Ever have one of those moments where you feel that something just isn't right? I've gotten them throughout my life and they've saved my ass many times. It happened again at the job I recently had, which is why you haven't seen me posting much lately. With school and working, It left me precious little time to do what I love, which is blogging.

The position I was hired for began with the most disorganized on-boarding and training I've ever seen. Nobody seemed to know what to do or who to listen to, with corporate telling me one thing, but the local unit being completely unaware. I can still remember showing up for my first day there, with the manager never having been told by corporate to expect me. Nothing was setup, and I actually had to retrieve the instruction email that the head office sent me in order to prove that yes, I did indeed have orientation and training scheduled.

So as you can see, it didn't get off to a promising start, and here in America, it would develop into what we call a clusterfuck. However, you'll see how what seemed to be odious at the start, turned out to eventually be a blessing in disguise.

Now as I've said, I get these feeling from time to time which act as an early-warning system, and that sucker started going off again. Everything looked ok on the surface, but I couldn't shake the thought that I shouldn't be there, nevertheless, I persisted.

The tip of the iceberg

This is the type of place where we deal with a lot of sick people. Fortunately, my workstation where I did my modules, was located well away from the public and the other employees who interacted with them. This would turn out to be a silver lining which buffered me from what was to come.

So I'm sitting there day after day, working through the huge number of training sets and taking notes. I was also taking note of what was going on around me, when it became apparent that people began going missing. Now they'd tell us that so and so was on "vacation," this turned out to be complete nonsense, and when they returned, I found out why.

Remember, these people are dealing face-to-face with the public, who are suffering from a variety of maladies. I'd already been assured during my job interview that there was nothing to be concerned about, and that everything was "A-OK." At this point, I was weary of the constant lack of communication between corporate and the local unit, where they'd tell me one thing, but not pass word down to my management.

My attitude was; "look, you guys need contact home base, they told me to do this, and that's why I'm here." Everything was being constantly held up while they played email tag in order to confirm the instructions I'd been given. As I said, it was a mess, so much so that after the first week, I contemplated leaving altogether.

Seeing clearly now

So here's where that intuition, or inner voice comes in which saved my bacon once again. The manager returns from his "vacation" and I noticed other members of the team feeling "under the weather" all of a sudden. Within days, my distant (thank God) co-workers began exhibiting strange and persistent sniffles and coughs which wouldn't go away. You see where this is going, right?

So I did some digging and found out that the manager and the trainer they'd brought in from corporate to work side-by-side with me, were both suffering from the current global affliction which like Harry Potter's Voldemort, must not be named. As I entered the area on what would turn out to be my last day, I could hear my personal trainer trying to get whatever was afflicting her under control, my warning radar was telling me to leave, and after speaking with management, I got the hell out of dodge.

Turns out, they were lying about those people taking a holiday, and didn't want to worry the employees by telling them the truth. But I recalled similar deceptions at my college, when instructors would also suddenly disappear on "vacations" then we'd found out late what really happened. By not informing the workers, it gave them no ability to protect themselves when the individual returned, not that any of them would have bothered to anyway, but I did.

Since I left, more people came down with it, and it looks like I got out in the nick of time. No one was taking even the most basic precautions while interacting so closely with ill members of the general public. I can still recall them laughing at me for sanitizing my workstation and wearing protection. They're not laughing anymore.

So I think this reinforces that fact that we all have a native intuition system that we can choose to either ignore, or remain aware of. If you read the post I wrote a couple years ago about me getting a strong feeling to cross the street, only to look over and realize that if I hadn't, I'd have been hit by the lead car in a fatal pileup. i could share so many times where that inner voice has caused to say: "you know what? Let's change plans," and it ended up saving me time and time again.

Some of you may have read about celebrities that just missed their flights on 9/11. These luck accidents are bookended by the eerie premonitions felt by those in the sinking of the Titanic. In either of these cases through fortunate coincidences, or a well-timed sense of foreboding, people were saved by something that interrupted their normal choices. Have you ever had an experience like this? After years of being "saved by the bell," I no longer need convincing that we all have the ability to tap into that sixth sense whenever we need to.