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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The juicebox podcast.

Cheyenne is here. She has type one diabetes since 2022 she's in her 30s. Cheyenne is on the show today to talk about discrimination that she met at her job at a weed dispenser, and she's going to tell us about having her gallbladder removed. I'm pretty sure this is the only podcast where you're getting those two stories in the same episode. Nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order@cozyearth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40 percent@cozyearth.com when you place your first order for AG, one, with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink. AG, one.com/juicebox. Lots of people with autoimmune seem to have trouble with their thyroid, and that's why I've made the defining thyroid series, juicebox podcast.com. Click on defining thyroid the menu to find out more.

This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by touched by type one. Touched by type one.org and find them on Facebook and Instagram. Touched by type one is an organization dedicated to helping people living with type one diabetes, and they have so many different programs that are doing just that. Check them out at touched by type one.org this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the continuous glucose monitor that my daughter wears, the Dexcom g7 dexcom.com/ dexcom.com/juicebox, get started today using this link, and you'll not only be doing something great for yourself, you'll be supporting the juicebox podcast. Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, a company that's bringing people together to redefine what it means to live with diabetes. Later in this episode, I'll be speaking with Jalen. He was diagnosed with type one diabetes at 14. He's 29 now he's going to tell you a little bit about his story. To hear more stories with Medtronic champions, go to Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox or search the hashtag Medtronic champion on your favorite social media platform, Cheyenne.

Cheyenne 2:39
And here to basically, kind of go over some things about discrimination and what it's like to be diabetic and working with, you know, discriminatory practices

Scott Benner 2:53
well. So let me get a couple things from you. Okay, so yeah, when were you diagnosed with type one? How old are you now? So

Cheyenne 2:59
I was diagnosed with type one in 2022 and let's see, I am 31 now. So I was 29 when I was diagnosed. And basically I the trajectory of how that worked was, I had a gallbladder removal surgery in June. I started working at this dispensary in August, and we were not due to open to the public until December of that year, so we were pretty much meeting virtually up until then, and I got diagnosed with diabetes, pretty much, actually, strangely, by my primary. You know, it was the typical symptoms of thirsty. I mean, I was going through like two gallons of you could find me with a gallon of water consistently. I was peeing every 20 minutes. Losing a lot of weight. I looked like, it's like, Why do I feel like this? What's going on? But hey, I look amazing. So I was like, hell yeah, but no, I really look terrible. But either way, I got diagnosed by my primary, who was like, Hey, I think you might have type one diabetes. And I'm like, I don't know what that is, because I'm like, the only one in my immediate family. We had no prior knowledge to diabetes at all. I was like, diet, what? Super confused. And he was like, Yeah, you know, you might have diabetes. So between him thinking I have diabetes and having to confirm that with insurance to get cleared for insulin, I ended up in DKA pretty severely, and I was in the ICU for about five days. I went in, you know, it was Thanksgiving, and I was like, why am I so sick? You know, what's going on? I was projectile vomiting all over the place. Went into the hospital, and they were like, full blown. DK, oh, full blown. I mean, literally, like, I got very lucky in the fact that, because I'm a pukey guy. I puke literally, like, over everything, all the time. So at the time, we were like, Am I just puking because I'm having a stomach issue? Am I puking because I have the flu? And we were like, all right, something's wrong here. Our doctor was like, Hey, you might have diabetes. Maybe these two things are connected. So

Scott Benner 5:17
I have to tell you, Cheyenne, I know we're going to talk about, like, job discrimination at some point, but I'm gonna be hard pressed not to call this episode A pukey gal.

Cheyenne 5:26
Please do like, Yes, I'm for it.

Scott Benner 5:30
So let me make sure I understand the timeline a little bit. You've started a new job, you have your gallbladder removed, yeah, okay, yep. And then a couple of months later, you start vomiting, and you're losing weight, you're excessively drinking that kind of stuff. Is that all

Cheyenne 5:46
right? Definitely. Yeah. So Thanksgiving, I'm in the hospital, and it's pretty bad. When you go in there, the ER is full. They take you immediately, and they take me back. They took my blood sugar and said, Oh my god, oh my God. And that must have been the scientific word for what was going on, because that's all anybody could ever say. Was holy and oh my god. And they immediately admitted me. And from what I understand, my a 1c going in there was almost 18, which was the hot, yeah, that was apparently the highest I just thought that I couldn't see because I couldn't see either, like, my vision was blurry. I was just like, weak. I get pictures actually, from when I was first admitted. And I was like, This is what this looks like. How

Scott Benner 6:31
long? Hey, Shane, how long do you think you had been type one and not known? It probably about

Cheyenne 6:39
six to eight weeks, okay? And it was, it wasn't, it wasn't too long, but it was long enough, for sure, to where my body was like, Well, this is wrong something, something's really wrong here. Yeah, so I'm in there, and they're like, Yeah, this is definitely wrong. This. There's something going on. And they finally, they didn't give me, I think, my first insulin shot until, like, the after 24 hours or so, but as soon as they did, it's like my whole body woke up. I was like, oh, oh, I feel better now. I can see I stopped throwing up, and I'm like, oh, that's, that's what I need. Was insulin.

Scott Benner 7:13
So, so hey, why did you have your gallbladder out?

Cheyenne 7:16
So I was actually having, I was having stomach issues to the point where I was, like, constantly puking, and like, I still have, like, I have suspicions that I have, like, something called Barrett's esophagus. I've got some pretty I've had, like, two upper GIS, and I've, I can't It's a weird, strange thing about me. I physically cannot burp. I've never been able to burp. It's like, air comes up my throat and then returns down to my stomach, so it's always caused me stomach issues. And they were like, Here, let's get your gallbladder out. And I was like, Can I have a piece of what's in my gallbladder? And the doctor was like, Yeah, sure, if I can get you one. And he vacuums it out and says it was like, grains of sand in there. And then let

Scott Benner 7:58
me ask you a weird question, yeah? So you have stomach acid, you have acid reflux, oh,

Cheyenne 8:03
horribly. I cannot miss a single dose of like, an antacid a day, or I am in trouble and I don't drink. I'm a person who doesn't drink anything but water or coffee.

Scott Benner 8:14
Do you think you have low iron?

Cheyenne 8:16
Have you ever been definitely, definitely, because I take iron. I take, yeah, okay,

Scott Benner 8:21
because the proton pump inhibitors that you're taking for the acid blocks iron uptake. And this is going to sound crazy, I have Barrett's okay. I don't know how badly I have it or not, but they said they saw like the beginnings of it when they scoped me. I think I'm supposed to go back again, I guess I should do that, and my iron is always low, like to the point where I needed infusions, like I was shutting off, but I went on a GLP medication a year ago for weight loss. It's actually been like 13 months ago now, and I've lost 50 pounds. So that's nice, but the GLP slows down your digestion, right? So when my digestion slowed down, my acid reflux started to go away, and I just had my blood work done yesterday, and my ferritin level is 180 and I haven't had an infusion in over a year. That's crazy. Yeah, by now, my iron, my ferritin level, would have been in the teens without the GLP medication. So I'm not saying you need a GLP, but I'm saying I feels like you and I have similar issues. This episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes. Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox and now we're going to hear from Medtronic champion, Jalen. I

Speaker 1 9:39
was going straight into high school. So it was a summer. Heading into high school was that particularly difficult, unimaginable. You know, I missed my entire summer, so I went to I was going to a brand new school. I was around a bunch of new people that I had not been going to school with. So it was hard trying to balance that while also explaining to people what type one diabetes was. My hometown did not have an endocrinologist, so I was traveling over an hour to the nearest endocrinologist for children. So you know, outside of that, I didn't have any type of support in my hometown.

Scott Benner 10:12
Did you try to explain to people, or did you find it easier just to stay private?

Speaker 1 10:17
I honestly, I just held back. I didn't really like talking about it. It was just, it felt like it was just a repeating record where I was saying things and people weren't understanding it, and I also was still in the process of learning it, so I just kept it to myself. Didn't really talk about it. Did

Scott Benner 10:32
you eventually find people in real life that you could confide in? I never

Speaker 1 10:37
really got the experience until after getting to college, and then once I graduated college, it's all I see. You know, you can easily search Medtronic champions. You see people that pop up, and you're like, wow, look at all this content. And I think that's something that motivates me. Started embracing more. You know how I'm live with type one diabetes,

Scott Benner 10:57
Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox, to hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community.

Cheyenne 11:05
Oh yeah, for sure, I've had these stomach and crazy issues pretty much ever since I've had a stomach like,

Scott Benner 11:12
I'm sorry. I'm asking you this, and I've No, you're good, and because we got we started in video, I've seen you, and you're like, younger than me, and I feel weird about this, but how do you poop? Is it good or not good?

Cheyenne 11:24
Oh, not. Okay. So here's the other thing too. So I, let's say this, I have not consumed more than about 500 to 800 calories in over

Scott Benner 11:35
15 years because you're afraid of what happens on the other side.

Cheyenne 11:38
Yes and no. It's for multiple reasons, for eating disorder, reasons for mental health reasons and for environmental reasons. Okay, pretty much so many factors that when they were like, diabetes, we were like, Huh, what like? Well, where did that come from? Because

Scott Benner 11:58
people think type two. They think weight, you're not heavy, like, that whole

Cheyenne 12:03
thing actually under. I would be considered somebody who's underweight. I went in that hospital at almost 92 pounds, and I am a, I think I'm like, 120 normal 122 right now, yeah, I'm

Scott Benner 12:16
just gonna ask, like, does the poop come out nice and like, the way you want it to be. Is it, like, reasonably firm, or is it squishy, or is it thin? Nah,

Cheyenne 12:24
it's like, squishy and floaty and like, Fatty, like, almost like celiac. But I've been tested for celiac and I don't have celiac. I'm

Scott Benner 12:30
gonna say something sideways crazy to you. Yeah, no, go for it. So I have an episode that'll be coming out later this year, with which I don't know if it'll probably be out before yours, I got together with like, a gut doctor, right? And he's not even a doctor. He's like a gut guru kind of guy, and I spend a half an hour, you'll hear it in the episode, explaining to him basically how my digestion works, you know, start to finish, and I get done, and he says, I'd like you to take slippery elm bark or slippery elm root. Oh, my God, let me look it up. I take it every day. Okay? I should probably know what it is, right?

Cheyenne 13:07
I know what that is, actually, yeah. Do you really? Yeah? I do. I do.

Scott Benner 13:11
Okay, so I slippery elm and I take these two tablets every time I eat. And in a day and a half, I was shooting like a king.

Cheyenne 13:24
I'm literally like, writing that down right now. It's going in my in my shopping cart.

Scott Benner 13:29
I'm gonna go into Amazon for you and actually find it for you, right? And so, like, you know? So then he said he also gave me a digestive enzyme to take along with it that actually had HCl in it, which is hydrochloric acid. I think, yeah, yeah. He goes, I know that seems counterintuitive, because, of course, you have, you feel like you have extra stomach acid. And I was like, right. He goes, but just like, you know, Humor me. And I was like, All right, man, like, whatever. So, all right, I'm gonna give it to you here. I'm taking Horbach slippery elm bark capsules. Oh, it's 4000 milligrams. They're like, $9 like, for, for, like, I don't know how many of them, 90 of them, or something like that, right? And, um, and I'm my stools come out the way you want them to.

Cheyenne 14:22
That's good, because I swear it's been a problem my whole life. I

Scott Benner 14:25
saw me too and and then I did. I added the the HCl like he asked me to. But I want to get that one for you. It's a digestive enzyme with an HCl. See if I can just search HCl. Oh, look at that. I bought Thorn beta team HCl and pepsin digestive enzymes for protein breakdown and absorption. 225 capsules. This was expenses. $42 for the 225 capsules. I'm taking one of them when I eat, along with two of the slippery ELMS and. It literally changed my life. Yeah, that's that's going in my shopping, right? And then, and then my son, who has, like, the same exact issue as me, I was like, try these, and he's now taking them without me asking him to, oh, wow, which says something. And so now that, here's the thing, is that this is masking a problem. It isn't fixing a problem, right, right? And so I am in the middle of doing like, a urinalysis for him, for the guy, and then he says that once he gets my urine analysis back, he'll be able to tell me what to do to hopefully heal this like and so we don't have to be masking it. So I don't know how that's actually going to go or not, but even if I just mask it for the rest of my life, it's way better than it was.

Cheyenne 15:41
Yeah, that's good to know, definitely, because I tell my primary a lot. I would like to just, instead of mask the issue, I would like to get to the root of the cause and attack the cause.

Scott Benner 15:52
If you take slippery elm and send me an email a week from now and you're like, I can't believe I'm going to the bathroom better. That's crazy. I would love to hear, I'd love to hear if it did or didn't work like but I'm gonna get past

Cheyenne 16:03
that. I'm gonna send you a poop diary. Oh, my God,

Scott Benner 16:05
would you that'd be fantastic. The Dexcom g7 is sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast, and it features a lightning fast 30 minute warm up time that's right from the time you put on the Dexcom g7 till the time you're getting readings, 30 minutes. That's pretty great. It also has a 12 hour grace period so you can swap your sensor when it's convenient for you. All that on top of it being small, accurate, incredibly wearable and light these things, in my opinion, make the Dexcom g7 a no brainer. The Dexcom g7 comes with way more than just this, up to 10 people can follow you. You can use it with type one, type two, or gestational diabetes. It's covered by all sorts of insurances. And this might be the best part. It might be the best part alerts and alarms that are customizable, so that you can be alerted at the levels that make sense to you, dexcom.com/juicebox, links in the show notes, links at juicebox podcast.com, to Dexcom and all the sponsors. When you use my links, you're supporting the production of the podcast and helping to keep it free and plentiful. I would somehow like, think that was funny and like it, because I want to know if it works for people. Because that's why I'm, like, it's why, my God, you have no idea shine. Like, I let him record his entire intake. Meeting with me, it's embarrassing. Like, but I just That's so

Cheyenne 17:31
funny. I'm putting I'm doing it right now. It's, like, already ordered and, like,

Scott Benner 17:36
I'm like, let me find out if this, like, if it's gonna help other people, then, like, let's do it. You know what I mean. Anyway, okay, I'm sorry. So you're in the hospital. DKA. I mean, you your, they said your ANC was like 18. What was your blood sugar? It had to be over 1000 Oh, god,

Cheyenne 17:49
yeah, it was like 1280, and so, so prior to that, I was still I was taking my blood sugar with like a meter. But to be honest, at that time, because I had no education in it, I didn't really know what I was looking for, yeah. So often the numbers I was seeing was between 360 and then just straight high, and I'd be looking at it like, yeah, hey, hi to you too. But can you tell me, like, what the number is? Because I don't know what I'm I don't know what I'm doing here, but I'm pretty sure that high needs bad and

Scott Benner 18:18
so remind me your GP. Put you on to the idea of diabetes, but really wasn't. But then you were in a fight about insulin with insurance. Is that right? Yes,

Cheyenne 18:26
yes. Because I was on Medicaid, and they were like, well, that's weird. We need to have, they wanted, like, two to three rounds of labs. And because I was, like, still working, I didn't really have the time between two weeks. Okay, yeah, it just kind of, it was a bad timeline. They were like, well, we need labs. And I was like, Okay, I'll get that done somehow, while I also have to work. And then between that time, I was like, ended up in the hospital.

Scott Benner 18:51
So now, how does all go? How does all of this impact your employment, right?

Cheyenne 18:56
So, because we were still meeting virtually, I get into the hospital, and I was there for about five days, I had communicated with my bosses pretty much primarily through text message and email, which we will learn that was a big mistake on their part. Okay, they primarily communicated with me this way. They said, hey, no big deal. We understand. Let us know when you get out of the hospital we will go from there. So the time, I'm like, Okay, sounds great. I also didn't have any sort of clue as to approach like an emergency FMLA or anything like that, which I did learn is a thing in some states, not for everybody and not for every employer, but it was an option for me. I just didn't know it at the time. Okay, so I get out of the hospital and I start. They wanted me for insurance. I think what it was is they wanted me to do a diabetes education class to get on they wanted me on the pump immediately. They wanted me on a CGM immediately. Basically, they wanted me to have everything pretty much right away. I didn't wait six months any of that. So I went to a diabetes education class, which proved to be pretty much, I don't want to say useless, but it was useless because not only was I the only, the only type one in there. But no, I I didn't learn anything. Truthfully, all they did was really talk about how to how to portion and work with food. And as somebody who was pretty much obsessed with everything I put in my body for like, a long time, I already kind of knew how that worked, so I didn't really need to be there. And I took that class. Was still trying to meet virtually with work. They told me to just stay home. Don't worry about it. By this time it is December, we were supposed to open up, but we didn't, so we were still meeting virtually, plus also meeting twice a week in person. While we were doing these meetings, we were essentially just just like bullshitting. There really wasn't much working. To be honest. It was just hanging out on Zoom and bulging.

Scott Benner 21:06
So you're saying that working for a cannabis dispensary was not like taxing work.

Cheyenne 21:11
It really was not for this company, not for this one. It's not like that everywhere, but for this particular one, because it was such a weird situation, because we weren't open yet, right? It was just wild. So, yeah, so we were not open still, and we were just meeting virtually, plus two days a week. And between all that, I was still taking classes, and let's see, what else did they have me do? Oh, yeah, I do meet with nutritionists. That's right, I had to meet with another nutritionist, and she sat me down twice a week for, I think, like, two to three weeks. And was like, you know, can you put together a plate of food for me? And then was like, Okay, you need to be here. So I was like, Well, I'm not learning anything from anyone, and that's what prompted me to kind of study on my own, honestly, and that's actually how I found this podcast was looking on my own. I was like, Oh, this makes sense. And now I'm being, I'm currently being treated by my primary, but also I'm being treated by a nurse practitioner who specializes in type one, so she's wonderful. And so I've currently got a great care team, but it took me some cherry picking to really get to where I'm at with that. I

Scott Benner 22:20
see? Yeah, I mean, it takes time. It sounds like you got the pretty classic, you're an adult, like, we're not going to give you any kind of guidance here. Did they even set up your insulin for you? Did somebody help you with like, initial settings a little

Cheyenne 22:36
bit in the hospital? I do vaguely remember, like, as I was so hungry, that was one thing I do remember in the hospital being so hungry, and they would not feed me, and they were restricting me from everything. And one side I'm gonna, I'm gonna Sideswipe here to this hilarious story of me eating 100 milligrams of cannabis while I was in the hospital, thinking it was no big deal, and I tried to sneak out of my room to the vending machine twice, and they were like, Cheyenne, where are you going? And I was like, the vending machine. And then they would come take my blood sugar. Was like, why is it so high? What did you eat? And I said, I didn't eat anything. And Cheyenne, Why are your eyes so red? I don't know. And

Scott Benner 23:21
so let's discuss for a second prior to all of this. And I imagine, like, what's your weed usage look like?

Cheyenne 23:31
Oh, I mean, I'm a classic user. I definitely cannabis every day,

Scott Benner 23:35
right? You wake and bake or you,

Cheyenne 23:39
I wouldn't say, like, not really on before, like, work days and stuff, but on the weekends, definitely,

Scott Benner 23:45
you smoke the flour. Do you vape it? Do I

Cheyenne 23:49
just primarily enjoy flour and definitely edibles.

Scott Benner 23:52
Gotcha so you're in the hospital, and you think I should probably be high.

Cheyenne 23:58
I was so hungry and I was so bored, and it was Thanksgiving, and I was so angry about everything, and frustrated, and like, all I wanted were mashed potatoes, and I didn't get any. So I had somebody

Scott Benner 24:13
like, I just, I just want to do something just like the pilgrims. You thought maybe a couple of gummies would really straighten the whole thing up. Yeah,

Cheyenne 24:21
it's no big deal. And but I wasn't thinking the fact that I hadn't, like, consumed any cannabis for like, several days before that. And so I was like, Yeah, that was a brilliant idea. So

Scott Benner 24:33
you was not so it rocked you, it rocked you, and then you started snacking. Yeah?

Cheyenne 24:38
I tried to sneak out, like, to the vending machine multiple times. I did not have money. I don't know what I thought I was doing.

Scott Benner 24:48
Mr. Zagnut, come out, come out.

Cheyenne 24:53
I don't know what what I thought I was doing or what the goal was there, but it wasn't I.

Scott Benner 24:59
Did you tell them? Did you say, Look, I'm

Cheyenne 25:01
high No, to be honest, I think they probably had some idea. They figured it out. They probably had some sort of idea. Yeah,

Scott Benner 25:11
you started talking about Mr. Mystic suplex, and you're like, yeah. You're like, okay, so you're, you're higher than, like, than you're accustomed to being, because you hadn't done it in a little bit, and then you

Cheyenne 25:22
hit it hard, yeah, yeah. And then I was so hungry, and they just gave me insulin, so I was, like, feeling better, and I just was, I just was, like, I just want to go home. And like,

Scott Benner 25:34
yeah, okay, all right, yeah. So

Cheyenne 25:35
we're now in, like, January. We are now the store is open and I'm going, I'm I'm still working from home, because they're telling me to over text message and email. I'm regularly checking in with them, and they're like, Hey, we have an idea for you. How about you stay home and do this work from home, gig where you can do product descriptions. So if you've ever looked on like Leafly. I heart Jane product descriptions, just like picking stuff, if you ever click on a cannabis menu, you click on a product, there's a description. That's what I used to do, is write those descriptions. Oh,

Scott Benner 26:11
this flowers nutty, and is a mellow high. And that kind of is that at all

Cheyenne 26:16
the way that cannabis is so it's such an interesting plant in the way that, like, I feel like the names generally don't mean anything. It really just boils down to the lab work. And what's present in the plant, you can say indicosity, the hybrid, or, you know, Scrum, DeLeon, just chronic OG fire Cush, and it could be whatever, but it's really just boils down to what's present in the lab works.

Scott Benner 26:44
So the THC levels,

Cheyenne 26:47
right? THC levels. THC A your, you know, all that stuff. So all the cannabinoids that are present in there and stuff.

Scott Benner 26:55
What about the way you decide to burn it? Like, like, what's the difference between, like, smoking it versus putting it in a bong, versus maybe putting it in one of those, like, high heat, you know, the vapes that don't actually do, yeah? What are they called? Like,

Cheyenne 27:09
like, a vaporizer, yeah, okay, yeah. Sorry about Higa. Hi a high temp. I got a, I got, like, a dry flower vape, and I like that thing a lot. It's pretty cool. But, uh,

Scott Benner 27:18
is there a difference? Like, can you put the same flower in three different places and get definitely different impacts?

Cheyenne 27:25
I wouldn't say different impacts. I would just say maybe different ways of entering your body, like smoking, no matter what is going to be the fastest way that it enters and also leaves your body, so versus, like edibles, where it's still going to have to go through that digestive process,

Scott Benner 27:45
it has to get metabolized and go through, like everything, and that takes longer.

Cheyenne 27:49
Uh huh,

Scott Benner 27:50
what about the drive ape? Why? How is that different than smoking?

Cheyenne 27:53
I wouldn't say it's necessarily different other than the way that it is heated. I believe it's got, I can't necessarily remember off the top of my head, but

Scott Benner 28:05
you're just not, you're not taking in smoke, but it's hitting you kind of similarly. Yeah,

Cheyenne 28:10
it's like this. It's like the same, because it's still like a you're still inhaling something. It's still got, like a risk of a carcinogen, no matter what, sure, but it's definitely a little bit healthier in the fact that it's vaporizing, just, I believe the THC portion, not the rest of the because I know for sure, like, you can take dry flour out of your dry herb vape and you can reuse that, and it will be still flour. It's just not going to be as potent. You could still use it to bake and use edibles. Okay, yeah, there's

Scott Benner 28:42
something still left there. Yeah.

Cheyenne 28:45
But you can't, like, do the same thing where, like, if you put it in a bowl and smoke the whole bowl and there's nothing left, like,

Scott Benner 28:51
so, yeah, so you, you couldn't go through a dry, like, a high heat dry vape and then take the what's left, which is probably pretty, like, I would say there's, there's no moisture left, and it's almost burned, right? If you tried to smoke that, you wouldn't get anything out of

Cheyenne 29:06
that. Probably, you might get a little bit, but it would, wouldn't be nearly the same. All right, I'm following, okay, I

Scott Benner 29:11
learned a lot of this podcast, yeah, yeah. So now they're like, Hey, do this. Stay at home, job. Write the descriptions for the for the website, and you're doing that, and that's going fine,

Cheyenne 29:22
yeah, so I'm doing that up until let's see. It turns out that I started doing this. Let's see we're open now. So January, February, March, I did that for about three months. And during that time, I started learning very, very, very much about the CGM, about the pump. I was pretty well good to go. So I'm on the pump. I have the OP five, and I've got the Dexcom g6 so I've got my phone, plus I've got that OmniPod, you know, the receiver. And so out of the blue, I receive a text message one night that says, hey, you need to come and work full time into the store. Or or you're basically going to lose your job. And I'm like, alarmed considering I received this text message, this text message at 11pm like the night before, and I'm like, well, that's odd. So I responded and said, Why? Basically, like, what's about,

Scott Benner 30:18
Bill, what changed since you told me you wanted me to work, since you told me you wanted me to work from home,

Cheyenne 30:23
right? Exactly? I said, Well, I don't have a problem with that, but I just want to know why. And they basically were like, you know, we're not being rude. We've been more than lenient enough with you. No other job would hire you under these conditions. They said all kinds of things they're not supposed to say.

Scott Benner 30:41
So Cheyenne, so your, your understanding was that, hey, they offered me something to do that was from home, and I accepted it. Now you're kind of seeing all the sudden, they were giving me this because I was in the hospital, like I was having these problems, and they were trying, like, so they they're it feels like what they were trying to accomplish isn't what you felt like on your side and then. And so they're basically sitting over there thinking, like, how long are we going to put up with this? And you're over that your house, thinking, this is my job. This is exactly what they want from me, right? Yeah. Okay. I

Cheyenne 31:18
think they thought this was going to be a very quick over and just be done. So I start going to the store. It's now March, going April and May. I'm trying to work full time, and so this was like a 45 minute drive. I'm doing this for 40 hours a week. If I was even one minute late, I was getting wrote up. They just basically really had it out for me. And I also have a printed schedule where they cut my hours only mine, cut mine in half, and in that same day, they hired on somebody of their own relation, which was against company policy. So they replayed. They were slowly replacing me with somebody, right? That was like a family member or something like that. Okay, so I'm trying to work in store while this is going on. I'm having things like highs, I'm having things like lows. I'm having to take insulin and things like this. During this time, they would often say that I was either making things beep or like, I want them to go off as much as they're going off,

Scott Benner 32:27
or they complained about the alarms on your devices. Yes,

Cheyenne 32:31
they would say I was doing it on purpose, because the person that was reporting to not because I shouldn't say it's a cause. However, he would often compare me to his wife, who was type two, and I'm learning now how different those are. But at the time, I really didn't know exactly how different. I just knew they were very different. Okay, he often would say, like, I just need to eat better, or I just need to do this. I'm just not trying hard enough, and I'm doing this on purpose.

Scott Benner 33:02
Oh, so now 55 Yeah, so now this at a snack, yeah, because I see so the now there's a person you're working for directly making

Cheyenne 33:11
me do things in bathroom. Okay, okay, so the same person offered me the work from home is, yeah, now saying, come in here, so I'm working in store with him, and give me these bits. And then took them away without any sort of warning. And then was like, Hey, you're gonna come do this. Also, we're gonna cut your hours in half. Also, you have to take your insulin outside. Also, if your thing goes off and you pull your phone out, we're gonna write you up all Cisco. You know, it was just like, one thing after another. Do

Scott Benner 33:43
you think you were doing a good job? Like, were you accomplishing the work and the time frame that was reasonable and doing like, well, at it? Yeah,

Cheyenne 33:50
yeah. Because, well, my role changed once I got into the store. Once I was in the store, I was just performing in store work with everyone else, which was including just stocking, counting, taking inventory, because that's all I ever did, was inventory. Okay, so it was very the same work that everyone else was doing, and

Scott Benner 34:09
you were also also, you were, you were working for somebody who commingled type one diabetes with type two diabetes. So now if your alarms going off, he's he or she is saying you're not, you're just not eating well, or you're not trying hard enough. And then probably were they communicating that back to the company, like Cheyenne, you know, it's beeping all the time, but if she just did this better, it wouldn't be like, do you think you were being painted in that light by somebody? So

Cheyenne 34:38
as it turns out, so we'll get there. So here, here goes, here goes it. So May and June rolls around, and I went out to visit my mom, who lives in Vegas. I go out to visit her. I get in touch with HR, who is in Arizona. I stopped by. And introduced myself and said, Hey, I feel like there's something going on here. I'm starting to feel discriminated towards it's there was also a lot of other things going on that led up to this, but this was really the big push was I had another co worker who was type two. It was just the constant I just feel like that something was wrong. So I go to talk to HR, they told me they did not know who I was. They did not know I was working from home. No one should have done no one should have offered me that. And what should have happened was I should have applied for emergency FMLA. I should have emailed HR once I was in the hospital, which when I emailed my boss, I CC to HR, but nobody responded to me. In that email,

Scott Benner 35:49
the whole thing's kind of bungled, like a long way. Okay, they

Cheyenne 35:53
had no idea that I was even what it turns out was, is that the position and the role that I was performing at home was actually part of my boss's responsibilities and duties for the company. I was doing part of his job that he did not himself want to do. So he basically passed it on to me, and then, once it no longer became an option, he said, I want you to come work in store. And I think what they thought is that I was going to say no, and they were trying to get ready No, right? Yeah, so they thought I was going to say no, and they hired the relative, right, and cut my hours, replace my hours with theirs. I got this all in email and text message, because from then on out, I started emailing HR every time something was going on. Once I returned back home, one day it was this, I believe it was, let's see. So this is almost about a year later, so let's see it is now, okay, so it's like July, so they call me in there, into this room and put me at a table with him and his assistant manager. And this man is full blown screaming at me, and he is telling me that I am making this up. I don't know what I'm doing. I just need to leave. Basically, you know, if I don't, like, what's going down, there's the door and get

Scott Benner 37:24
out. And what did he say? You were making up that

Cheyenne 37:27
the whole thing that I'm just not, quote, unquote, this sick. I didn't do any of this. And I just, I'm doing this all on purpose for for show, like, for an act. And I'm like, Yeah, because I'm totally spending money on devices and carrying them around for, for what reason? Like, it's just bizarre. Yeah, absolutely bizarre. And it was really what it boiled down to, was nobody wanted me there. They didn't like me. They wanted me to leave. That's really just what it boiled down to, because for I just it was a mess. So I'm shaking at this point because I'm sitting in a room with a man who's screaming at me, and I'm like, this is this is nuts. So I was like, okay, may I please be excused. And he said, yeah, if you don't like the door, get out. So you know. So I just get out and I go downstairs. I grabbed my stuff, I walked outside, and I called HR, and they told me to leave. So when I left, they sent me a text message and basically told me not to come back. So wait, who told you not to come back? The my boss. My boss is this company.

Scott Benner 38:32
I don't want you to tell me what company is, but it is it big enough that human like, is it in a corporation and there's like a big Human Resources thing, or is this a small company, and there's like one person who's HR, there was

Cheyenne 38:45
like one person in HR, and that person apparently, like, I guess HR, changed positions and roles so many times that nobody even knew anything. Okay, nobody knew anything. So

Scott Benner 38:58
this is a startup company, right? Like it's, it's not like an offshoot of another company, or it is,

Cheyenne 39:05
actually, it's an offshoot of a bigger company. It is the LLC that owns, I believe, like real estate properties, and I think they're, they're headquartered in, I think, yeah, they're headquartered in Arizona, so, but the LLC does not exist anymore, from what I understand and

Scott Benner 39:24
and the LLC was the weed like the weed company, yeah, they owned a

Cheyenne 39:28
couple dispensaries and some grow ops in that area. They owned one other dispensary in Maryland that coincidentally was shut down over another lawsuit. Then they had this particular one in Missouri that no longer exists. So

Scott Benner 39:40
what are we talking about? Like, a bigger company that had some cash and decided to try to get into being in dispensaries too? Yeah,

Cheyenne 39:46
I think that's pretty much what it was. Okay, I think that's what it was, is they just tried to open a dispensary in Missouri, and it did not. They hire

Scott Benner 39:53
a bunch of people, get the thing up off the ground, and it has a lot of business problems because. Maybe these aren't business people. Maybe they're more weed people than business people, or something like that,

Cheyenne 40:03
right? Okay, 100% Yeah. They just, they didn't know what they were doing, and

Scott Benner 40:07
they think you're faking this whole thing or, or it doesn't even matter now, because, like, there's been this kind of like attitude that's been fomenting. So basically they just, they just see you as, like, a liar or dirty or not, something that they want around. So now they're just, like, on, like, unarmed, fully, just trying to push you out the door.

Cheyenne 40:27
Yep, essentially, okay, so they pushed me out the door. I was like, well, that's the end of my job. And I basically, I mourned this for probably a while, because I was just frustrated at the fact, like, is this going to happen to me at every job? Is this something that I can do anything about, like, what's going on? So I filed for unemployment that October, yeah, that October, and I got it so that told me that they fired me. So from then on, I kind of did a little research, and I paid a couple of lawyers for some consultation and sent some emails off, and I couldn't afford for any of them to take my case. But what I couldn't afford was the consultation, and each one was like, honestly, you have you have something, you have something here, and I'm like, Okay, well, I'm gonna keep going with that. So what I did was, is I filed with EEOC, and that takes months. That takes months they have to review your case. I assign you a worker, and I went over pretty much this entire thing with them, sent them all the emails, all the text messages. They also deemed that I was being discriminated against and that I was fired, and it definitely looks like they gave me benefits and then took them away, which was pretty much the primary reason that I won this lawsuit. Okay, because, okay, it's not illegal to be an asshole. You can be an asshole all day and night, but it is illegal to separate somebody from the company based on a disability, which is pretty much what they did. And

Scott Benner 42:11
you said a minute ago, like you spent a lot of time worrying about this, because in your mind, you weren't around diabetes ever. So now suddenly you have it, and the first experience you have is an employer being like, Oh my God, you have diabetes. I gotta get you out of here. And now you think, this is gonna be my life, everywhere I go, how am I gonna get a job anywhere?

Cheyenne 42:29
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I was terrified. I was sad because I enjoyed cannabis, and that was like something I wanted to do. So I was like, well, now I feel like I'm there goes everything I worked for. There goes all my studying. There goes there goes everything and yeah, plus the employee discount. Yeah, no kidding, right? Which is not that great. Honestly. I was like, Well, yeah, so the end of that.

Scott Benner 42:55
So do you hire an attorney? Does an attorney finally say, like in these, like your your consultations, does one finally say, Look, I'll do that. I'll do this for a piece of the settlement. Is that how you were able to do it? Or no, you have to pay for it.

Cheyenne 43:09
I actually, yeah, you got to pay for all of that. So what ended up happening was, I represented myself and I had, I did. I had all my notes in front of me. I sounded a lot more organized than I do this morning, and I had everything to go and this mediator. They're not, they don't really. They're not there to take sides. They're just there to referee essentially, yeah, but they saw everything. They went through everything, and I don't want to say they took my side, or they kind of took my side, and the company even what happens then. So during this mediation, they immediately opened with saying that I tried to quit because I left the building. The mediator immediately interrupted that and said that is not a topic of discussion because I received unemployment, which deems that I was fired. So immediately they backtracked that, and they said they were like, Okay, well, what is it that you want? Basically, and so the mediator and I, they separate lines, so like you and the mediator get to talk separately. It goes back into the meeting, and then they talk separate again. And it's very different than it would be if you were, like, going to court, because this was all virtual. Most of this is actually done virtually. Is

Scott Benner 44:35
what you ended up with, health insurance and free weed. Is that what you asked for?

Cheyenne 44:41
I can wish. I can wish

Scott Benner 44:45
so. So when you get into that that that separate space with a mediator, what do you tell them that you'd like? So

Cheyenne 44:52
she actually, they were great. They said, I don't want to tell you this, but ask for 10 times more than your. They get. And so what I asked them for was 50k that's so wild, right? It's a wild number. It does not, it's that's not what I got, right? I ended up with 10k okay, and that cover, and to be honest, that covered my unemployment because unemployment only paid me like 3160 and because of a bunch of hullaboo with Missouri not spelling my name right, I didn't get my unemployment until like, six months later. So

Scott Benner 45:29
the money just helps you bridge the gap and until you can find another job. Yeah, doesn't make you rich. It doesn't like, set you up or anything like that. It's not like, not out of a movie. It's enough money to keep your rolling so you can find more work. Yep,

Cheyenne 45:43
absolutely. So basically, it helped me pay my car it helped me pay some of my family members back. It helped me definitely get through that period 100% it was a very long and daunting process, because in total, it probably took me about a year and a half. Oh, my God. As far as filing for unemployment, filing with EEOC, meeting with three different lawyers for consultation. What kind

Scott Benner 46:12
of work do you do now? Did you find you found what

Cheyenne 46:14
I do now? Yeah, so I got very, very lucky, and I am incredibly lucky, and this is what I want to end with, is on a great note, because the job I have now is fantastic. And I mean, absolutely wonderful. I get to work with AI, I get to work with large language models. The company that I work for is scale AI, they are a wonderful company. And not only that, but they my first day there, when I talked to them about diabetes, they said, Is there anything we can do to make your job easier here? And I had to go in the bathroom and just ball because I couldn't believe that cared enough that they wanted to help. Not only that, I have my I got my own cabinet there that has my own juice, my own snacks that Nobody's allowed to touch. It's cheyenne's cabinet because, because they give a sht, and it's so nice because I went from somebody basically telling me to get the out, I'm faking it to this company who not only cares, but they know I'm doing this right now, and they are like, wanting the link to this immediately. They were like, we can't wait to hear it. And I'm just, I couldn't be any more grateful. Take

Scott Benner 47:38
you seriously and give you some support so you can do your job.

Cheyenne 47:41
Yeah, like,

Scott Benner 47:43
I do you need that much more grateful giant, really, I

Cheyenne 47:46
know I don't. I don't. I just want God, I just wanted somebody to not treat me like garbage, to be honest. Like

Scott Benner 47:54
it does sound like you were stuck in a situation with people who would have maybe distrusted anything that they didn't understand, and then went right to, went right to get away. Like, just get away from us. You're this is, this is more than we bargained for. We don't want to be involved, like, you know, like, I don't want to know about your diabetes. I want to hear the beeping, and I don't want to, I don't want to hear you had to go to the hospital, like these people just were not interested in any way, shape or form, and and then handle it absolutely, and then handled it really poorly,

Cheyenne 48:27
absolutely, yeah, and that is what we that is what we all agreed upon, like, like they basically said, You can be an asshole day and night. That's not the the part that got me that settlement, what the illegal part was, was providing me that work from home, benefit, ripping it away for no reason, and then also further, saying things like, you're lucky to have a job here. No other job is going to hire you, calling me names. That was definitely one, locking me in a closed room, plus they were done. They didn't even know that I was in conversation with HR on a separate note. And had, I think, had they known that maybe things would have went a little bit differently. Well,

Scott Benner 49:13
also, Missouri is a work at will state. Oh,

Cheyenne 49:16
absolutely, yeah. So they could fire you if they don't like the color of your shirt.

Speaker 2 49:19
They could have just fired you if they did it right exactly, and there wouldn't have been any recourse whatsoever for it for you, because it's they could have just said, I mean, anything. They could have said you were late one time you're fired. They could have said you counted something wrong you're fired. They could have, and I'm sure you made a mistake here and there. They could have fired you for any reason at all like work, it will like, honestly, United States labor law workable employment is an employer's ability to dismiss an employee for any reason and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal. They literally picked the wrong reason. You know, they

Cheyenne 49:55
did this to themselves. Yeah, 100% and. As it's all set when it's all said and done. To be honest, I'm the one that ended up with a better job. That man is now retired, quote, unquote, he

Scott Benner 50:08
got away from him, you know. I mean, that's good for you. Yeah, he apparently,

Cheyenne 50:12
well, soon after this all went down, not soon after, but a couple months after, I had gotten word that the entire team got fired. After that, they just ended up closing the dispensary. They

Scott Benner 50:23
lost the will to work too, huh? Somebody else was like, I'm getting rid of Well, I'm gonna guess after they had to pay $10,000 to you, somebody took a hard look at them, and then that's what happened afterwards. They got rid of

Cheyenne 50:37
it. I have no idea what really prompted all of that, but I can certainly say with confidence that the people that put me in a locked room were fired after me and

Scott Benner 50:51
made me feel good. Yeah, tell me the locked room story. I don't think you mentioned that before, but

Cheyenne 50:55
I had gotten comfortable with my receiver. I was getting ready to kind of talk to them about, hey, this is what's going on with this. These are what these beeps mean, blah, blah, blah. And they're putting me in a room, and they said, This man is starting to scream at me. And he's like, you, you are making this up. My wife has type two. All you got to do is just eat better this, you know? And then he said, our co worker down there, she has type two. There's it's just diabetes. Cheyenne, it's just diabetes. It's not this big of a deal. And had done all this, and then was like, if you don't like it, there's the fcking door. And so I was just kind of baffled at first, because I couldn't believe he was full on screaming at me like that. But then as soon as I said, Soon it was done, I'm sitting there shaking, basically. And I had said, you know, because I know better now, and because of previous ways that I have behaved in workplace settings when things like this have happened, I know better now. And so I said, May I please be excused, and I'm proud of me for that. And I got up and I got my stuff, and I walked outside, and I immediately called HR, and that was the best thing that I could have done, instead of losing my cool, instead of getting angry, instead of lashing out, instead of anything, I just let him, let him go off and said, May I please be excused? And that was the hit. But

Speaker 2 52:24
was that? What does that have to do with a locked room? Did they bring you in that room, lock the door and yell at you? Yep. Oh, so talk about that for a second, like, I got to see you a little bit before we started like you're a, you're a, you're a lean girl, like you're not. I mean, how tall are you?

Cheyenne 52:40
I'm about five four. Yeah, I've always been known as a little bit of a smaller kind of person. I'm little.

Scott Benner 52:48
You're a small 2930 year old person in a room with a guy probably 20 years older than you, who locked the door and then started screaming at you, Yep,

Cheyenne 52:57
yeah, along with another his all his assistant was in there too, and she was, um, typing this whole interaction down, recording, supposedly just

Scott Benner 53:08
from your from, listen, not obviously, you can't prove anything, but your perspective was she horrified?

Cheyenne 53:14
No, she didn't care. She was just kind of, like, going, she just didn't care.

Scott Benner 53:19
Were you scared? Like, like, physically scared. It wasn't

Cheyenne 53:23
that I was physically scared, but I was certainly alarmed that he was full blown screaming at me, especially in a room that is being recorded. I was, like, looking around at the cameras, like, are you serious? And do you have

Scott Benner 53:36
any fear that he would like come towards you, or anything like that? Or it wasn't like that.

Cheyenne 53:39
Ah, nah. He was just sitting in a chair like yelling at me, Jesus. I mean, he was really doing something. I guess I don't know. He was really intimidating you. Yeah, he was 100% trying to intimidate me without it being physical. And that's

Scott Benner 53:56
pretty physical, though. Like, I mean, restricting your movement with a listen, say what you want bring someone to a room and locking the door is, is a, it's a move. You're, you're saying something when you do that, right? And then, like, this is very official. This person over here is going to be taking down notes from what happens here. You're, you're meant to feel scared at that point. And then they

Cheyenne 54:18
presented me with these, what they did was, is they presented me with these write ups that were never signed by me, that I've never seen in my life. They tried to say things like I was using my phone and I asked for proof, and then he started screaming and saying, bitch, I don't need to give you any proof if you don't like it. Yeah. And he's like, you don't like it, there's

Scott Benner 54:40
the door so and things and bitch. Yeah,

Cheyenne 54:43
yeah. And this is what I was like, looking around at the camera. I was like, Are you? Are you hitting me right now? Like, and I'm telling HR, like, in these emails on the phone, like, I implore you to listen to the feedback please. Like, I'm sure

Scott Benner 54:57
they were thrilled. I'm sure they were thrilled only after. Give you $10,000 to be perfectly honest, like that's, yeah,

Cheyenne 55:03
I don't know, because neither they did not know who I these people that I had talked to, they didn't know who I was. They didn't know anything about it. Yeah, they didn't know who

Scott Benner 55:12
they were. That whole locations being run poorly, top to bottom, basically, yeah, it's

Cheyenne 55:16
done. Now. It's gone. Yeah, I want

Scott Benner 55:20
to say this, if you can't make money selling weed, you're an idiot. Yeah, Jesus Christ. It's

Cheyenne 55:28
a whole, it is. It's the whole market is absolutely just bonkers without pre state. But my God, Missouri and here in Illinois, man, they just No. I mean, they're ruining it.

Scott Benner 55:39
Well, that would, that would be like, going out of business selling lemonade in the desert, I don't know. Like, what are you doing? Oh, my God, that's crazy. I appreciate you coming on and sharing all this with me. It really is absolutely, really something else,

Cheyenne 55:58
absolutely insane, but it can be done basically just, it's not illegal for someone to treat you like, unfortunately, but what it is illegal is for them to discriminate based on the fact that it's diabetes like and there are jobs out there, there are jobs out there that will appreciate you, there are jobs out there that will work around your diabetes. You know, it's, it is out there, it's it is. Mean,

Scott Benner 56:27
listen, you might get discriminated against, but I'm going to assume most people are going to be smart enough not to tell you they're doing it.

Cheyenne 56:33
Yeah, absolutely. They, really, man, they, they, they said this like through email, through text message. It could not have been handled any worse than it was.

Scott Benner 56:44
They wrote it down for you, too. I don't think, listen, forget work for a second. I don't get when people, like, write anything down that's like, sketchy. Like, what are you doing? Like, yeah, so everybody gets caught. Like, do not watch the news. Like, don't text that to somebody fascinating. I

Cheyenne 57:00
couldn't believe it, yeah, just wow. I could not believe it. It was insane.

Scott Benner 57:04
How do you feel? Like, how far removed Are you from this? How long ago was it? Let's

Cheyenne 57:08
see, I think it officially closed itself out of like, a year ago. So I've been with this company for, let's see, about a year and a month now,

Scott Benner 57:17
okay, but it's almost two years since this guy yelled at you in a room, yeah, yeah, for sure. Do you think about it ever, or is it? Is it something you're past? Um,

Cheyenne 57:25
I'm definitely past it. Sometimes I think about the fact that the man that yelled at me is also a retired police officer. So I I think about that sometimes, and I'm like, huh, yeah. Then I remember, you know what, that man is miserable, and I'm not. I got a better job than both of them, and good for you. I make probably more money than both of them, and I'm gonna do better than both of them. So they're

Scott Benner 57:50
definitely not gonna have success treating people the way they treated you. That's for sure. Yeah, that's that's not

Cheyenne 57:55
gonna work, yeah? And, wow, I don't care. Like, like, no, type of diabetes is easy, but to sit there and compare like the way that they did consistently was so, so wrong, so wrong. No, I

Scott Benner 58:09
mean, they thought they knew something, by the way, that's where most people go wrong. They, you know, they thought, thought he knew something, and he was smarter than you, and you were just dumb and didn't understand or willfully making problems or whatever. That's just such a small way of of considering things like maybe just not a bright person, not able to take in all the all the factors and really weigh them properly, and just went with the first gut reaction that he had. My, you know, my wife's got this. You're not eating, right? Okay. Well, thanks, thanks, Doctor. Yeah, great, yeah. He

Cheyenne 58:46
was like, at one point, he's like, just take your Metformin. And I was like, sir, I took Metformin for four days and still ended up in the ICU. It was like, spitting at a tornado. Yeah, it did nothing.

Scott Benner 58:56
That's not really for type one diabetes. I have a different type. I don't know if you can hear one and two and how they sound different, exactly.

Cheyenne 59:03
Yeah, it's just that area, the area the city, in this area of low IQ, is absolutely, I

Scott Benner 59:12
was gonna say, dumbfounding. What you're really doing is you're telling me a story of an interaction you had with a stupid person. Yes,

Cheyenne 59:19
that is, I don't know how to say this, but they were all idiots.

Scott Benner 59:23
Well, that's a pretty clear way to say it.

Cheyenne 59:26
Yeah, that's, that's, that'll pretty much cover it. Yeah, it was a bunch of idiots. And I made out, okay, yeah.

Scott Benner 59:32
By the way, Missouri, New York, I don't care where they're idiots, everywhere,

Cheyenne 59:36
absolutely. But the highest concentration is right here, from the corn, you

Scott Benner 59:41
think the corn promise shine? Are you to tell me that corn makes you stupid? Is that what this is,

Cheyenne 59:47
you know? What? I don't know. I don't want to say causation here, but there might be a correlation, okay, a correlate. You, if you you know,

Scott Benner 59:57
I won't give you the whole story, because I just like. I just, I just blurted it out in an episode the other day. But I went to get tires. I had to order tires for my car, right? And they gave me a time to come get them fixed. Then I got there and they pull my car and take off the jack the car up, take off the wheel, pull the tire off the wheel, then go in the back to see if the tires had arrived. And then they come back out and go, Hey, your tires aren't here. And all I could think was, why wouldn't you look for them first? I don't understand, like, such an odd thing to do, like you wouldn't go look to see if you have the tire before you go through all of this. And he actually says, this happens a lot, so it happens a lot, and you still didn't go look, and I'm just, like, I just sitting there thinking, like, how could you have such a misunderstanding of your job? Like, that's really what struck me. Like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah,

Cheyenne 1:00:51
that's accurate. Yeah. It just and it constantly.

Scott Benner 1:00:55
Can I tell you a story I don't think I've told here, because it absolutely doesn't, it doesn't look good for me. And then we'll start. I'm just gonna absolutely, I lost my goddamn mind in the post office recently. So, oh, I

Cheyenne 1:01:09
love this. Okay, thank

Scott Benner 1:01:10
you so super simple. But I ordered silk worms for my chameleon, and yeah, by mistake, they were held at the post office. Like, I just wanted them to come to my house, but there was a hold put on the delivery. And so it gets held at the post office where you go pick them up. So I'm out that day, like doing stuff, and my wife says, Hey, we just got a phone call from the post office. There's a package there for you. It's marked live animals. I think this is probably your silkworms. You should go get them. And I was like, Okay, great. So I swing through the post office, and I go up to the counter and I say, Hey, how are you? I'm here to pick up a package. I got a phone call that said it was here. And the guy looks at me and goes, we don't call people. And I went, I mean, I don't know what to tell you, I have a phone call from this post office that I have a package to be picked up. And he goes, we can barely get the lights on in this place. You think we're calling people to let them know the package is here. And I said, Sarah, I don't know. All I can tell you is that I received a phone call that I have just here. Here's my name, like, this is my address, like, this whole thing, and he's mumbling to himself and mad and like Bob back and forth, and like, you know, and now I'm showing him the the email with the the fcking, like tracking number. Just type the goddamn tracking number in here and go get the box, you know what I mean. But I'm being nice, and I'm like, a cordial and like, I'm joking with him, like, you know, I don't I'm not looking to fix the world. I just want my box. I got to keep going, right? So he types it all in blah, blah, blah. And he goes, it ain't here. And I'm like, well,

Cheyenne 1:02:51
oh my god,

Scott Benner 1:02:53
where, where is it? He goes, it's across the street at the distribution center. I said, Am I supposed to go there for it? Like, thinking, like, maybe I went to the wrong place, right? And he goes, No, you people aren't allowed in there. And I went, Okay. I'm like, but you guys called my house like, an hour ago and said it was here, like, specifically here? No, we didn't. And I'm like, No man. I'm like, definitely did, you know? And now I'm like, Well, I didn't take the phone call my wife did. Like, maybe she's wrong. Like, you know what I mean? So like, it's like, I'm standing there with him and, like, it's get very contentious, and I don't understand what's happening. And I'm like, what what I said, I appreciate it very much. I said, what's gonna happen? He goes, it'll get delivered to your house tomorrow. And I went, you know what? I'm not in a hurry for them. Like, that's fine. Like, okay. So I walk all the way to the door, which is like, 30 feet from him, and it just hits me. I'm like, my wife's pretty bright. I don't imagine she was confused about who she spoke to and what they said. So I called her on the phone and not loudly, like, off in the corner, like, privately, and I'm like, Hey Kelly. And she's like, Yeah. I'm like, who called this morning? And she goes the post office. And I was like, like, was it this location that I'm at right now? And she goes, Yeah, because I checked, because I'll tell you, there was an anthrax scare at my post office, like 20 years ago, and the place was actually shut down for a year while it was remediated like it was really bad. So my wife said to me, when I was on the phone, when I was on the phone with them, I said, Hey, is this the anthrax post office? I want to make sure I send them to the right place. And the person said, Yes, you have the right location. So we're really sure about what location it is, right by the way, somebody was trying to sell it, send to anthrax, to like, a sender, or something like that. And it got stopped at my post office. And like, anyways, it was a big news story decades ago, not the point. The point is, my wife was fcking sure what goddamn post office it was. And I was like, and I was like, and what did you say? What did they say to you? They said, there's a box here, and it's marked live animals, and it's on hold, and you have to come get it. I'm like, Okay, so anyway, I'm finishing up with her on the phone, and I look up to realize that he's eyeballing me from across the room. And as I hang up. The phone, he yells across the room, what you don't believe me. And I all my brain did was, I'm like, what is happening? What is happening. So finally he yelled at me, and there were people in there. There were like, four people in line, and three other people working. And I go, Hey, Bob, fuck you. I said, I said, I believed you. I was checking with my wife, and, by the way, she says, You're wrong. And and I was like, so I'm gonna ask this guy to check on it. And so I start looking at the the other guy, who's like, this tall, young guy, and he's looking at me like, he's looking at me like, what's happening? And I'm like, I don't know, man, I said, but you just found the 25 year old me, and he ain't having this so, like, I started talking. So I just started explaining it to him. I'm like, Hey, man, listen, I don't know what's going on over there with this guy, but here's what happened. Could you just check on and now the guy starts yelling at me, the original guy, oh my God. He is yelling across the post office at me, which brings the manager out from the back, and she goes, What's going on here? And he actually says, I'm telling you, he's a grown man. He goes, That guy doesn't believe me, and I don't know how he was raised or what happened to him, and I don't care. And I just went over, and she goes, What's the problem here? And I said, my best assessment assessment is, Bob's a fcking idiot. And then, like, now I'm speaking at the top of my voice, and like, and she's like, whoa, what? So I went over it again. I said, I don't know why I came in here, and right away he's arguing with me. I said, Hey, you guys called me. And he's immediately shoots back at me, we don't call people. And he starts randomly talking about how inept the post office is, and why they even like, and I'm like, I don't, I don't want to be involved in all this. Like, I'm like, so, like, it's going back and forth. Well, he now he's in full blown, like, he's just attacking me now. And instead of backing down, I just keep going back at him, and I cursed at him, and he goes nice language. And I went, Okay, Bob, well, go yourself. And he goes, you. And I went way to stick to your rule about bad language, Bob, you gave that up pretty quickly. And he goes, You're an asshole. And I said, Bob, I gotta tell you something. I might be an asshole, but I'm 100% sure you're a fcking idiot.

Speaker 3 1:07:20
So exactly like, oh my god, man. And then

Scott Benner 1:07:24
I turned to these lovely people in line, and I go, I'm so sorry. I was like, I don't know what's happening. And this is not how I would normally do this. I was like, I really apologize. You guys must be scared out of your minds right now. I'm like, I really am so sorry. And then the manager, like, grabs me and Bob. She finally shoes Bob into the background, and she goes, What can we do to make this better? And I said, if I was you, I'd fire Bob. But beyond that, I don't have any opinion. Okay? I said, he, at least shouldn't be allowed to talk to people and like, you know, and she, and she's looking at me, and I'm like, I recognize I didn't handle this well, I said, but when he I have to be honest with you, when he attacked me, I forgot everything I had learned in the last two decades of being an adult, and I went right back to being in my mid 20s. And I was like, fuck me, fuck you, and like, and that was just kind of where it went after that. And I just, I escalated it. Then I walked out with a box of goddamn worms.

Cheyenne 1:08:25
Things you went through for those worms, though

Scott Benner 1:08:28
ridiculous, but here, in the end, I'm going to tell you something I and I'm sorry if I sound coarse. I was dealing with a stupid person. Yeah, no,

Cheyenne 1:08:37
I get it. That's what happened

Scott Benner 1:08:38
to me. Listen, I'm not proud of that story. I'm telling it to you because I hope you find it a little amusing, but I'm embarrassed, like, genuinely, like, I could have just gone to the next and asked again, and when he yelled at me, I could have continued to ignore him and I, and I should have, I shouldn't, probably have done that. That's what I should have done. But I had just, it had been a long string of things that happened that a friend of mine once recently said to me, I'm starting to think I'm being tested by the universe. And I was like, and she's like, What do you mean? She goes all this dumb stuff keeps happening. And I feel like I'm being told to smile through it and to like, accept it as like, this is just how it is. And I feel like that happened to you, Cheyenne, like, I feel like you were just involved with a dumb person who, you know, treated you poorly, didn't know what they were doing, and the entire time, thought they were right. I can't tell you how much the guy at the post office believed he was

Cheyenne 1:09:33
right. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, definitely get it here.

Scott Benner 1:09:37
I'm gonna give you one more. The other day, I put out my recycling, and then the truck goes by, and I go out to get the cans, but they only took, like, part of the recycling. And I'm like, what is happening? So I went inside, I called the township I live in. I said, Hey, I don't know what happened, but like, half my recycling was picked up and half of it wasn't. And the woman says, What color? Her cans. Were they in? Was it in? And I went, I go, I don't know. And she's like, we only pick up stuff in green cans. And I went, since when? And she goes, it's a new rule. And I said, Well, how would I know about the new rule? And I swear to God, she said, we put it on our Facebook page and our website. And I said, You think I go to the Facebook page and website for the recycling department of my community? And I was like, I don't do that. I said, Did you send a letter? No. Did you call us? No, so you just hoped I would see your Facebook post about it. And I was insane, insane. I'm like, I'm like, Are you gonna come get it? And she goes, No. And I said, But you only collect the recycling every two weeks. What am I supposed to do with my recycling? And do you want to know what she said? Cheyenne, I'm gonna give you a couple of guesses. Go ahead.

Cheyenne 1:10:51
Oh my god, she probably, she probably wanted to know. Let's see what color, what shape, no. What supposed

Scott Benner 1:10:59
to do with it now that they wouldn't come get it for two more weeks, and I don't have any place to put it. They

Unknown Speaker 1:11:04
told you to throw it away. They

Scott Benner 1:11:06
told me to throw it away.

Cheyenne 1:11:07
Yeah? Like I told you, yeah. You know why? Because it all ends up in the same place. Anyway, I've seen it happen. I have literally seen it happen. I've seen it physically happen. And I have watched the recycling truck go into the landfill and dump it. And I'm like, wait a minute. What are we doing? Why are we doing this? If

Speaker 2 1:11:24
you have nowhere to store it, you can throw it away. I said, well, then what's the goddamn point of any of this? Yes. So she says, Well, you can get two free cans from us. I'm like, I have two of your green cans. I have to get two more. And she goes, yeah. I said, But you only pick it up every two weeks. There'll be times where that's not enough. I'm like, how much of my property should be littered with green can? And I was like, I have one can that it all fits in. Why can't I just put it in that? And she said, the thing

Cheyenne 1:11:50
is, you have to have two cans for them to pick up. One cans full. And then that's, that's how it goes. You need four cans for them to pick up, two cans worth of well,

Speaker 2 1:11:58
I asked her, I'm like, what? What's the big rule change? Because, by the way, I've been putting my recycling out in regular cans like for ever, and she says some of the people are getting injured picking up the trash cans. And I said, you've hired people to pick up recycling who are not strong enough to pick up recycling, and now I can't use a can unless it's green. I was like, may I suggest not solving a problem by making a bigger problem?

Cheyenne 1:12:27
Oh my gosh.

Scott Benner 1:12:28
I said, What if you just hired people that are like, sturdier? Would that not fix it? And she's like, well, we we don't even pick up our own recycling anymore. Now we're like, we're contracting it to someone. I'm like, Oh my God, you're paying someone to pick up your recycling, and they're not doing it for you, and they told you that you have to go back to us, our residents make our lives harder so that you can pay them to pick it up. I was like, you don't feel like you're being taken advantage of a little bit.

Cheyenne 1:12:59
This is it. This is all a conspiracy by big trash to throw away more trash. They're just like, here, you throw this away. No, you throw this away. No, you throw this away.

Scott Benner 1:13:08
Very nice to her. First of all, I said, I said to her, I'm like, I know this is not you. You're not the decision maker in this situation. I was like, but I would like it if you'd pass on to somebody two things. A, I don't appreciate having to have 1000 little cans all over my property. I was like, B, for what I pay in property taxes, maybe you could come get the goddamn stuff more frequently than every 14 days. And C, hire stronger people to pick up the recycling. I think that's your fix. Like, not like. So basically, someone said, this hurts my back, and they change the way the entire thing's done.

Cheyenne 1:13:41
And I was like, Oh, sure, that simple for everything

Speaker 2 1:13:45
else, but, but my point is, is that the post office, the tires and the recycling have all happened in the last three weeks. I get that. And I'm like, I get that. So my friend who said to me, like, I think everyone's trying to make me crazy, I might be agreeing at this point, like, like, every time I leave my house, I'm bombarded with the dumbest thing handled in the worst way, and I'm supposed to just go, Okay, thanks.

Cheyenne 1:14:12
I have a theory that I was probably either Mussolini or Hitler with past life getting paid based on what has happened to me, and everyone around me who is around me for more than 10 minutes at a time will agree. Like, my first day of work at this new company, I got stuck in an elevator,

Scott Benner 1:14:33
elevator. That's so funny. Stuck

Cheyenne 1:14:36
in the elevator. Who does that happen to oh, I don't know me like I just you have diabetes. Oh, by the way, you're also stuck in an elevator. Hope you don't have to pee.

Scott Benner 1:14:48
Well, there's, I don't have all the details, so I can't really go into it, but I don't know if you've seen recently that Boeing has like sounded the alarm, that they think their Dreamliner 787, may come across in flight a. Part in flight because of structural flaws. And, you know, that

Cheyenne 1:15:03
doesn't surprise me. I my first boyfriend was an aircraft mechanic, and he would tell me, and this was like, 15 years ago, and I remember going into the hangars with him and the like, this was a frequent topic of discussion that, like, stuff was held together by like, duct tape. And like, it was just a constant topic of discussion that the planes were not put together.

Scott Benner 1:15:25
Well, this is the New York Times yesterday. FAA investigates claims by Boeing whistleblower about flaws in 787, Dreamliner, the whistleblower and engineer says that sections of the plane's body are being assembled in a way that could weaken the aircraft over time. Yeah, Boeing says there's no safety issue, okay? But then other people are coming out and saying that, in general, engineers are not nearly as well trained as they were a generation ago, and like so it's like, it's the whistleblowing is like tumbling. And my point is, I don't know if that's true or not, but I believe it, because it's impossible to hire a guy who changes tires, who knows to look for the tires before you take the tire off the car. So if rolls downhill, then I believe maybe that the engineers don't know what they're doing with the planes. And I'm scared now, is what I'm saying. Yes,

Cheyenne 1:16:15
you know, I have stopped flying for multiple reasons, but that is definitely one. Oh, and then the last time we flew as a family of my younger sister, her eardrum bursted on the plate again, literally, like I just I keep going.

Scott Benner 1:16:33
I think my bigger point is, is that I believe that someone should be able to competently manage a cannabis distribution set area without treating a person the way you were treated. Yeah, absolutely like that should be possible. And if we can't find people to do these small things, I think we have to reevaluate something, and I don't know what that something is, but I've now basically laid out you've laid out one thing. I've laid out three more. These things should not be difficult. No,

Cheyenne 1:17:02
definitely not. Yeah, should not be a difficult thing. And right? It was not only a difficult but a long, ridiculous process. But it did end Well, glad I got what I got. I mostly, actually, I'm I'm lucky, and I still have, like, a good 3k left over,

Scott Benner 1:17:18
and good, I'm glad, and you got a nice job that you're happy

Cheyenne 1:17:21
I'm doing pretty well. Yeah, I got a great job. Ended up with a lot more tattoos than I should. Ended up with a lot more things. So it's

Scott Benner 1:17:29
like, free time, weed and money and I got tattoos. Yeah, exactly. All right, you were terrific. I appreciate you sharing this with me. Hold on one second for me. You a huge thanks to a long time sponsor touched by type one. Please check them out on Facebook, Instagram and at touched by type one.org. If you're looking to support an organization that's supporting people with type one diabetes, check out touched by type one, you can use the same continuous glucose monitor that Arden uses. All you have to do is go to dexcom.com/juicebox, and get started today. That's right, the Dexcom g7 is sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Jalen is an incredible example of what so many experience living with diabetes. You show up for yourself and others every day, never letting diabetes define you, and that is what the Medtronic champion community is all about. Each of us is strong, and together, we're even stronger. To hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community or to share your own story, visit Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox. And look out online for the hashtag Medtronic champion. If you're not already subscribed or following in your favorite audio app, please take the time now to do that. It really helps the show and get those automatic downloads set up so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongway recording.com, you.