It's the people not the work

At work, I wear a hairnet. It's quite lovely and blue. It's different looking from your usual hairnet, but nonetheless it does the same duty: keep hair out of things. When I went into an area where we clean equipment, I put on another kind of hairnet. However, when I left both hairnets came off at the same time and into the garbage they went. I went to the locker room to retrieve some money and run off to the cafeteria for a snack, but before I made it to my locker a co-worker stopped me to ask how The Boy's wisdom tooth extration went. I was filling her in on the details, the grossest of which is that when the dentist pulled one of his wisdom teeth, he said it was the longest root he'd ever seen. Now, when the boy breathes though his mouth you can hear air rush into his sinuses, which is how far the root went up into his mouth. It is the more horrible sound, but I keep asking him to do it.

While we are chatting, one of our area's Leads walks into the locker room and berates me for not wearing a hairnet, which I was about to retrieve from the shelf anyway. I make a face or something and she tells me to step into her office when I am through in there. So much for that snack. We finish chatting and I walk into the office where she states that she's not trying to pick on me but that we have to wear the hairnets and if our hair touches our scrubs we have to change our shirts.

This rule is ludicrous. We put on our scrubs in the locker room and don't put the hairnet on until we are in the lobby area of our department. We don our scrubs and our hair touches them when we put them on. Oy. So, we discuss that for a moment and then she asks if everything is okay, mean while another lead stares on. She said that I seem different from when I first started, that I seem less enthusiastic, less peppy, etc. She asked if I wanted a different shift or if I had a problem with the one I was working now. I said no, that I enjoyed my shift. I did mention that I was bored with the job. She said that there's always something to do and I inserted that it's not mentally stimulating work. She said that's the nature of the job and I kept my mouth shut.

The things I didn't say were that I do think the job is boring, but more importantly I used to think I could make a difference there, that I could make some positive changes. And when I figured out that nothing was going to change, that status quo would remain in place, I became cynical. I don't like my job and I am always looking for a new one. I started applying for jobs in the town which The Boy lives, about an hour north of where I currently live. I don't want to work in CSPD forever. It's a stopping point, nothing more. Something to pay the bills. And if they don't realize that, if they don't realize that we hate their managerial skills, of which they have none, they need a wake up call.

We had a staff meeting on Wednesday. I brought up one of the policies they follow to a T, which is the occurrence policy. If you arrive to work later than 29 minutes, you receive an occurrence. If you call in sick or use any Unplanned Paid Time Off, you receive an occurrence. The occurrences stay on your record for a rolling year. If you get on in April of 2007, it won't drop off until April of 2008. One you reach eight occurrences, you are fired. I commented on the unfairness of this policy.

The head manager stated that this is the policy set forth by HR throughout the company. I said that I read in the policy mannual that it is up to the discretion of the department manager to decide what is an occurrence and what is not. She said that she's brought it up to HR before and they state that the occurrence policy must be followed. However, this is a lie. She is passing the buck off onto someone else because she is too afraid to take responsibility for any of her choices. She can choose what is an occurrence, she can choose who she fires and does not. She does not need to blanket everyone with the same rooms for fear she'll be accussed of favoritism. Obviously, she needs a dictionary and some help with the definitions of discretion and favoritism, which I might add she participates in anyway.

She said in the meeting, "We have a high turn-over rate and some of those people quite because of the occurrence policy." Hmmm, duh. Think we need to revamp that policy? Also, she stated that this policy is equivalent to having 7 days of vacation per year, which if you're sick what kind of vacation is that? And she said that she's biased because she doesn't have kids nor does she get sick very often. She asked, "Well, you don't plan on getting sick eight times a year do you?" Ah ha! That's where she's wrong. It's only seven times the first year, after that it's however many you have on your rolling calendar. Also, what about those with kids? Children get sick and someone has to stay home with them, to be punished for that is inconceivable, especially since we all work in a hospital. What about those of us with poor immune systems? We get sick. No, we don't plan on it. It just happens. Again, we work in a hospital and our surrounded by germs.

And if we try coming to work with a communicable disease/infection like pink eye, strep, etc we are sent home with an occurrence.

Where's the justice in that? I would love to try and unionize that job, but I don't know how to go about doing it. But having some power behind us, having some weight and leverage would have to help. I'd get fired, but what the hell... making a difference in a cynical way could be a dream come true.