Office Health - toxic office or can you breathe?

Office Health...

Now I know this is a significant factor
and one that is ignored often by the powers that be...or team-members are just aware.

I'm like a canary in a coal-mine by now.
My lungs and breathing are very sensitive...I'll cough at anything, especially when my allergies get going.

Mold in the ventilation system, fibers in the carpet...and so on.
And that doesn't include sharing germs on surfaces...lighting, etc.

I know I have to literally live...before I work.
And despite what the powers that be want...you aren't a machine. (and even machines break too)
Being the hero should a short time thing.
Putting your nose to the grind-stone is fine, but don't wear your nose away despite itself (mixed-metaphor meaning ignore your health)

Even being sick is a distraction...much less the long-term impact.

I've been in unhealthy if not dangerous situations over my career.

• Staff going to hospital due to overwork (90+ hrs/wk 24/7 schedule)
• Keeping a pace that impacts you.
• Vents/air that provokes colds and cough...it's not just your heart is important, you have to breathe too.
• Allowed to leave for long-breaks - are you a slave to the desk?

Like the project I'm doing...staff is intelligence, skilled, diligent and so on. ("it's all for the kids" attitude)
BUT they are overworked, understaffed, constant crisis-mode, whack-a-mole scene, too many projects at once...and so on.
They will put themselves into a grave...just for a pension and benefits.
Good health plan & retirement is useless if you're dead...or too messed up to appreciate it.

There is preparing for the future, but there is ALSO dealing with now.
Life is too short to be a long-term martyr.
What about you??

What's your opinion on the matter? (Link to summary on topic above)
Let us know some experiences you've had.
Did you resolve it?

I know it's not just me...

 

Oh man. I used to work at a preschool in a church, and the church got some extra money to do some remodeling projects around the building. They were unaffiliated groups--the preschool was operated by a nonprofit that merely rented space at cost from the church, so sometimes communication was not the best. One of these remodeling projects included a large community room underneath the rooms used by the preschool, and part of the project included painting the ceiling with mildew-resistant primer and paint. The smell floated directly up into the main preschool room. We had so many parents complain at dropoff that we felt obligated to let other parents know what was going on, and we moved operations for the day into the secondary room we used across the hall. The project took two days, over which we had to use one room or the other, depending on which smelled the worst, and we had several parents just not bring their kids in because it smelled so toxic. We also spent a lot of time outside. As it turned out, no one from the maintenance team at the church had thought about the kids in the preschool!

That place also had a head teacher that thought we should all work through thick and thin. Bullshit. There were times I had to call her out on her crap using the health code (can't handle food if you've got certain illnesses, yet she would want me to do it anyway), and Labor/Industry rules (no, you cannot do dishes during your lunch break, that's against the law, and she would expect us to follow her example). That, however, wasn't the most toxic work environment I've ever been in. I worked at a rehab center once, and they viewed the patients there as $$$. It was terrible.

I once told the teachers I worked with this year that I feel like they ought to be grateful for what they have, as some of us have had really shitty jobs, and teaching is amazing compared to any of those.