TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: I will do yours soon. I've done most of them. I haven't quite gotten to "S" because, in theory, Blue Cross should now be paying to you instead of me, because I'm out of network.

CLIENT: Maybe I should call them and let them know. Do they cut me a check?

THERAPIST: Blue Cross actually paid no at least I call them, but it's probably not health providers in the month of January as far as incurred from other providers. They haven't sent a check to anybody yet. I've been submitting claims each week. I do them, so you don't have to do that. You'll just get checks in the mail and I imagine that would start within the next two or three weeks. Then I'm billing you for my regular fee minus the recording. I think you'll probably have something like $200 visits that you'll still have to cover, but the rest will be covered by insurance and the recording. [00:01:22]

CLIENT: Okay. Actually, you know what? This is not good for me that you're out of network. Sorry.

THERAPIST: We can drop it and talk about it some other time.

CLIENT: No I'm just in a horrible, cranky, cranky mood and finances make me cranky. (chuckles) But, yeah, tomorrow will probably not work. I've been in a really bad mood all day, which has been extremely unpleasant. I do know one of the causes, but one thing that's really frustrating is all of the things I do to be like, "Okay, I'll make myself feel better," haven't worked at all. I was like, "Okay, I'll try and take a nap." Then it's like I'm too hot, I'm too cold, the bed sucks, I'm not tired. Oh, fuck. I tried petting one of my cats and they were like (growls). The other one sat in my lap but I was still like, "I don't know. This is terrible." I might go to comfort shows, Murder She Wrote, and I was like, "[...] (inaudible at 00:02:55)" I made it five minutes in. I was like, "Maybe some more water to drink." No I just feel horrible. My head hurts a lot. My eyes are also hurting for whatever reason, like probably eye strain. I don't feel very good, in conclusion. [...] (inaudible at 00:03:33) I had intended to start work either Friday or yesterday, and I didn't because [...] (inaudible at 00:03:55) so I wanted to start work on Friday... [00:04:01]

THERAPIST: Right, that's what I remembered from last week.

CLIENT: Yeah. And so on Thursday I was like, you know, I haven't received any someone has to say go and I had talked to someone on Monday who hadn't said yes or no. I called the people and left messages and found out from one of the coordinators that Chet decided that he wants the input of the head of IT as well. All right. (sighs) Organizationally, my only supervisor screened his call and I do IT work and blah, blah; but they look at my salary. Whatever. I've noticed that Chet does that when he either doesn't want me to do something or is feeling really insecure about something that I've done. Our head of IT, Harry, was on vacation and then he was going to reschedule, so everyone meets on Friday the 8th in a week. [00:05:43]

THERAPIST: You mean this Friday?

CLIENT: Yeah, this Friday. And then after they meet someone will come up with a written plan and give it to me and then I'll... So what probably made me super-stressed is that the meeting that's happening on Friday is to discuss my accommodation requests. I didn't think they really needed honestly? To me I was like, "I'm not sure what you have to discuss about it, other than a part-time schedule." The accommodation requests are on my workstation evaluation, which anyone can do anytime. I requested to not be required to sit or stand continuously without breaks and to not have to squat or crawl for extended periods of time. [00:07:04] (pause) So I'm really stressed out by the [...] (inaudible at 00:07:13) involve someone else in your accommodation request. One of the reasons is that the head of IT is kind of he's not good at saying things diplomatically. And so, when I returned from having surgery I said to him, "By the way..." blah, blah, blah. And he actually laughed. It was weird. I said, "Oh, you know, the things I restricted right now are like kneeling, squatting, crawling." He was like, "What? Really?" and he sort of laughed. I'm like, "No, really. I can't do that all the time." So his insensitivity that time... [00:08:11]

Nothing has changed except that he's more stressed so that worries me. Also once we have the meeting on Friday, I won't actually know. All I know is we're meeting on Friday to discuss the request and the display coordinator said that she can't tell me when anything else will happen until after that meeting, so I don't know when I'm going back to work. On Thursday when I was calling around, part of my issue was that I have a person offer to give me a ride to work and I need to tell them if they're driving me to work. [00:09:17] It was just very frustrating Thursday at like 3:30 4:00 to be having this conversation. In short, I'm still applying for full short-term disability benefits through February 20th. They extended it. On the one hand I'm like, "Well, that's good. Does this mean that it's going to take until the 20th do you think?" I don't know. [00:10:14]

THERAPIST: Was the approval until the 20th coordinated with I'm a little confused about if that is totally separate.

CLIENT: I don't know.

THERAPIST: You don't have any idea what's going on.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Got you.

CLIENT: The woman who's been very helpful about she's [sort of the staff display coordinator] (ph?)when I talked to her on Thursday, she was clearly frustrated because she makes it sound like I don't know what's going on. I'm like, "Great. This is sucky." So that's just kind of looming and stressing me out and I'm worried that they're going to say no to something. [00:11:10]

THERAPIST: To any accommodations?

CLIENT: Yes. Or they'll use this for another reason to shift me to another job, which can happen. Someone who I [...] (inaudible at 00:11:37) who I talked to before got shifted from working days to working nights. The option they gave her was you can either work nights or you can not have a job or you could apply for other jobs but, basically, that was her choice.

THERAPIST: And that related to coming back after being on leave? [00:12:05]

CLIENT: No, that was sort of an earlier weird shifting of jobs; but one of the things that can happen after coming back from a leave is that and they told us this in advance the department might say "we've reorganized and reworked and we want you to do something else." My job description does say that I need to be able to lift something like 60 pounds, which I can. I just can't do it quickly from the floor. [...] (inaudible at [0:13:54] how possible all of this is. I'm just sort of freaking out about that. Friday, February 1st, I started calling about apartments and [...] (inaudible at 00:13:12) apartments. Landlords are unwilling to consider March 1st because they wanted to fill it by February 1st, even though it was February 1st, which was stressful. Two different places that I got information about are like, "If you want this place you have to bring a check right now." One apartment which I was kind of like, "I don't know..." wasn't even that amazing sounding. The [...] (inaudible at 00:13:56) said, "Probably only the way to get this apartment is to give a deposit immediately, pay half of February's rent, and offer to pay more rent for the entire year." I was just like, "Why would I do that? What?" [00:14:15]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Sunday I looked at another apartment that was kind of like a garrulous realtor of unprofessionalism where the tenants (chuckles) weren't quite out. They weren't basically in the apartment when we were there, but they still had their Christmas decorations on the door and their stuff. You could see that they were moving things but oh, look. Your laptop is still here; your cell-phone charger is here. I could see stuff and it was a third-floor walk-up, no dishwasher, no laundry, and the realtor was very cavalier like, "Oh, they'll totally fix... "like the bathroom looks like someone had a bomb in it. She said, "[...] (inaudible at 00:15:16) fix those things. Can you give me a check now?" "No." [00:15:26] I thought about the third floor but I was like, "Well, I'll consider it," because it was a very large apartment, but Ashby's deal-breaker is laundry in the building. My deal-breaker is somewhat a dishwasher. I'm willing to buy one, a portable one. So there was all of that. And the second-floor is a family with kids who we could hear. I was like great. I'm walking and leaving and I saw there were boxes and boxes of either junk or Christian material that someone was planning on distribution; and someone on the first floor is a smoker. Of course, I'm like, "Fuck." So there was all of that. [00:16:23]

I had an assignment due for my outline class Monday at midnight that I just couldn't write. It was an eight-page paper, which is nothing. I always think like eight pages is a page an hour. I had a really hard time with it. I ended up shredding my complete paper and asking for an extension, which the professor very kindly granted. The paper is about ethics and what is your ethical framework? How did you form it? How do you think people are unethical? Why do you think organizations and professional groups have ethics, blah, blah, blah. One of the places where I got stuck was I'm like, "So you just want me to talk about my personal values for several pages?" because I don't know, I guess one of my [...] (inaudible at 00:18:00) of Harvard, as a real assignment, not like a response paper, you want me to actually be like blah, blah, blah... feelings for four pages or so and then I should make all papers be just feelings and opinions. I got caught up in that. Then I just got really stuck on feeling like what I was saying was boring or uninteresting actually I guess more not interesting. (pause) It made me very stressed. [00:19:01]

I tried on Sunday going to Au Bon Pain's to work and it's noisy, nah, nah, nah, went home. Monday I went to a coffee shop and I of running into four people I know and I had to explain to them why I was at a coffee shop during a workday which was frustrating, especially since I still don't know when I'm working. I spent a long time just feeling, again, like I'm not writing anything interesting, partially because there was a writer friend who also writes a lot about spirituality and a musician friend who's working on a composition, so I kind of felt like they have things... [00:20:11]

THERAPIST: Like a kindergartener writing about her values?

CLIENT: Yeah. I just felt like I'm the little kid drawing in crayon about her values and everybody else is like, "Oh." [...] (inaudible at 00:20:29) the other thing which has sort of gotten to become clear in my discussions which are required is that I feel a lot of people have religious bases for their ethics. I know; it's a thing. But most people haven't thought about that and I think it was [Copp] (sp?) who said if you are fighting morality in what God has told you to do, there's also the issue of how do you know what are the things that God said? She's like, "Well, obviously, the pope." (both laugh) No. She had noticed the thing. Then we had another ethics article where I got the opposite it started like a story about somebody and I drew the completely opposite ethical conclusion of what we were supposed to, and I had a lot of feelings about it. It was a business school classic case, the parable of the sadhu. Have you read this? [00:22:23]

THERAPIST: I read of a sadhu, but I wouldn't have thought business school would be all that interested in it.

CLIENT: Executives take some time off to spend a lot of time hiking the Himalayas or something. It's like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to [...] (inaudible at 00:22:42). While climbing up the mountain, it was kind of high-pressure. They went up to a sadhu who was lying on the ground, he wasn't well dressed, he didn't have shoes, he clearly had hypothermia, and was...

THERAPIST: Not in good shape.

CLIENT: Yeah. So they were like, "What do we do?" So, at first, they kind of made sure if he was still alive, they put clothes on him, so that he wasn't going to die immediately. This person was like, "Okay. I really want to get over that next hill so let's go." His friend, who's an anthropologist, stayed behind with this sadhu for about an hour and then caught up and said to this man, "How do you feel about the thought that you contributed to the death of another human being?" This guy was like, "Whoa. I don't know what you're talking about." One of them was like, "You'd probably look at it differently if, instead if it was a western person lying on the road fully dressed or a woman or someone else of your class." The businessman said, "No, no. I don't know what you're talking about." There was a little more information about [...] (inaudible at 00:24:45). He never got the guy's name. No one had communicated with him, as far as the article could tell, and it's unknown if the man died or not; because the group behind them offered him more assistance but refused to I think, spend a couple of hours back-packing this person to a village. When they left this sadhu they were like, "Well, he was able to speak and was throwing rocks at a dog," and he had shown them where to walk, but he was still lying in the middle of the... yeah. [00:25:37]

So the sort of thing I was taking from this was that this is really callous. This is really horrible. He had written that this man must think, "You're right, if this had been a western person, I would have reacted differently." That's where I was going and that was not the conclusion I was supposed to draw. The business person was like, "What right does this sadhu have to wander around poorly dressed and disturb my plans? What right does he have to impose himself on me?" I was like, "I don't know. He's a person." The businessman was like, "I was kind of in a rush. Maybe I should have considered this a little more, but I'm basically okay with the decision I made," which was to leave this guy. I'm like, "This was a real person, not a parable." [00:26:46]

THERAPIST: It actually happened.

CLIENT: This actually happened. And then he talked about going up the mountain and all.

THERAPIST: Horrible.

CLIENT: Yeah. I was horrified. And you weren't supposed to be? It was very clear from the article that the horrified reaction was the wrong reaction; and so he continues to talk about how this decision he made, which he thought was good and ethical, also applies to business ethics in general. I admit to not fully taking in his argument because I was kind of stuck. His basic concept idea was if you have plans that are going forward or you're doing whatever you're going to go to the theater right now if another person is sort of like [...] (inaudible at 00:27:56) and there is this homeless person who wants assistance, needs money, whatever what right does this person have to disrupt me in my life? I should just continue on to the theater. It was very unique. [00:28:26] Basically he was like, "If your business has a plan and is going forward and one person in the group will some people say ‘I don't think we should...' you should just go forward. So basically he thought it was totally ethical and fine to abandon this person and was mad at the sadhu for imposing himself...

THERAPIST: Imposing on him. [00:29:04]

CLIENT: And mad at him for not being properly dressed for the weather and why did he take the wrong route down the mountain? Because there was a quicker route, and all of these things. Because the sadhu had made, I guess I don't know I guess it was a mix of bad choices plus it was inconvenient.

THERAPIST: This guy sort of saw him the same way as it reminds me of a telemarketer. You know, like you didn't invite them to call your house, it's not nice that they're calling at dinnertime, and you have the right to just tell them to go away. And to be annoyed with that person is okay and so he has a kind of similar view of the sadhu, that the sadhu is how he put it doesn't work for me at all, but I guess the idea is that it was an imposition, he was irresponsible, he was interfering with the businessman's trip and agenda for the day. [00:30:19]

CLIENT: And the other thing is that I kind of paused and read the beginning more carefully because I was like, "Wait, is this like one of those ‘you're climbing up Mt. Everest and if you don't go forward you'll die' situations?" It totally wasn't.

THERAPIST: That would be different. It's sort of a reasonable call. (chuckles) [...] (inaudible at 00:30:46)

CLIENT: Yeah. It's so awful and I was like, "I don't understand. You actually told everyone that you did that? That's horrible."

THERAPIST: Right. Well he seems to have no compunction in not having done anything.

CLIENT: Yeah. He and his anthropologist friend talked about it some, but the businessman clearly thought his anthropologist friend was overthinking it or not being practical and all these other various things. [00:31:28]

THERAPIST: Oh, my God.

CLIENT: I know. It was like 40-bazillion things. So there is that. I sort of had 40-bazillion responses. Also one of the things I thought was so bad was that he never got this person's name. It was a little unclear if anyone could have communicated with him with this person but it seems like someone could somehow. They have no name and their only purpose is to create a parable for this article, like he didn't even consider this sadhu a person. He mentions [...] (inaudible at 00:32:25)

THERAPIST: Is it that this man who wrote the case [...] (inaudible at 00:32:30)

CLIENT: Yeah. So this businessman who was on this trip wrote it, so he starts his little article by being like it's called the [...] (inaudible at 00:32:37) sadhu and he was like, "I went on this trip and I met this guy..." So that's the intro and then he goes in to discuss how this applies to business. I mean, he felt it was an ethical decision and he feels that a decision and the ethics behind it which I honestly really just don't understand. I totally understand in the moment justifying it. [00:33:18]

THERAPIST: Right kind of rationalizing to oneself so that he had his whole self-interest to continue his hike like finding some kind of rationalization would continue him to do that. That is kind of hard to imagine somebody doing or relate to. Not what people ought to do. [00:33:36]

CLIENT: He sort of questioned himself like, was I too focused on the trip going forward? He was like, "Well, maybe, but business is all about quick decisions, so blah." I could also see like how I had this question of like I was so caught up in the moment, the adrenaline, and that I didn't think. That would be a really interesting ethical dilemma. What do you do when you've gone on and someone says you've fucked up and it's something that you can't really undo? But that wasn't it. So I was [bumping my shit] (ph?) over it and no one else was. (chuckles) [00:34:35]

We have a discussion forum and everyone is required to post in it. Someone brought up that article and they were talking about the controversy over a political image that was put on the cover of a library journal. I was pretty much like, "Guys, guys let's go back to the part that I care about which is [...] (inaudible at 00:35:04)" I did find it disturbing that that wasn't really brought up, discussed, or interesting to anyone really. A couple of people were like, "Oh, that's a good point." One thing that was brought up in my comments was that there have been a lot of disturbing cases of people climbing Everest just walking by and abandoning their people. [...] (inaudible at 00:35:50). One woman was like, "Oh, yeah. It's because it's in there. It's supposed to be really good. I haven't read it but my husband has read parts of it to me." I was like, "Why is your husband reading parts of a book to you? Why don't you read it? What?" But that was sort of a sidebar of... [00:36:12]

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I find it weird that your response is to tell me that your husband has read that book.

THERAPIST: Right. I imagine that this is all quite insulting and alienating, too. They're calling this "school," right? I imagine it feels very insulting that (pause) the class seems so intellectually and (chuckles) amorally bankrupt. [00:37:16]

CLIENT: Yeah. The other thing that surprised me was that we had four reading. We had to read some Cott. We had to read some Jon Stewart's and John Stewart [novel] (ph?).

THERAPIST: That's high school.

CLIENT: Yeah. And boring. I'm like, "That's totally school Cott," and then there was like an intro to moral reasoning and the sadhu article. It was just sort of like, "Okay. You really just want to discuss Cott? And poorly discuss Cott? No." I don't know. The other thing that I just found fairly enraging about people is that a couple of them were like, "Oh, Cott is awesome." I don't like discussing philosophy a lot because I really hate it when people are like, "Well, you haven't fully rigorously planned out every detail of formal logic," and I'm like, "Fuck you with that." [00:38:31] But in the lecture the professor was like, "So Cott had this thing where the problems with Cott is that he felt there was never any good reason to violate ethics, so if it's wrong to lie there's never a time when you can make an exception to that rule which, therefore, means this was [...] (inaudible at 00:39:00) if Cott would say that it was wrong for people during World War II to hide Jews in their house because they were [...] (inaudible at 00:39:10). I was like, to me, that's a big problem. If that's where that philosophy is going to end, I think that philosophy has some problems. [00:39:34]

So when people were blithering around about Cott, no one really brought that up either. I'm like guys, it's important. It was just (pause)... So the class goals are basically to make us think about ethics and blah, blah, blah. The range of classmates in age is like high 20 23, 24 to late 40's. And I don't know. I just am like, "Is no one a little more reflective?" I mean there was the one person who really wanted to show off how brilliant his awesome knowledge of philosophy is and I'm like, "Umm. This is boring. Don't care." But I think no one can even successfully have an interesting ethical argument about abortion which a) I would never try to have an ethical argument about abortion because it goes nowhere and b) they didn't even touch on some of the sort of obvious problems of that. [00:41:16]

It had just occurred to someone to ask whether or not it was acceptable for the government to force people to, for example, get a flu shot in an epidemic. I was just like, "Wait. You've never thought about [...] (inaudible at 00:41:43)" (laughs) It's just like Typhoid Mary. (pause) I don't know if I exactly have regrets about taking this class, but I do have a lot of frustration about it. Kind of part of what it reminds me of is everyone in upstate Pennsylvania is kind of secretly conservatively I mean, not very secretly, upstate Pennsylvania is conservative. My dad had to live with Democrats and that's just like what was my... [00:42:42] He would often talk about how frustrating it was for him to have people at work...

THERAPIST: Vote for someone and complain when they do what they said they'd do. [00:43:11]

CLIENT: Exactly. Or they're like, "I can't believe a Republican cut social programs." That's what they do. Arrgh. My state senator, who has been the senator of my area since I [...] (inaudible at 00:43:26), came out and was one of the most vocal opponents of same-sex marriage when Pennsylvania state was voting on that. He just came out and said, "It's abhorrent." He said, "It's immoral [...] (inaudible at 00:43:44) about gender [...]. And when asked about it he just stuck with, "It's abhorrent. It's an abomination. It's disgusting." It was partially because of his Catholicism, but also... so I think that I had this revelation of "Wait. A lot of people around me had very different views on what I think is acceptable behavior or [...] (inaudible at 00:44:27) behavior and not... " The best example I can give is the first [...] (inaudible at 00:44:39) and so I couldn't drive. I needed a ride. My parents were the only parents of any of my friends who would give us rides. I was kind of surprised because I was kind of like there was one person in particular who told me, "Your mom is kind of lefty. I'm really surprised" My parents have talked about their ethicism throughout my life and it was weird to have this moment of I mean I knew this wasn't typical but it really hit me how atypical it was.

THERAPIST: Yeah. We have to stop, but you kind of were clear of how different it was from what you were around. And also, or oddly, more of the cranky aim that paper for school, the apartment stuff, the work stuff I mean I'm sure there's more going on about it, but I'm not so surprised that you're cranky. (chuckles)

CLIENT: Yeah, I'm just surprised that I haven't been able to get rid of it because I'm really done with being cranky soon. (chuckles) So I'll see you tomorrow.

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