Like the title says, i’ve long suspected that an old dude at my work is losing his mind.
I watched my mother succumb to alzheimer’s a few years ago. A lot of the signs are there with this guy.
My problem: I’m not sure anyone else knows or cares. This guy is a little off, like a little wacky, and to be blunt, kinda dumb.
He has a wife at home, but i have to imagine that she’s may be a little wacky too.
He’s the weird old foreign guy at work. I believe I’m his only real friend at work. Most folks avoid him. He is not easy to get along with. Our friendship did not come easy.
What, if any, is my moral and professional obligation in his mental health issue.
We work in an industrial manufacturing plant. It’s not super dangerous, but risks are there. He does wreck machinery too often. I’m more scared that he’s going to drive his car off a ramp going home one night.
Is it my responsibility to talk with HR?
I don’t want to lose this guy; he’s the only person who does an honest days labor. I would feel alone without him. I dread the day he retires, he and i do 90% of the labor out of a team of 10 people. I don’t see anyone stepping up if he goes down. But that’s a whole nother topic…
If you don’t think there will be a problem at work, I wouldn’t bring it up with work, HR, or anyone else (except us). Boundaries work both ways.
Unless there’s a clear and present danger, and I assume you are not a physician, it is best to keep these ruminations about your co-worker’s health to yourself.
How does he wreck machinery? Is your company unaware of that? If so, this may be something to bring up with your superiors. Just keep your suspicions about his health out of it.
We set molds in plastic injection molding presses. We change out tooling on robots. Before production, we manually test that the robot will safely pick parts out of the mold before we run the press in auto. He skips the test, puts the robot tooling on upside down of backwards, starts the press, and, predictably, the robot crashes. Stuff like that.
My bosses know he is a liability. I suspect he makes fast food money, and thats why they keep him around. As i stated, he busts his ass. There are good things about this guy.
If the bosses know he is a liability, then there is nothing for you to tell them. The decision to keep him on is up to them.
And he’s one of the better workers?!
Correct. Welcome to the world of low wage manufacturing. It we had any brains at all, or could pass a drug test, we’d be in high wage union shops, wouldn’t we?
Ugh..poor old fella.
Yeah, I wouldn’t get up in his health business.
Manufacturers like restaurants are starving for employees who actually show up. The business you work for will keep him, up and until something really bad happens.
Personally, I’d pull back from him alittle. 'Cause I’m cautious of people that might cause danger or problems.
Is he close to retirement age?
Avoiding this guy is not an option. He’s my partner, and I’m the supervisor of the whole shop on evening shift. Supervisor, not boss. All the responsibilities, no power though. Like i said, im his only friend at work.
Yeah, the “nobody wants to work” thing is strong around here. We can’t fire the lady reeling from dope. Everyone gets to pick their level of participation.
But anyway, I’ll heed the sage advice of the Dope, and keep my medical opinions to myself.
Since you’ve made your (probably wise) decision, I just wanted to comment on the above. In my experience (my late step-grandmother had a diagnosis of dementia) the ones closest to the afflicted, especially residing in the home are the last to notice (not ruling out wacky though!). For many people with dementia, being in a long-lived in home, with people they’ve been with for long periods of time, lets them keep following years/decades old routines. Even if you’re missing chunks of time, the remaining pieces accumulated over a long time keep you more-or-less functional.
Take them out of their familiar home / work / known places, and it becomes a lot more obvious. Which is what happened when after downsizing, and moving to be closer to one of their kids, my step-grandmothers situation appeared to worsen considerably. No, it wasn’t worse, but losing the anchoring information meant she really couldn’t adapt.
YMMV, and every case is different, but speaking from my experience and that of a friend who was in a similar situation but with his father.
When my brother was in Medical School, he worked in an injection molding plant. His opinion was that any (highly paid medical doctor like he met at university) who couldn’t understand the Communist urge to destroy society as we know it, had never worked low wage manufacturing in an injection molding plant.