#from her 4th archive file btw

[wolfgirlfloof]

your honor i love her

[cbk1000]

So, my sister came over to our apartment today and we had a good long bitch about the work situation, and I found out a little more, although she can’t give me very many details because she promised our boss she wouldn’t say anything to me.

Firstly, let me just clarify: I keep referencing ‘our boss’ and then referring to a ‘she’ and ‘he’--I can’t remember if I mentioned this, but the clinic is run by a husband and wife, not one gender fluid manager who is being kind of an ass.

So, back at the beginning of September my sister first asked about her raise; she asked the wife (I’ll refer to her as ‘C’ from now on, and the husband as ‘L’ to avoid confusion instead of just referencing ‘our boss’), who said that she was right in the middle of taxes, so she’d have to look at it next week. A legit excuse; I know she’s always really harried during this time, and I don’t blame her for wanting to just get that out of the way first.

My sister didn’t hear anything more about it, so in October she popped in to remind C about it, thinking she may have forgotten because she was so busy. C said she had actually forgot about it till a few days ago, when she’d asked her husband. She said it was in discussion, and that they were talking numbers, which very heavily implies the raise is a sure thing, it’s just a matter of hashing out exactly how much it’s going to be. So, apparently, back in October, the raise was all but decided upon, it was just a matter of settling dollar amounts.

A few days ago when I first posted about this situation (Dec. 4th, my archive tells me), she had gone in to C’s office to ask yet again about the raise, because she first inquired about it three months ago, and was starting to get irritated, feeling as if she were being put off. It was then that C told her all this stuff. I outlined the basics in this post, so I won’t rehash it now. 

C is very upset, basically. She did not want to tell my sister any of this because she was hoping to just delicately handle it behind the scenes, but I think she felt she couldn’t put her off with some lame excuse since it had been three months since my sister initially asked for the raise. There are some gaps in my knowledge of events because my sister told me just enough to avoid breaking her promise to C, but essentially, L is fed up with people bitching about us even though none of the complaints actually have anything to do with our productivity and the quality of our work, so we’re basically being punished because fellow co-workers are whiny shitbabies. C is trying to get the raise, but she is not entirely sure how to go about it because once L gets something in his head, he can become fixated on it; he also will act like nothing’s wrong for a long time and then suddenly be super pissed about something minor (this is not just her trying to play Good Cop and make it look like she’s on our side, I’ve seen it happen many times). 

We assume C did not want my sister telling me the whole story because she knows I am very confrontational, and she really, really does not want us to leave, and I think she’s afraid I’d be justifiably pissed if I knew everything and would get into a blow-out with L that would end either with A. Me quitting on the spot B. Him firing me on the spot. My sister said she was clearly very upset and is obviously worried this is going to result in one or the both of us leaving. I know she really does not want that, because back in 2014 I asked for a raise a few months before I left on my trip, and one of the first things she said was, “Yes, we can definitely talk about that; L and I most definitely do not want to lose you”; I hadn’t implied (or at least I hadn’t intended to), that I would look for another job if they didn’t give me more money, but me leaving was her first concern, and within probably a week, my sister and I had both got a raise.

I do not want to punish her, and L is not a bad person, but his management skills are often severely lacking, and as I said in a previous post, if he is going to cater to the asshole employees who are always causing problems and punish the good ones who show up on time, do their job without getting into personal conflicts or constantly wasting his time with petty complaints, then I think he needs to see that there are repercussions. People will eventually get fed up, and I don’t think either one of us deserves to be treated this way. My sister said she thinks he feels safe doing this because we’ve been there for so long, and he just figures we won’t leave, but this is pretty much the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, and I’m trying to persuade her to look into other opportunities as well. We have been fed up for a while that some of the doctors upstairs are basically dictating how the filing system is laid out when we have told L over and over again that they (and he) are cluttering up the system with redundant categories that we already use, categories that will be used once in a blue moon, and just in general making it more of a pain in the ass to navigate; there are not the ones who have to navigate all these categories, so I think our opinions on it should carry some pretty hefty weight. We have spoken with him about this several times, and each time he agrees with us, complains about what a pain in the ass it is to deal with people upstairs, and then just goes back to doing what we asked him no to do, so sitting down and having a candid discussion with him is not an option; we’ve addressed problems with him before, and he just keeps caving to whoever whines the loudest/most. I could play that game, but I have better things to do with my time, and I’m not going to try and outshout everyone else when I have a job to do and can make much better use of my day. Also, I’m a fucking adult, not an incontinent fucking preschooler. 

It is infinitely crappy that the raise it sounds like he was prepared to agree upon back in October is now being held hostage because he is fed up with some jerkoffs complaining that we talk to each other instead of staring blankly at a windowless cubicle for eight hours a day and run movies for background noise. He knows our productivity isn’t lacking; we have bins full of confidential documents waiting to be shredded, so it’s clear we’re going through a ton of paperwork; and if he wanted to, he knows where we keep the reports: he could check and see that the trays are nearly empty/empty when we leave for the day. The people upstairs also know we are productive and not just fucking around, because when we’re behind, the whole clinic knows: reports aren’t in the charts where they’re supposed to be, people have to call down constantly looking for paperwork, etc. Several of them have commented multiple times on how surprisingly fast we are, so this has nothing to do with anyone being adversely affected, which is the only complaint that should be relevant in the workplace, and everything to do with being petty fucksticks. We don’t even interact with most of these people; we don’t even SEE them because they’re busy upstairs and don’t have time to come downstairs (except when they need to spend 30 minutes of their day whining to C), and we go upstairs only rarely to fax records and check our box for paperwork that’s ready to be filed. Which, btw, is in the nurse’s station, so they see us constantly coming and going and grabbing papers, and are therefore definitely aware that we’re not just sitting around marathoning The Bachelor or whatever. And that’s what really pisses me off about this--whoever is complaining has to know that we are obviously just running shows and movies as background noise, because if we were actually sitting and watching them intently, we’d be way behind and the repercussions of that would be felt upstairs really quickly. If we’re behind, everyone’s behind, basically, since the doctors and nurses don’t have the necessary records to review for appointments, billing can’t find the insurance info they need, etc.

I feel bad for C because I fully believe she is trying her best to handle this in a way that doesn’t screw us over and doesn’t punish us for other people’s whining, but it’s been time for my sister and I to move on for a while, and even though this is shitty, I think there’s a slightly silver lining in that it’s giving us a push to just gtfo.