Back in the UIHC

Okay, so I'm trying to be funny. For some reason, the Beatles' "Back in the USSR" was in my head when I was trying to think of a subject line and so since the cadence worked, I went with it. Ah, well...gotta take creativity (of sorts) where you can get it.

I was talking to one of my friends from work, and we figured out that I've been training new phlebotomists since last November. Yep, the turnover has been that great. The reason is nuts in my opinion. Some of the powers-that-be need to have their heads examined, or removed from an orifice, whichever it is.

See, I think it was a better deal when I began with the U. The "rule" was that a person could not transfer out of the department until their six month probation was done. So, if you came in as a part-time phleb, you stayed a part-time phleb until time was up, then you could apply for other positions. The one exception was if a full time phleb position became available, it could be applied for.

But somehow it has become the "norm" for part-timers to use phlebotomy as a foot in the door with the University. Someone has relaxed the rule and if another position comes open in the lab, be it a phlebotomy position, a lab tech position, etc., the new folks are allowed to apply. Lab workers are in demand; labs are willing in many cases to train on the job, so anyone who has a smidgen of experience is considered.

A case in point is a recent trainee, "U". U has been with us for about five weeks now. She's a very pleasant woman with good potential. However, I took her out for training and found that I could not have her for a student. I'm not sure why, but I just could not seem to get her to understand what was necessary. First time I've ever had to go to Kathy and ask her to assign someone elsewhere.

Anyway, I've taken U out several times now that she's gotten some basic training and can draw. But, even though her training is incomplete, she's leaving us to take a full time job in another department. This hit me wrong. She accepted the job knowing it was only part time, but she needed full time and had applications within the university that fit her needs, but the hire dates had not been finalized. In other words, our department hired her IN SPITE of the fact that they knew she would not complete her training, nor be with anything resembling lab work within a very short time. Yet, several of us spent our time and talent to teach her to do something she had absolutely no intention of using except to get her by till something better came along. I think we feel cheated and dishonored. I know I do. It's things like this that make people become blase about their jobs; why should they care about their coworkers and the department? There's always another warm body.

Thus, an odd sense of job security is mine - I've always got a new trainee to deal with. Understand, I'm all for people working in their own best interests, and if that means needing to work full time, then that's great! But, damn, I'm tired of the constant training - BECAUSE we never EVER get to develop a good solid team of folks to work together. I think since I've been there we've had a solid team for about two weeks. It was nice.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love teaching. I seem to be good at breaking things down into steps that make things easier for the new folks. I've also been told that I have tremendous patience. I guess I do. I like being part of someone else's success. I like thinking that something I've taught is being used for tremendous benefits, and that I can make the trainees learn that this job can be done with both gentleness and competancy in a humane way. Face it, we've all had blood drawn by someone with a poor attitude, or who treats you like you're not important enough to be treated with dignity and respect.

The downside to this is that because I'm constantly training, I don't get a chance to increase my own draw speed. This leads to some odd sort of irritation with me from the other phlebs - yes, those same people who I patiently trained.

Now, I'm not being totally fair here. There are other factors that have little to do with the job and more to do with the bullshit. I'm sure most people can relate - it's no different in any other job.

Right now, my particular thorns in the paw are two phlebs - my behind-the-scenes nicknames for them are Snippet and Miss Tattle.

Snippet is under the age of 21. She's a little busybody who finds it far more enriching to her work life to pay attention to what others do and conveniently forget to do her own assignment. We constantly 'clean up' after her, for she's off checking on the status on other floors to see who is finished or not, regardless of the fact that she's not even finished her own floor. She cries easily, and if we point out her lack of enthusiasm for her own work, we are told that we are being too rough on her.

The upside to this is she's pregnant. Several of us are hoping that when she goes on maternity leave she won't come back when she finds out the exhorbitant cost of day care for two children.

Miss Tattle, as her name implies, is someone who runs to the supervisors with anything that she considers an infraction of the rules. I've recently had two experiences with her.

Experience One: I'd finished my floor and had come back to the lab to restock my tray before going out to help finish the other floors. One of the things that is being bantered about is having each phlebotomist do their own patient cancels when they get back to the lab to save time at the end of the day. So, I sat down to cancel the two patient orders that I'd had. This takes all of about three minutes to do.

Miss Tattle decided to go to our supervisor and rat on me. Thing is, I could hear every word she said to Kathy. Pretty soon, Kathy came around the corner and whispered to me, "Kate, you'd better go help out on the other floors and not do your cancellations first."

You have to understand, Miss Tattle is moody and mean spirited. If you cross her path wrong and you have to work with her all day, she will do whatever she can to make the rest of your day miserable. I understand where my boss is coming from on that one. So, she was simply making sure she said something to me in order to appease Miss Tattle. I just rolled my eyes at Kathy and she nodded and said, "I know...I know."

Funny thing is, not more than two days later, I came back to the lab (second person back from my assignment that day) and lo and behold I found Miss Tattle sitting in the computer bay while ten other floors were waiting to be finished. Yep, she was doing her cancels. Odd, isn't it how what's good for the goose.....?

My next encounter with Miss Tattle occurred two weekends ago. My assignment that day was the orthopedic floor. It looked like I had only 12 patients to draw. That's an easy day. However, one of the nurses decided not to send her lab orders down and to let me find all them as "add ons" Suddenly, my list of 12 ended up being a list of 23. The paperwork alone took me almost an hour to process. That's an hour of draw time I didn't have. So, eventually Eric came to help me finish the floor. We were both on our last patients when Miss Tattle came to check on us.

She said, "Kate, I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but everyone else is up on 6 Carver standing around and I asked them if anyone had gone to check on you and they all said, 'No, Kate only has 12 - she should be done without help.'" Miss Tattle said, "She had a lot of add ons - did anyone check on her?" Again, the response was, "She only had 12." And no one came to check on me, but in addition, they were pissed at Eric for coming to help me with my "12".

As I said earlier, Miss Tattle is mean-spirited. She delights in trying to make everyone's day bad. Well, that time she succeeded in making my day bad. All I could think about was selfish on my part - that none of these folks I had trained thought enough of me to come check on me. I would never have known, nor given it a thought that no one had helped because for all I knew they were having busy days themselves.
So, I ended up crying all the way home. Robert told me to quit.

But out of that comes an advantage. I'm developing a section in the phlebotomy classes on what to expect on the job and how to look at things from a different point of view. I'll let you know how it all comes out.

But...that's not all in the story of Miss Tattle and Snippet. Another conundrum has been added to the mix.

We have a new supervisor. Her name is Wendy. Wendy has been working overnights for the last couple of years while she finished her degree. When Kathy was finally allowed to open up that particular position again, we all thought it was going to be a good thing. Kathy has far too much on her plate and having an assistant would be wonderful for both the department and Kathy.

At first things seemed to be all good. Some ideas were tossed around and a couple of positive changes were made. But, Wendy has seemingly forgotten that she's supposed to be our supervisor. She's hanging around with Snippet and Miss Tattle exclusively, and she's being quite vocal to them about things she perceives to be "wrong" with our work..."this one works too slow, that one doesn't do this or that right" and of course Snippet and Miss Tattle love having the ear of "God" so to speak.

The muttering in the lab has begun. People are noticing the chumminess. They see the three of them go to break together. Wendy doesn't go to break with any of the rest of us. That's been noticed as well. It's going to turn ugly. Film at eleven, folks. I'll give you the exclusives as they happen.

This entry has been quite long. Miss Tattle did another "raid" on my floor this past Sunday. But, I'll tell you about that in another post.

Thanks for reading.