclip in the office would have to inch its way through this decontamination unit to prevent reinfecting the new space.
I could only imagine the magnitude of the task at hand - putting our entire company through the decontamination process. So I was truly dreading the inevitable "D" day. It wasn't until halfway through the moving process, however, that I became aware of the real risks involved in reporting to work as requested.
Despite my reservations about the situation, I went back to work Sunday morning. We'd been told that we could only take essential files with us to the new, much smaller space. Everything else would either go into storage or be destroyed. Bottom line: I knew it was a job that only our management team could do effectively. The guys in bunny suits wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to prioritize or how to label things so that the business could continue to operate.
As I drove up to the building I felt overwhelmed with a sense of despair mixed with anger and resentment that I had to endure this trial. I paused and took several deep breaths before getting out of my car. I didn't want to spread my negativity and lower morale even further than it already was. I had to be strong and just go do this.
Even after the two days of work we'd already put in facilitating the move, the place looked like a disaster zone. Heck, it was a disaster zone. But we all dug in again, sorting and packing files, lining up boxes to be sent through the decontamination chamber, carting boxes of "cleaned" files and equipment over to the new space.
The whole office had to be torn down and set up again, department by department, desk by desk. We couldn't fit in enough desks for everyone - some workers (including myself) would have to share a space and alternate telecommuting schedules.
When I got home that night, I felt totally drained, and I had another one of those vicious migraines. I could have slept for two days, but I knew that come morning, I would have to go back again. The new space still had a ways to go before business could continue as usual.
It's been more than three months now since we were evacuated to this tiny "temporary" office. My health has improved, however, I can't say the same for my career.
I'm still sharing a desk and computer with the editor, and we're coordinating our in-office time and equipment use by telecommuting part time. The situation has left me without an office of my own (no one who had a private office in our old space has one here), which means I have no place to receive clients for our new Career Services division. Since we cannot effectively launch HIRE Career Services until I have an office to work from, most of my duties have been redirected to editorial for the time being.
While the editor's desk is familiar territory for me (it's where I spent my early years with the Job Journal), I can't help but feel enormous disappointment. The idea of putting my counseling career on hold isn't any more palatable to me than the notion of sidetracking this new division is to the company.
But we're all in this together and, looking on the bright side, I'm confident that we'll get through it somehow. If there's one thing I admire about this little company, it's the pluck and determination that has kept it humming through thick and thin for nearly 20 years. Still, I wonder, how long will our business be on hold? And when will this mold drama come to an end?
Part II - Decontamination Daze
Return to California Job Journal's Mold Information Home Page
Copyright © 2001 California Job Journal. All rights reserved.