Hey [Name] I think Ive got to stay in tonight and take care of [Insert Roomates Name]. If there is valuable information being conveyed, I want to know it, but the toll on my mental health if I do this training is going to be immense, and I cannot imagine what content they will be teaching that I havent already heard and internalized many times before. This LW has already had a lot of training. Thank you! LWs boss is nuts. this isnt an Im calling my lawyer so I can sue knee-jerk thing, its consultation on employment law and options when the obvious ones are made inaccessible for one reason or another. You dont know how you will react until you are in a situation, but a one-time seven hour LARPing of a horrible situation will not help you and certainly can traumatize you. Im in charge of working with our local law enforcement to conduct an active shooter training. The shooters there werent interested in us as long as we stayed on our side of the street. You do volunteer work 8. Two weeks ago, we had our first active post-Covid drill, meaning we were meant to act it all out. I like Alisons phrasing for what to say to your boss, it doesnt necessarily imply mental health issues, just that you have a past experience that makes this too close to home. I thought I was the only one to do this lololol. The trainings have been optional. Our organization lost one person in the large event because they couldnt believe it was happening and went to go see. Its crazy there are plenty of places in the world with constant random violence. At their large school, the directive is that 3rd+ need to get off campus and run out to the neighborhood by any means possible. That was about it. The self advocacy takes its own toll. That means if you click and buy a product, we may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Regardless of what OP decides to do, I dont think the boss can be trusted to react sympathetically. The UK is having a heck of a lot of problems, and every so often we wonder if wed need to head back Stateside, but active shooter drills keep it crossed off the list. It doesnt need to replicate the emergency as realistically as possible. Use an excuse. I escaped HS 2 years before columbine was 8.5 mo preggo during SandyHook. Im so sorry. Hes a nice person but has very deeply entrenched ideas about mental health, anxiety, young people, and triggers, and I dont want to have to disclose my own mental health diagnoses to him, make him think Im simply not tough enough to handle it, or come across like a millennial snowflake, etc. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. OP shouldnt give a reason for calling in sick at all if they can possibly get away with it. No one will want you near them or ask any more questions. If you want to make memories with your family on trips away from home, you will need to take advantage of the weekends. As one robber was walking me from the back of the store to the front, with a gun in my ribs, I managed to remain calm enough to figure out how to not get taken out of the store as a hostage. Cain gives introverts the tools to better understand themselves and take full advantage of their strengths. Seven hours is unbelievable, but sounds more like a training event for the police than your workplace. Weve had active shooter trainings, but no drills in any of the universities Ive worked at (thankfully). It is not worth the cost to your mental health to try to justify your position any more to your insensitive boss or even, frankly, other people. Call in sick is what I would do. I was 5th grade when Columbine happened, young enough my parents tried to keep us away from it, old enough I knew everything anyway. This means there needs to be a fair balance between times where you work, rest, and do what makes you happy. (They literally had us hiding in our offices while the public was still in our spaces creating a safety hazard while doing safety training!) They youd be able to get your note without having to have an excuse, you legit had to miss because you had an appointment that day. Do they also do a seven hour fire prevention and response class? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, regular physical activity improves your brain health, helps you to maintain a healthy weight, and reduces your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and even some cancers. how do you handle being pregnant at work? Calm is author Fearne Cotton's mission to find the simple things that can inch us away from stress and over to the good stuff. Tell the host a detailed story of how hectic your last week was with all the office meetings, official tours, and prepping up for the big seminar that went great today. Theyre homeschooling now. You Had Other Car Issues 11. Even worse was what they advocated we teach kids they expected that we would teach 5-year-olds to run in a zigzag pattern across the playground and show them a safe location to run to (like the next school down the street), or discuss the possibility of an active shooter with them every fall. This sounds like the episode Emergency Response from Parks and Rec, so interesting to hear about a real-life counterpart of it/how true to life that show really was. So its a surprise, but not TECHNICALLY because they told everyone about it in advance. Echoing others concern about this training being from a valid source. They had to go door to door knocking to tell people to leave. They're basically faster, safer, and more supportive- you can check them out here. When I voiced my concerns, he made a few jokes about how he would simply redirect the shooter to a younger person.. Has your boss given you any information on who is putting on this training, what their credentials are, and what evidence they have that this exercise is in anyway effective, informative, or safe? Have a good gaming night! I think practicing repeating whatever line works for you, to avoid being needled by him about it in future, might be worthwhile. Nope, apparently were supposed to magically ignore our actual needs as well as whether you can actually do any of this running and hiding in the building/area we work in. 4. Best practice is to allow people to opt out, for any reason. Alternatively, its too difficult to talk about also works. Seven hours of training is far more likely to be a poorly designed hands-on training that will only cause stress, fear, and trauma, possibly leading to worse outcomes if there ever is a real shooting. Its the worst. If approved, you will be given permission to miss the drill and will not face any penalties. I work in a clinic that serves LGBTQ+ patients and I live in a state that is very second amendment and extremely not LGBTQ+ friendly. I have a perfect non-attendance record for the last 10 years of active shooter training at my firm. (Like Alisons proposed it wont be possible.). Essentially, it is suppose to identify potential issues ahead of time; example, local, state & federal departments all using different radio frequencies and needing to figure out what they would use together in an emergency (this was an issue during Katrina). Make sure to tell them that your boss has been dismissing your concerns and you dont trust him to handle mental health issues with any seriousness. Call out the day before/after if you want to make it look less intentional. A lot of resources on everytown.org if youd like to read more: Point being, opt out. And thats not even including all the training around dealing with bomb threat callers, with angry patients/family members, with weapons, with baby/child abduction, etc. Either way, Im very sorry youre dealing with this horrific BS. Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "adc1af5dd80e55ae1e3f646224ebba55" );document.getElementById("a603c4a483").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Subscribe to all comments on this post by RSS, Email (Optional will display your Gravatar). If youre a party person, in your teens or early twenties, a party at Davids is news that will stir a lot of excitement. Sorry, I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come follows author Jessica Pan's hilarious and painful year of misadventures in extroverting, reporting back from the frontlines for all the introverts out there. Dealing with Life Events or Advice, Texts and Messaging Templates. Someone (I think it was Maya Angelou) said that when somebody shows you who they are, you should believe them. Dont they do drills and practice?. Protagonist is South Asian or possibly Middle Eastern man who is meeting a woman for a date? I have a hard time figuring out how a small company with no HR jumped to the conclusion they need to train for a mass shooter. As everything that could go wrong did go wrong, they ended up doing a whole a lot more than IT as it basically became an all hands on deck situation. And if we get it wrong, we will talk out ways to stay quiet and not fidget after. A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that in 2015, approximately 25% of adults regularly played sports. Because lets be honest, who does not want to have a hot mug of coffee on the terrace while watching the rain pouring onto the glass of your windows, making a thud sound and yet so calming? Informthem how you need to fill up for one of your colleagues for an extra shift,and you wont be freeuntilmidnight. Not the building burning down. by They are not going to find out; unless they know your father very well. Then you have a Soldier with real issues like a family member dealing with cancer and there is no allowance period. Pretty sure I called in sick that day. Things have been chaotic and I need a little time to recoop. The introvert/extrovert divide is the most fundamental dimension of personality. There are contingency plans in our family if we were on a plane during a hijacking. He had no sense of humor about such things. No one processed the paperwork and the slot got filled up every single time. But its hard, if not impossible to learn anything when in the throes of a panic attack or PTSD symptoms. If you feel you need to address it with your boss directly, you could do that while being vague. Hi [Name], Im so sorry but weve been out all day and weve found out that the train is suspended from [Your Location], the journey would be a nightmare/ we would probably miss the whole event by the time we arrived.