Buh Bye

Since I gave my notice at work, I'm come to realize that there are two kinds of people in my department. The ones who really like me and the ones who really hate me.

I've shared a lot of personal information here. I've talked about my weight, my sex life, my family, death and my deepest feelings. The one thing I've never talked about is work. It just seemed somehow off limits. I didn't want to talk about people who wouldn't have any recourse and frankly, I didn't want to get fired.

I'm done playing nice in the sandbox. I work for one of the largest healthcare institutions in the state. Hint, it's not the Cleveland Clinic. Comparisons have abounded for years between "us" and "them". They ran a factory style assembly line, bringing patients in and pumping them out without barely knowing their name and we were "the hospital with a heart".

As most organizations do, we've had a few major reorganizations in recent years and the current senior leadership seems to have a hard on for keeping up with the Jones'.  The Jones' being the Cleveland Clinic.

Oh, the Clinic is building a hospital in Twinsburg? We better do that, too. The Clinic is building a new outpatient facility in Lake County? Better find some ground for us to build on! The decisions that they are making at all levels don't seem to make much sense. For example, a local businessman donated $30 million dollars to us. A wildly generous gift, for sure, but as all large donations go, a wing or building is named after the donor. In this case, a hospital was built and named after the donor. But the total cost of the hospital was $298 million dollars. Hmmm....where do you suppose that comes from?

We've been forced to cut support staff positions while overpaid physicians are hanging out at the coffee shop on an administrative morning when they should be in the office working. Their egos barely fit through the door and when they do, it's usually just to blame you for something or other that isn't to their liking.

I'm a big advocate of policies and procedures. Oh, this is how it's supposed to be done? Well, then let's do it that way. My position reports to the operations manager so she's sort of like the principal and I'm the assistant principal. Remember how much you hated the assistant principal? Why? Because the assistant principal is "bad cop" telling everyone how things should be done.

My breaking point was in a clinical practice meeting with all 17 docs when one of them asked me for access to a scheduling program that only a handful of people are allowed to access. I tried explaining that to him but he kept interrupting me to tell me how he should be able to have access because he wanted to. In chimed my ops manager, "Don't worry. You can have access to whatever you want."

WTF??

Way to undermine my authority. And she's thrown me under the proverbial bus for a whole bunch of stuff that existed long before I ever started working there. All under the guise of being my "friend". God, women are such bitches.

So, I'm just done.

And I don't think anyone even gives a shit. Except for the aforementioned group that really likes me. But they're outnumbered by the haters. The chairman that I've worked with for 6 years hasn't even acknowledged that I'm leaving. Really??

I can take solace in knowing it's not just me. Two physicians have left and another has given notice because they're tired of the toxic environment that exists in the department. To quote one when I gave my notice. "You go girl! Good for you!"

The system is going to do a study in employee retention because so many people quit within their first year. Duh. You don't need a study. Just ask people.

Will they talk about me and blame me for everything when I leave? I'm quite certain they will. But I'm leaving knowing who I am and what a great job I did and at the end of the day, that's really all that matters.