News From the Nursery Lab 2008-8

I KNEW it couldn't last!

This is not a tale of babies, but of personnel. Yup, in its simplest form, a bitch session.

Finally - Finally! we have put together a good working team in our nursery and critical care lab. This is due, in part, I will braggingly say, because of the excellent training the new people have had.

And, until about three weeks ago, it's been delightful because my boss is a good man.

Unfortunately, he's now found a new orifice to stick his head into. And, I guess he's not getting enough sunlight, so to speak.

My boss is being an absolute ass.

Personally, I can put up with people when they go through times when you'd swear legal steps had been taken to change their middle name to Asshole. What I have a huge issue with is when it affects the whole team of people I work with.

He's thinking about applying for a new job, a nice promotion. And, I think it's quite possible that he's being groomed for that position by his supervisor who, unfortunately, he must deal with. She is one of those who believes that being nice to those who work with you is not an option, instead preferring to terrorize and intimidate. I'm guessing Supervisor Beeotch has laid the law down to my boss, telling him he needs to whip his people into shape.

So, in the last three weeks he's intimidated (for about two seconds) the two newest employees. One who had knee replacement in December was called in for taking too much time off and being cited for "excessive absenteeism". He was doing this on the orders of Supervisor Beeotch, of course, who called the offending team members in. Unfortunately, with the first, they both forgot that she'd been working at BHTS for several years, and she conveniently couldn't meet with them when they tried to shanghai her into meeting. She got in touch with the union rep, and suddenly the meeting was called off...there was this little thing called the Family Leave Act which her time off was covered by.

The next employee had a similar fate. She was a contract transfer into the position. Her previous supervisor was pissed because she applied for the job without consulting with the supervisor. It's all legal - she didn't have to check with her supervisor before doing so. And, thus, the supervisor gave my boss a bad reference about her, making my supervisor leery of her. You see, a contract transfer gets the job regardless of who else applies. It's not always right, but that's the system. And, she's a good worker as well, and most everyone enjoys her. Again, she was being cited for excessive absenteeism. She was told that her doctor's excuses didn't mean a hill of beans because she really couldn't have been sick or needed the time off. Now...please understand that at BHTS we have to have time available to take off. We use comp time, sick leave or vacation time, all of which are already earned. The only time we can skip those options is when Family Leave Act is used, and that's simply because it gives an option for time off without pay and a guarantee your job will be held for you.

Once we got through this mess, another mess comes to make things interesting. We have a "subversive" in our group. One of the newer employees - my first trainee in NICU - is the culprit. It's taken us a bit of time to put it all together, but she's not very careful about hiding her attacks.

She is trying to be the fair haired child to the boss. She's running to him with any little thing she feels is wrong with the department. She was overheard to say to one of the Lab Scientists that she was the boss's "favorite".

I mean, how junior high can we get here? Thing is, he's believing what she tells him without checking the facts. He's mad at one employee because he was told she didn't show up to work on time, when in fact she had been early and had gone immediately to work on Bay 5 which was swamped and Miss Pet had not seen her, so of course she must have been late. The employee countered this by pulling out all the reqs with her initials and timestamp on them.

Today the other employee had gotten called to the overflow mother-baby unit to draw three babies, and this had left no lab tech in NICU. Some draws were needed and the Lab Scientist called for Miss Pet to come upstairs and help with the draws. She went running to the Boss and told him that the employee could not handle being in the NICU alone. Odd, isn't it, when the tech was not even on the floor, but was doing her job SOMEWHERE ELSE?

I'm in the doghouse because I went home early today; I injured my back a few days ago and needed medical treatment, but this left Miss Pet alone instead of the other tech being with her in Critical Care. My boss was angry with me when I told him I needed to go home well over half the shift was done. And, I didn't grovel and beg to go home. I informed him I was going and handed him the paperwork to sign. Too bad.

Now, to make this even more interesting, Miss Pet has a twin sister who also works in our department. Nepotism is not a good thing in most cases. It is my opinion that family members can work in the same place, but should not be in the same department. Again, this happened at a time when I was not in a position to comment, but only train. I had reservations about them then, and this situation reinforces it even more. The twins and Little Mary Sunshine (remember her?) all get together every morning and have a "shred" fest. They make no secret of talking about each and every person in the lab, making fun of them, in short, finding fault and gossiping about them *with intent* if that makes sense.

The good of this is that Little Mary Sunshine is moving back home next week, so we'll have one less of her type to contend with.

The bad of this is that all three of us who work on days are disgusted enough to start looking for other employment because of this bullshit. We all three left our last positions because of this sort of garbage and were thrilled to have a boss like ours. But now...it's just plain miserable at the moment, even though we all love our work, but not our jobs.