Batch

07-19-2013 -- [I don't usually have nightmares, but I sure did, last night. And it was in multi-part. I would wake up, then drift back to sleep and be back in the same dream, with the same root causes, but each time things escalated.] Somehow I went back to work at Hewitt. There were some people there who liked me and wanted to give me another chance, even though I don't have a voice, and so couldn't speak on the phone. Instead they had me doing desk work, processing paperwork or something like that. Even so, some of the bigwigs don't like me.

In the dream I carried around a big backpack filled with books to read (including a large hardcover book with something like six sci-fi/fantasy novels in a series printed small in the big omnibus edition, several bags of balloons, my dream notebook, possibly my notebook computer. Fairly big pile of stuff.) The employer was Hewitt, and most of the people worked on phones in a call center environment, but the building is one I have often dreamed I worked security in, based on the TAMS building in Tustin, with staircases leading upstairs in two separate parts of the building leading to two separate upstairs areas that don't connect. And the huge warehouse area in the middle is far more JC Penney than what the TAMS building had.

Earlier parts are somewhat generic and sketchy, but one part is in an outdoor section, where people are working in cubicals outside, which makes no sense whatsoever. But for some reason I am allowed to set up a small tent to work in when there is room. Unfortunately, the place I usually set up this tent is now overflowing with tables and booths in a kind of job fair, and I am having to look around to try and figure out somewhere to set up my tent, just to come to accept that today there is nowhere I can set it up. This doesn't stop one guy from coming up to me and asking what the heck the tent is about, anyway, and who do I think I am, and why am I allowed this special treatment?

I have to go and sit at my usual cubical, working with the friendly, young, Hispanic guy that I really shared a cubical with at Hewitt, even if after six or seven years I can no longer remember his name. But with the job fair going on, they aren't bringing any of the usual paperwork around, so I don't really have anything to do, and am pretty much wasting the day sitting around and talking. Eventually one of the managers who doesn't like me comes over and gives me an assignment to take something to the other side of the building and deliver it there, and I have no problem in doing so, though I am not too happy with her attitude.

When I come back, I find the delivery was a ruse to get me out of the area so she could gather up my backpack/box, my computer, and anything and everything else of mine that might be in the cubical. This angers me. Not to going through my stuff, that is covered by company policy, and I can see the point of it, but the going behind my stuff behind my back, without even letting me know they are doing it. I realise that some of the bigwigs who don't like me have decided it is time to get rid of me, and are looking for a reason to fire me, but I don't care. To me, this behavior is beyond the pale, and I am ready to quit on the spot because of it, regardless of whether this is giving them just what they want. I ask around to find out just where she works, and I am told she is in the Obamacare department, and am given vague directions to it. Great ... Obamacare ... so this is probably something political. This just gets worse and worse.

As I am searching the building, looking for her desk or office, it seems more like Sears in the Buena Park Mall, in the layout and where the elevators are located. It takes a fair amount of looking, but I eventually find her. She's got all my stuff there and is going through it, and I start grabbing parts of it from her hands and my bag/box, and sorting through the stuff that is mine, and the stuff that belongs to the company, but that I have use of, seperating them out. At the same time I am lecturing her about the sneaky way she went about all this, telling her that if she had just told me they were going to search my stuff and had me present for it, I would not have had any complaints, but this is bullcrap.

Meanwhile, I am pulling bag after bag of balloons out of my bag, and dumping them on her desk. Though it makes no sense, for some reason they have been providing me with balloons, and I am giving them back. Then it turns into bags and bags of potato chips, snack cakes and chocolate that belong to the company, and that I never put there. I have to assume she was putting them in there to frame me, giving her a reason to fire me. I don't give her the chance, as I dump all the stuff on her desk, telling her I quit! She says I can't quit, because she is in the process of firing me, and I tell her too late, I already did. I find an extra check in my bag, and figure if it is my final check, I'll keep it, but it turns out to be somebody else's check, so I toss it on her desk, also.

Now that everything in my bag/back pack is really mine, I gather it all up, and am ready to leave the building, but she orders me to use the warehouse exit, rather than any of the other ways out of the building, and I don't know why. But as I am walking through the warehouse, some of the workers are calling out to me, distracting me, and driving fork lifts and things close to me, and in the process I set down my bag and dodge some stuff, and when I go back to where my bag was, it is gone. I now realize she wanted me to exit through the warehouse so she could have somebody in the warehouse steal my stuff. I don't get why, but I am not happy about it.

[It was about this point that I woke up and fell back asleep for the first time.] I storm back into the office and start trying to find her, but now she is hiding from me, and has made her cubical look almost identical to everybody elses. So I am looking and looking, but having no luck in finding it. I keep asking around for where her cubical is, and a few people try to point me in the right direction, but most are unhelpful, realising that I am on the outs with management, now. Eventually, when I reach the point that I am right next to it, a big worker who looks a lot like Sam on NCIS LA is very insulting, and points me at the cubical I am standing next to, and I am finally able to confront her again.

She denies everything, tries to claim I probably just mislaid my backpack, or maybe didn't even have one to begin with. She says she planned nothing, she doesn't believe me, and that I am just trying to stir up troubles. But a couple of the more honest employees back me up, at least in part. One points out that 'Sam', who is carrying a fantasy anthology, hates reading, and they know they have seen me with that book in my possession for any number of weeks. But she refuses to listen to anything, claiming that, at worst, I misplaced my bag in the warehouse, and am making wild accusations against good people to stir up trouble.

So I am back in the warehouse, looking around for my bag (it is kind of like a huge yellow duffle bag of the style (but not color) that soldiers or seamen use), but now much more of the warehouse staff is against me, and more and more I find myself involved in slightly dangerous near misses with warehouse equipment which is where it shouldn't be. Stuff that isn't really all that dangerous, but kind of threatening, like they are trying to warn me off. But I keep looking around, and one of the guys finally gets angry enough to get more serious. It seems like there are two 'levels' to this warehouse, and he is somehow driving a forklift on the second level. These aren't floors, that would make sense, but not be dangerous. Instead it is like a second level about fifteen feet above the first that is formed from catwalks and the like. Stuff that is there, but isn't super sturdy.

Anyway, there are some racks of pipes, the kind and size that they sometimes install along the street, segments perhaps 12 feet long and about a foot in diameter, and lots of these pipes are stacked up together, and one of them drives a forklift out on to this rack of pipes so that they break out of the rack and start to rain down around me. Worse, the forklift no longer has a sturdy base, so it is plunging down on top of me, as well. While this is not a nightmare yet, it is getting more and more serious, and I end up laying flat on the ground while the forklift comes to a stop about six inches above me. Getting close enough to truly be dangerous!

[Somewhere around here is when I woke up for the second time, then fell back to sleep.] I am soon stalking through the building, looking for the supervisor who started all this again, and she is still hiding, so it takes a lot of time and effort. By this point I am determined I am getting paid for the (at this point turning into two days) time that I am spending looking for my stuff which they have stolen from me. I finally find her and start to berate her about the latest attacks, and she tries to categorically deny everything, saying there is no way such a thing almost happened, just to have one of the employees not under her thumb come up and say "Oh no, so-and-so did dump his forklift down a load of pipes. We were wondering why he had been so stupid," so again, I had witnesses backing me up.

Suddenly she stops for a moment, and seems to remember something. She tells me that the black high school around the corner was off yesterday and is off today, and maybe some of them have seen something, and can help me to find my stuff. She is very insistant that I go ask them about it, and is telling me what to say to them, giving me a quote in a foreign language, though I am not sure if it is in French or Spanish. Anyway, she keeps repeating it over and over again until I actually write it down. About that time, my friend Carl, who neither of us saw standing there, steps out and verbally tears her a new one. He may have even physically attacked her slightly, ranting about what kind of a horrible person was she? I say something like "Let me guess ... what she was telling me to say was a horrible insult that would get me killed if I said it to the students at the school? Did you really think I was dumb enough that I would ask what you told me to, without first getting a trusted translation?"

I explain that I now have actual evidence that she is trying to kill me, waving the paper [in real life, my handwriting, no help, but in the dream it seemed it would work as evidence], and now she is going to be in so much more trouble. I angrily stalk off into the warehouse to continue looking for my bag. Problem is, now she knows she made a mistake, and the kid gloves are off. There are at least three or four of the warehouse workers now trying to kill me, and I am being chased by workers using all kinds of equipment.

When I try to duck into the racks of stuff and climb a little to get out of range, the kinds of cranes that work on ships or airplanes, the elevated ones that move around on two parallel tracks, are being used to chase me around and try to crush my head if I don't stay low enough to be in range of the forklifts. For a good ten or fifteen minutes, I am running around, fleeing for my life as there are constant near misses, screaming for help, but because of the no voice thing, nobody can hear me.

Finally I have made it near the edge of the warehouse, back by where the office area starts again, and pursuit dies off as I run into Carl, who has seen the last little bit of it, and is horrified that they are trying to kill me. That's when I woke for the final time, almost hyperventilating from all the running I'd been doing in the dream.