Wednesday – Unjust Desserts
Feb. 24th, 2010 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
.
I’m around a new group of people in a new workplace and this means one thing: keeping the whole “my body doesn’t make any insulin” thing under wraps for awhile. I usually wait 6 months, at least, before I let it slip out in casual conversation. It seems silly and the disease is not that big a deal to me, but experience has shown that I need to let people get to know and see me as a person before they hear about any disease. They need to get used to seeing me eat the same stuff they eat and do the same things they do so that when they learn about it I am "Nina, who happens to have diabetes" rather than "a diabetic whose name happens to be called Nina." At my last job, I brought it up after only a couple of months and lived to regret it.
In my department at Big Death, there was a culture of desserts like one I had never come across before. My boss, T., liked to buy everyone lunch and sometimes dinner when he was in town, and loved to insist that everyone have dessert when he did. In addition to this, Dixie, my coworker who would turn into my office nemesis, loved to bake and bring desserts in and serve up large slices of gooey sticky forbidden delights. In my first weeks on the job, my refusal to eat dessert quickly cast me as an outsider. I have never felt so uncomfortable about turning down offers for sweets in my life.
“Here you go, Sugar,” Dixie said one day about two weeks into my time at Big Death. She handed me a small paper plate overflowing with a slice of cake the side of my face. This was before she’d made up her mind that she hated me and stopped calling me “Sugar” (she pronounced it Shoog-ah).
I declined and said that I really didn’t eat sweets. She looked like I’m just told her that her kids were ugly and stupid.
After a pause where her sense of offence hung in the air between us like so much stale cigarette smoke, she said, “Neither do I, I just like making them,” she said. “At least try it.”
I asked for small piece, in that case.
She dropped the big piece on my desk where it landed with a soft thud. "Just throw away what you don’t eat." It was her signature dessert, called an Almond Joy Cake: a chocolate cake with coconuts, caramel, and almonds so sweet that it made your teeth hurt. I don’t like coconut flakes out of a bag (fresh coconut is a different matter), so I found it easy to eat a bite of the cake part while avoiding the icing and toppings, and then threw the rest away. I put some paper on top of it in my trash can so she couldn’t see how little I’d eaten. I was just figuring out that as far as Dixie was concerned to reject her cooking was reject her. She used to own a restaurant called "Sugar's Tea Room" and her identity was still wrapped up in food.
T., my boss, liked to buy rather than make desserts, but he looked wounded if I said no. In fact, he kept insisting (“Oh, come on! Pick something! Go ahead!”) that I would end up letting him buy me a slice of cheesecake or pie just to make him shut up. I felt too self conscious at that point to not order a dessert since the tone was being set that by not ordering something sweet I was ruining everyone else’s good time. I would take a few bites and then ask for a to-go container, saying it was wonderful but that I was just too full.
I came out of the NutraSweet closet, so to speak, with my two coworkers when T. was out of town told the three of us to go to lunch on his credit card to celebrate mine and Delbert’s birthdays, which fell a few weeks apart. This would be the only time I would ever go out to eat with just my two co-workers. In the almost 2 and a half years I was there they would eat together often but I was never again invited. By that point I was absolutely weary from having declined so many desserts and having everyone insist that I must, I really must have something since everyone else was.
After the meal, Delbert and Dixie announced that since this was a birthday celebration and T. was paying that we may as well all have dessert.
“I’m full. Y’all go ahead,” I said cheerfully.
“Oh, come on,” said Dixie, “T. is paying! Get yourself something!”
“I don’t eat sweets that much.”
“Nonsense! This is a special occasion! Get something!” It sounded like an order, and it was starting to get on my nerves. I reached in my purse for the pen I carry to inject insulin.
“I’ve had diabetes since I was a little kid,” I said, dialing up a dose on the pen to cover my lunch but not the mother-load of carbs that would come in a slice of cake, “I’ve gotten used to not eating sweets in that time and I don’t really like them that much. Y’all go ahead. Get two each and enjoy an extra one for me.” I stuck the needle of the pen into my thigh through my slacks.
Delbert just raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “All right,” he said. I never had any issues with Delbert. He’s smart, if a bit boring. For his personality to be any less dramatic than it is, he would have to be in a coma. Dixie, on the other hand, was another matter. Her body stiffened and her face hardened, as if my diabetes were somehow a personal insult against her and her baking hobby. “Well,” she said, “I guess you don’t need anything, then.”
“Nope!” I smiled brightly. I was doing my damnedest to be light and cheerful through this whole exchange. Dixie's face was like a stone when she looked at me. I still can't figure out exactly why she took this as such an affront.
They two of them ordered desert, but the conversation was more subdued after that. Dixie, who had been sitting on the fence about whether I was something she wanted around or not, apparently decided then and there that I was not. She acted like she had caught me in a lie, and viewed my revelation as proof that I couldn’t be trusted any further than I could be thrown. If I could hide something like diabetes, God only knows what other dreadful things were bound to surface about me.
Two years later, when Dixie was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, she suddenly sidled up to me and wanted to talk shop. I didn’t like Dixie by that point, but I was always tried to be friendly toward her. My theory is that taking the high road not only keeps you from rolling in the mud, it gives you a good vantage point to look down your nose at the person who takes the low road. I asked polite questions about her treatment and gave her some tips. Of course, when Dixie got diabetes everyone she met knew about it. It was something people could feel sorry for her about, and she could shake her head and tell people how hard it was to adjust to. I'll give her credit: it is not an easy adjustment. I made it years ago, but I remember that much.
Dixie’s reaction to my diabetes was by far the most extreme I’ve come across. Most people are subtler and kinder. Before her I didn’t worry about hostility so much as I worried about people blessing my heart and making sad eyes at me (I had having my heart blessed and getting sad eyes from people: after the first few thousand times, it gets old). Still, here I am in a new place with new people. These people aren’t big dessert eaters, which I like about them. Still, I’m feeling a little gun shy after my experience with Big Death’s Dixie.
Maybe I’ll wait a year this time around.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
I’m around a new group of people in a new workplace and this means one thing: keeping the whole “my body doesn’t make any insulin” thing under wraps for awhile. I usually wait 6 months, at least, before I let it slip out in casual conversation. It seems silly and the disease is not that big a deal to me, but experience has shown that I need to let people get to know and see me as a person before they hear about any disease. They need to get used to seeing me eat the same stuff they eat and do the same things they do so that when they learn about it I am "Nina, who happens to have diabetes" rather than "a diabetic whose name happens to be called Nina." At my last job, I brought it up after only a couple of months and lived to regret it.
In my department at Big Death, there was a culture of desserts like one I had never come across before. My boss, T., liked to buy everyone lunch and sometimes dinner when he was in town, and loved to insist that everyone have dessert when he did. In addition to this, Dixie, my coworker who would turn into my office nemesis, loved to bake and bring desserts in and serve up large slices of gooey sticky forbidden delights. In my first weeks on the job, my refusal to eat dessert quickly cast me as an outsider. I have never felt so uncomfortable about turning down offers for sweets in my life.
“Here you go, Sugar,” Dixie said one day about two weeks into my time at Big Death. She handed me a small paper plate overflowing with a slice of cake the side of my face. This was before she’d made up her mind that she hated me and stopped calling me “Sugar” (she pronounced it Shoog-ah).
I declined and said that I really didn’t eat sweets. She looked like I’m just told her that her kids were ugly and stupid.
After a pause where her sense of offence hung in the air between us like so much stale cigarette smoke, she said, “Neither do I, I just like making them,” she said. “At least try it.”
I asked for small piece, in that case.
She dropped the big piece on my desk where it landed with a soft thud. "Just throw away what you don’t eat." It was her signature dessert, called an Almond Joy Cake: a chocolate cake with coconuts, caramel, and almonds so sweet that it made your teeth hurt. I don’t like coconut flakes out of a bag (fresh coconut is a different matter), so I found it easy to eat a bite of the cake part while avoiding the icing and toppings, and then threw the rest away. I put some paper on top of it in my trash can so she couldn’t see how little I’d eaten. I was just figuring out that as far as Dixie was concerned to reject her cooking was reject her. She used to own a restaurant called "Sugar's Tea Room" and her identity was still wrapped up in food.
T., my boss, liked to buy rather than make desserts, but he looked wounded if I said no. In fact, he kept insisting (“Oh, come on! Pick something! Go ahead!”) that I would end up letting him buy me a slice of cheesecake or pie just to make him shut up. I felt too self conscious at that point to not order a dessert since the tone was being set that by not ordering something sweet I was ruining everyone else’s good time. I would take a few bites and then ask for a to-go container, saying it was wonderful but that I was just too full.
I came out of the NutraSweet closet, so to speak, with my two coworkers when T. was out of town told the three of us to go to lunch on his credit card to celebrate mine and Delbert’s birthdays, which fell a few weeks apart. This would be the only time I would ever go out to eat with just my two co-workers. In the almost 2 and a half years I was there they would eat together often but I was never again invited. By that point I was absolutely weary from having declined so many desserts and having everyone insist that I must, I really must have something since everyone else was.
After the meal, Delbert and Dixie announced that since this was a birthday celebration and T. was paying that we may as well all have dessert.
“I’m full. Y’all go ahead,” I said cheerfully.
“Oh, come on,” said Dixie, “T. is paying! Get yourself something!”
“I don’t eat sweets that much.”
“Nonsense! This is a special occasion! Get something!” It sounded like an order, and it was starting to get on my nerves. I reached in my purse for the pen I carry to inject insulin.
“I’ve had diabetes since I was a little kid,” I said, dialing up a dose on the pen to cover my lunch but not the mother-load of carbs that would come in a slice of cake, “I’ve gotten used to not eating sweets in that time and I don’t really like them that much. Y’all go ahead. Get two each and enjoy an extra one for me.” I stuck the needle of the pen into my thigh through my slacks.
Delbert just raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “All right,” he said. I never had any issues with Delbert. He’s smart, if a bit boring. For his personality to be any less dramatic than it is, he would have to be in a coma. Dixie, on the other hand, was another matter. Her body stiffened and her face hardened, as if my diabetes were somehow a personal insult against her and her baking hobby. “Well,” she said, “I guess you don’t need anything, then.”
“Nope!” I smiled brightly. I was doing my damnedest to be light and cheerful through this whole exchange. Dixie's face was like a stone when she looked at me. I still can't figure out exactly why she took this as such an affront.
They two of them ordered desert, but the conversation was more subdued after that. Dixie, who had been sitting on the fence about whether I was something she wanted around or not, apparently decided then and there that I was not. She acted like she had caught me in a lie, and viewed my revelation as proof that I couldn’t be trusted any further than I could be thrown. If I could hide something like diabetes, God only knows what other dreadful things were bound to surface about me.
Two years later, when Dixie was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, she suddenly sidled up to me and wanted to talk shop. I didn’t like Dixie by that point, but I was always tried to be friendly toward her. My theory is that taking the high road not only keeps you from rolling in the mud, it gives you a good vantage point to look down your nose at the person who takes the low road. I asked polite questions about her treatment and gave her some tips. Of course, when Dixie got diabetes everyone she met knew about it. It was something people could feel sorry for her about, and she could shake her head and tell people how hard it was to adjust to. I'll give her credit: it is not an easy adjustment. I made it years ago, but I remember that much.
Dixie’s reaction to my diabetes was by far the most extreme I’ve come across. Most people are subtler and kinder. Before her I didn’t worry about hostility so much as I worried about people blessing my heart and making sad eyes at me (I had having my heart blessed and getting sad eyes from people: after the first few thousand times, it gets old). Still, here I am in a new place with new people. These people aren’t big dessert eaters, which I like about them. Still, I’m feeling a little gun shy after my experience with Big Death’s Dixie.
Maybe I’ll wait a year this time around.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 10:47 pm (UTC)I very much understand not telling people about a health condition right off the bat. It makes a lot of sense to let them know the true you first.
And yes, people who love sweet practically shove them on you and make you feel bad for not giving in. I have DEFINITELY experienced people doing this to me.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 04:09 am (UTC)I don't usually make a show of dialing up a dose and shooting myself in front of people, but I was irate that day and was trying to make a statement: "Stop trying to force feed me dessert, damnit." Unfortunately, it seemed to be interpreted as: "Wow, she doesn't eat dessert. How on earth can she ever be one of us?"
Live and learn.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 04:32 am (UTC)Don't you think it just a bit ironic tht the person who reacte dso strongly was diagnsoed a coupld of years later. maybe it was a fear of hers. Type 2 is much more liftstyle oriented than anything else, isn't it?
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 04:41 am (UTC)Here in the midwest, diabetes is becoming more and more common. I am not sure if more people actually do HAVE it now, or if they are just getting better at diagnosing it these days.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 10:37 am (UTC)You and your disease were a threat to Dixie's ability to get attention and sympathy from the staff. You're lucky you two worked in a quiet office. If you'd worked in an industrial facility, she probably would have pushed you into some piece of heavy machinery and Sweat Pea would be an orphan.
On top of that, she would have spent the next 5 years rehashing the details of the terrible "accident" to your replacement.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 03:31 pm (UTC)I honestly believe that people are much more accepting than you're willing to give them credit for. For example:
Our new library director has Celiac Disease (i.e. she can't have anything w/ gluten in it, which can be very difficult at times to avoid). But she was completely up-front about it and everyone here has been very accepting and we've all tried to accomodate the intolerance and bring in gluten-free things whenever we bring things in. It doesn't have to be a big deal. On the other hand, your work environment(s) were probably not as friendly/close-knit like we are. Unfortunately, where I work is very sweets-oriented too. I wish that would change, but what can I do?
Honestly though, if you're hiding it in an effort to get people to accept the "real you", than you're really just shooting yourself in the foot. Because it's a part of who you are, and hiding that is hiding the real you. If people can't accept that, then that's their problem and their loss. Are you really afraid that people won't like you if they know?
Lastly, I whole-heartedly agree with
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 04:05 pm (UTC)In the case of my department at Big Death, I always declined the sweets and they never accepted my answer but instead insisted I have something even after I said no. I've never worked anywhere where people habitually insisted that I had to eat a piece of cake to be a team player. It was weird (not to mention pushy of them).
Besides that, I can eat sweets if I want. I can eat anything anyone else eats; it's a matter of adjusting my insulin to what I've consumed. I've just gone long watching my carb intake that a few bites is all I ever crave, and I have a "waste not want not" mindset that makes me hate throwing a whole piece of cake after I've taken only 2 bites. When I ask for a small piece, I'm not breaking any rules. However, when someone says, "Hell no, have a big piece instead!" they are breaking the rules of basic etiquette and it pisses me off.
Dixie was the only person I've met who was hostile about learning of my diabetes. Most other people are surprised because I "seem so normal" (honest to God, that's what they've told me). Some of them get protective and self-righteous about what I eat because they know a little but not a lot about the disease. When I'm getting used to a new work environment, I have enough on my mind that becoming an educational ambassador for diabetes is not a job I want to take on at that time. Besides, I am a very private person: my medical history is my business and no one else's. If I had endometriosis, it would be my business. If I had a history of cancer? My business and my business alone. If it doesn't effect my job (and this doesn't), its a private matter (just like my sex life is).
I don't hide my diabetes; I just don't advertise it, either. Once they know me and I know they see me as a person, I let them know I have a disease. Otherwise, they will focus on the disease and not bother to get the person behind it. Not everyone, but enough people for it to be a pain in the ass. Trust me on this. Every lesson I've learned about this, I've learned the hard way. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 04:09 pm (UTC)In due time, I'll clue them all in. In the meantime the odds are in my favor that I'll be okay for the next few months until I do so.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 04:23 pm (UTC)*HUGS* It's sad that people let illness define the person, instead of personality and what's inside define the person.
I hope your new co-workers are much more accepting when you do decide to let them know.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 05:02 pm (UTC)I'm not defending Dixie at all - just trying to possibly see where she might have been coming from. I think we already established that she's a vile person, though. So I'm totally on your side, I promise.
Trust me, I really do understand the stuffing sweets down your throat scenario. I don't think it's quite as bad here, but the mentality definitely exists here. There's a couple of us that are on strict diets & refuse to eat them, but they always get the evil eye too. The whole situation reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld when Elaine stages a rebellion against sweets. Do you know that one?
no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 02:31 pm (UTC)I'll have to watch the clip when I get home tonight. My computer at work has no speakers. :(
no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 02:45 pm (UTC)I suspect it might've been the bitch factor. :P