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Overworked, double-jointed thumb

You know you have serious problems when you post on the internet about having a sore thumb.
Anyway.
I have a new job, which involves lots of folding of acetate sheets, and I don't mind doing that at all. However, because the top bit of each thumb bends almost as far backwards as they bend forwards, spending 7 hours of each weekday folding stuff means that my thumbs are spending loads of time bent backwards. They started aching on Saturday morning, and I thought it was because I'd been using a machine on Friday which needed buttons pressing all the time with my thumbs. I don't think the aching is like normal aching where you use a muscle you forgot you had, because my left thumb is permanantly achey now. I've tried keeping them in a 'normal' potision when folding stuff, but that just feels like they're about to pop out into their backwards position, and I imagine that would be quite painful.

Does anyone have any advice/suggestions on ways of stopping the aching [without me having to lose my job!] and ways to prevent permanant damage to my thumbs, if you think that might be a danger.

*left thumb clicks* =/ eeeh...

Thanks for any help :smile:

Reply 1

Tell your boss, its a health and safety issue.

Reply 2

ImperceptibleNinja

I mentioned it in passing earlier on... my boss wasn't too taken with double-jointedness ['euurgh! If ever you cut yourself, by the way, go to Tracy, don't come to me.']. This is also the only job I've managed to find this summer - I've been looking since May - and I don't want to hinder my chances of going back next summer. Also, there are lots of other people doing the same stuff as me, and although they don't particularly love it, they're not struggling because of weirdly designed thumbs. I guess I can try to avoid folding stuff and try to do other stuff as much as possible, but there's a limit on how much I can manage that. Thanks for the response though :smile:

Reply 3

You need to go back and press the issue, you could be permanently damaging your thumb, your boss needs to accomodate this into your work, otherwise he is intentionally causing you harm.

Reply 4

ImperceptibleNinja

When I say 'overworked', I don't really mean to point the blame on my boss. I've only been working for slightly over a week, and at this stage, I'd like the investigate ways to help my thumb, and only after trying that and failing would I want to say that I needed changes in how I'm working to accommodate my freaky thumbs :p:

I think that going up and asking for changes (without having tried to work around the problem myself) doesn't look very good, especially to a new employer who doesn't yet know me very well.