I've really enjoyed all the comments on last weeks post! And I hope the commentor doesn't mind if I expropriate "CrazyGate" ... which is a great shorthand title for what's going on at the Madhouse these days.
The news this week about the "final four", expecially, made me feel crazy! The gulf in perception between Administration and Staff has always been remarkable. But this choice - out of 30 applicants - is truly jaw-dropping.
But it's clarified my issue. Boiled down, it is, I think, Administrative Accountability. Who holds the people who hold us accountable, accountable? I admit I'm guilty of insubordination, but Adminstration admits nothing...ever...even in the face of lost identifying information, increases in serious assaults, improper staffing, various examples of patient neglect, high staff turnover etc., etc. (Reminds me of Bush when he's asked if he ever made a mistake.) Seems to me that in a perfect world, someone would be checking up on the performance of this "Administration". I hope to discover the obscure chain of command that permits the chaos we see around us to continue as it does. Who knows about it (the chaos, that is)? and when did they know about it? Why hasn't anything been done? etc. etc....CrazyGate, indeed.
Anyhoo.....this is just a "note" to keep readers abreast of the progress of my "potential termination". Nothing new has happened so far, except that I've made a date for a conversation or two. (Thanks, readers, for your attorney tips.) I keep getting distracted by other things...there's a big war going on, for one thing...and I'm working at a new business...kind of hate taking the time out to explore CrazyGate issues. But I'll do what I can. Next week I should be able to report back about the "corrective action" meeting, anyway.
Meanwhile, Blog On! Keep those comments coming!
Comments since last post on Insubordination!
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Friday, July 21, 2006
Insubordination!!
Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!!! ...well, almost. Those of you who've worked with me know that I've been asking (rhetorically, of course) for quite some time, "What would it take to get fired?". I began to ask this after watching a co-worker repeatedly "work over" his team-mates by calling in sick 30" before a shift...(or just not showing up for three days in a row...many times..even on holidays..) I asked again when a nurse who could never learn how to give meds was given paid leave. I continued to ask it after a nurse took protected info home....or somewhere...and got it stolen....and when the rumour started that the reason he hadn't provided the victims with the police report info was because he hadn't filed a proper report. I even asked my supervisor once or twice, "What, exactly, would it take to get fired?"
Well now I've found out! It's Insubordination!! That'll do it. Good to know.
So, remember: it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you don't openly defy your supervisor. Wait! let me revise that...open defiance isn't the issue since surely the employee who repeatedly failed to show up for work must have been told to stop it...and he didn't...and that's "defiance". No, it's saying you don't intend to comply right out....That is "insubordination" and that will get you fired!! Thus, those of you who want to stay at the madhouse are free to do whatever you want, but remember to always say that you are now or will be soon, or wish you were or will try to be...compliant...
...regardless of what you're being asked to comply with. In my case, it was those stupid "competencies". Ye gods. I've taken those darned things so many times, I feel like I'll puke (that probably should be "experience an emesis") if I have to do them again...particularly the one about managing the violent acting out patient...which surely we all understand now does not work, is seldom, if ever, used and requires us to throw one another around a room for several hours every year during mock re enactments of patient-to-staff attacks. I'm sorry, but I just don't care for that much physical contact...(and, actually, that very reluctance to grab or be grabbed has done a good job all these years in keeping me out of harms way with violent patients). And I know from talking with assaulted staff, that when your number comes up and you're getting the tar beat out of you, the class material is not what you rely on for salvation.
So anyway, I completed them in the fall/winter of 2005...unhappily, dragging my feet, mumbling and grousing the entire way, but I did 'em - and heaved a sigh of relief. "Maybe I can figure out how to get fired before I have to do 'em again.", I said to myself. But Fate was against me. When JCHAO came to inspect the hospital in..when was it....January, I think...some management staff hadn't completed their competencies...which was an issue, apparently, even though, of course as we all know, management staff very seldom enter the milieu anyway...Even so..to get back to the subject...JCAHO needed to be mollified in some way. HMG (Hospital Management Group) made an executive decision to effect said mollification: the entire staff of the hospital would taken competencies at one time in May/June.
If you're keeping track: this is six full months before I should have to be tortured again...I even blogged about it once..."who's responsible for this inhumae torture???" I blogged.
Well, I stalled and avoided as long as I could; then I just said, straight out, "I'm not doing it". And thats Insubordination! And it really is...there's no point denying that part. Never mind that I think of it, myself, as "resisting idiocy"...it's still insubordination. I see that. I said it myself, at the time.
However!! Praise be! There's a grievance process!! Now, I've had some experience with the "grievance process" here at the madhouse. In fact, I have some left-over issues about how the "grievance process" has worked in several cases. So I see this as an opportunity!
And! I can give you all a blow-by-blow report on how it's all going!! An inside view of a firing!! This should boost readership. I'm excited! I've been having trouble coming up with blog material lately. This should be good!
So, keep reading, fellow bloggers! The Gadde Fly is about to get swatted!
No comments since last post..guess nobody wants to talk about war...No Wait! I lied. There is a new comment on Wish List. Sorry...just no comments on Backwards
Well now I've found out! It's Insubordination!! That'll do it. Good to know.
So, remember: it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you don't openly defy your supervisor. Wait! let me revise that...open defiance isn't the issue since surely the employee who repeatedly failed to show up for work must have been told to stop it...and he didn't...and that's "defiance". No, it's saying you don't intend to comply right out....That is "insubordination" and that will get you fired!! Thus, those of you who want to stay at the madhouse are free to do whatever you want, but remember to always say that you are now or will be soon, or wish you were or will try to be...compliant...
...regardless of what you're being asked to comply with. In my case, it was those stupid "competencies". Ye gods. I've taken those darned things so many times, I feel like I'll puke (that probably should be "experience an emesis") if I have to do them again...particularly the one about managing the violent acting out patient...which surely we all understand now does not work, is seldom, if ever, used and requires us to throw one another around a room for several hours every year during mock re enactments of patient-to-staff attacks. I'm sorry, but I just don't care for that much physical contact...(and, actually, that very reluctance to grab or be grabbed has done a good job all these years in keeping me out of harms way with violent patients). And I know from talking with assaulted staff, that when your number comes up and you're getting the tar beat out of you, the class material is not what you rely on for salvation.
So anyway, I completed them in the fall/winter of 2005...unhappily, dragging my feet, mumbling and grousing the entire way, but I did 'em - and heaved a sigh of relief. "Maybe I can figure out how to get fired before I have to do 'em again.", I said to myself. But Fate was against me. When JCHAO came to inspect the hospital in..when was it....January, I think...some management staff hadn't completed their competencies...which was an issue, apparently, even though, of course as we all know, management staff very seldom enter the milieu anyway...Even so..to get back to the subject...JCAHO needed to be mollified in some way. HMG (Hospital Management Group) made an executive decision to effect said mollification: the entire staff of the hospital would taken competencies at one time in May/June.
If you're keeping track: this is six full months before I should have to be tortured again...I even blogged about it once..."who's responsible for this inhumae torture???" I blogged.
Well, I stalled and avoided as long as I could; then I just said, straight out, "I'm not doing it". And thats Insubordination! And it really is...there's no point denying that part. Never mind that I think of it, myself, as "resisting idiocy"...it's still insubordination. I see that. I said it myself, at the time.
However!! Praise be! There's a grievance process!! Now, I've had some experience with the "grievance process" here at the madhouse. In fact, I have some left-over issues about how the "grievance process" has worked in several cases. So I see this as an opportunity!
And! I can give you all a blow-by-blow report on how it's all going!! An inside view of a firing!! This should boost readership. I'm excited! I've been having trouble coming up with blog material lately. This should be good!
So, keep reading, fellow bloggers! The Gadde Fly is about to get swatted!
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Backwards
Remember those 100 degree days in June? Now it's July and we've had a week of rain. It's chilly in the house this morning...had to put on a sweater. Seems backwards, the weather does, but what the heck, all this rain is great!! Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Everything seems backwards lately, not just the weather. This morning on CNN the Bagdad reporter was telling about Shiite militias who are stopping everybody on the streets and asking for ID's. If the subject's last name is Suni, they shoot him (or her, or them). "Bodies are piling up", he said. How can it be that, after we've saved Iraq from its brutal dictator, everything is way worse for the average Iraqi citizen (especially the average Suni one...)??
And then there's the Gaza Strip...in order to retrieve one soldier, Israel kills a bunch of Palestinians?...yes, I know, there are those rocket attacks, too...but I find it so troubling that it's always ordinary citizens that are so massively, so obviously, the victims when governments bring out the war machine.
During the Vietnam era, the solution to war that I backed was to have the two (or more) government leaders involved in conflict get into the ring and personally duke it out...no gloves, no weapons, no rules. Kim Jong Il and Bush, one-on-one. Or Bush and Saddam Hussein. Or Bush and Osama Bin Laden. Or Bush and Fidel Castro. Or Bush and Hugo Chavez. Or Bush and Vladimir Putin (that one's coming)Or Bush and ...oh, gosh...can't remember who's in charge in China....(it's uh, Who Gin Tao, isn't it?...if it was spelled right?) well, whoever it is...Bush and him.
Hey,wait. Does it seem like Bush is a kind of cantankerous cuss? Here in the world of mental health, we should be offering our leader some conflict resolution skills...or maybe an anger management class! Maybe he needs an anti-depressant...depression can make you irritable...or is it paranoia? Maybe an anti-psychotic, then. Or anxiety...what about that...we've got stuff for that, too. Really, anyone who can't get along with his peers any better than this, has issues. You know it's true.
Anyway back to my earlier solution: with my "you guys go ahead and fight it out" plan in place, the citizenry would naturally elect either a big burly meathead who could stomp all the other leaders (Schwarzeneger?) into the mat... (We'd win every fight! Go USA! Problem solved!)...or a very peaceful person who tended to resolve conflicts long before they approached the need for "war" (the Dahli Lama?) so there wouldn't be any fights. Knowing humanity, we'd swing between the two types every generation or so, depending on who was available to run for office at election time. Bush is too old for a fight, yet he isn't "peaceful", either...not a good choice for "leader".
War is insane. War, is, after all, two groups of people who, having come to some impasse or other, resolve their issues by sending all their young citizens out to kill all the other guy's young citizens. What's insane is not just the leader's perception that slaughter and destruction will improve the situation, but the remarkable cooperation of the slaughterees. We all just go along with it. No problem...send our kids over...and our neighbors' kids...our wives and husbands...into "War". And human beings have been doing "war" since the dawn of history...over and over....if it was a matter of "learning", we'd have learned by now.
It's probably genetically coded population control. We really have no choice, we just think we do.
Backwards.
Hey! Thanks to Facilities Mangement for the water on the patients' courtyards! Grass is returning! Ironic, don't you think, that the sprinklers have coincided with the rain? Don't forget to mow now and then! You are appreciated!
Comments since last post on "4th of July".
Everything seems backwards lately, not just the weather. This morning on CNN the Bagdad reporter was telling about Shiite militias who are stopping everybody on the streets and asking for ID's. If the subject's last name is Suni, they shoot him (or her, or them). "Bodies are piling up", he said. How can it be that, after we've saved Iraq from its brutal dictator, everything is way worse for the average Iraqi citizen (especially the average Suni one...)??
And then there's the Gaza Strip...in order to retrieve one soldier, Israel kills a bunch of Palestinians?...yes, I know, there are those rocket attacks, too...but I find it so troubling that it's always ordinary citizens that are so massively, so obviously, the victims when governments bring out the war machine.
During the Vietnam era, the solution to war that I backed was to have the two (or more) government leaders involved in conflict get into the ring and personally duke it out...no gloves, no weapons, no rules. Kim Jong Il and Bush, one-on-one. Or Bush and Saddam Hussein. Or Bush and Osama Bin Laden. Or Bush and Fidel Castro. Or Bush and Hugo Chavez. Or Bush and Vladimir Putin (that one's coming)Or Bush and ...oh, gosh...can't remember who's in charge in China....(it's uh, Who Gin Tao, isn't it?...if it was spelled right?) well, whoever it is...Bush and him.
Hey,wait. Does it seem like Bush is a kind of cantankerous cuss? Here in the world of mental health, we should be offering our leader some conflict resolution skills...or maybe an anger management class! Maybe he needs an anti-depressant...depression can make you irritable...or is it paranoia? Maybe an anti-psychotic, then. Or anxiety...what about that...we've got stuff for that, too. Really, anyone who can't get along with his peers any better than this, has issues. You know it's true.
Anyway back to my earlier solution: with my "you guys go ahead and fight it out" plan in place, the citizenry would naturally elect either a big burly meathead who could stomp all the other leaders (Schwarzeneger?) into the mat... (We'd win every fight! Go USA! Problem solved!)...or a very peaceful person who tended to resolve conflicts long before they approached the need for "war" (the Dahli Lama?) so there wouldn't be any fights. Knowing humanity, we'd swing between the two types every generation or so, depending on who was available to run for office at election time. Bush is too old for a fight, yet he isn't "peaceful", either...not a good choice for "leader".
War is insane. War, is, after all, two groups of people who, having come to some impasse or other, resolve their issues by sending all their young citizens out to kill all the other guy's young citizens. What's insane is not just the leader's perception that slaughter and destruction will improve the situation, but the remarkable cooperation of the slaughterees. We all just go along with it. No problem...send our kids over...and our neighbors' kids...our wives and husbands...into "War". And human beings have been doing "war" since the dawn of history...over and over....if it was a matter of "learning", we'd have learned by now.
It's probably genetically coded population control. We really have no choice, we just think we do.
Backwards.
Hey! Thanks to Facilities Mangement for the water on the patients' courtyards! Grass is returning! Ironic, don't you think, that the sprinklers have coincided with the rain? Don't forget to mow now and then! You are appreciated!
Comments since last post on "4th of July".
Sunday, July 02, 2006
4th of July Weekend Rocks!
It's been a rockin' week-end at the Madhouse so far! The exuberance of the patients is reflecting the nation's birthday party mood, perhaps. The most recent comment on "Wish List" provides a good summary of festivities, but it left out mention of the new Free Love zone on our Adolescent unit, and our drought memorial display in the Admission Team's courtyard. Credit where credit is due, however. Maintenance DID turn on the water one day last week...and it resulted in a massive courtyard flood, followed the next day, by an apparently renewed committment to drought.
You know, those Maintenance guys might be underfunded or something...I'm thinking a grant from the Gates Foundation might be in order. Gates and Buffet have made me hopeful. Those guys are problem solvers, all right...and have the bucks to back it up! Maybe the foundation could be persuaded to make mental heath one of their charities.
Did anyone notice the article in Thursday's Rocky Mountain News, "Analyst had OK to take data home; VA bosses negligent in theft of veteran's info, lawmaker says."? The paragraph that I found most interesting was "Lawmakers expressed dismay over the latest disclosure. They noted that the analyst immediately notified his supervisors after the theft from his suburban Maryland home, but supervisors delayed publicizing the crime until May 22. ... 'the gross negligence in this case are the people above him,' said Rep. Bob Finer, ...". You might have overlooked this one because right under it was an article about a judge who is on trial "on charges he used a penis pump on himself in the courtroom while sitting in judgment of others." I know that one got my attention. (The two articles right together like that really provoked a lot of reverie about our own "higher ups", I must say...imagination can be a burden.)
A quick review of the situation here is that our event occurred in April and affected patients were not notified until June....even though the employee who took the data home reported the theft immediately. The VA and Congress are shocked at the elapse of time in that case...what would they say to the elapse of time in THIS case? If those "higher ups" are held accountable, shouldn't our "higher ups" be too? What's the deal?...which is what a blog reader was asking in his comment to "Dead Horses" this morning....since I doubt regular readers would spontaneously go back and check the comments on such an old page, I'm mentioning it here, so you'll all go read it...sums up the situation as is stands today about our Data Theft incident...
I think that whoever is our in-house media person needs to contact the press about this before a dirty, underhanded leaker does it. (Hey, Dirty Underhanded Leaker, I think you should get busy!!)
Meanwhile, it's the 4th of July (almost)! Happy Birthday, America! Let Peace and Freedom Ring!
Comments since last post on Wish List and Dead Horses.
You know, those Maintenance guys might be underfunded or something...I'm thinking a grant from the Gates Foundation might be in order. Gates and Buffet have made me hopeful. Those guys are problem solvers, all right...and have the bucks to back it up! Maybe the foundation could be persuaded to make mental heath one of their charities.
Did anyone notice the article in Thursday's Rocky Mountain News, "Analyst had OK to take data home; VA bosses negligent in theft of veteran's info, lawmaker says."? The paragraph that I found most interesting was "Lawmakers expressed dismay over the latest disclosure. They noted that the analyst immediately notified his supervisors after the theft from his suburban Maryland home, but supervisors delayed publicizing the crime until May 22. ... 'the gross negligence in this case are the people above him,' said Rep. Bob Finer, ...". You might have overlooked this one because right under it was an article about a judge who is on trial "on charges he used a penis pump on himself in the courtroom while sitting in judgment of others." I know that one got my attention. (The two articles right together like that really provoked a lot of reverie about our own "higher ups", I must say...imagination can be a burden.)
A quick review of the situation here is that our event occurred in April and affected patients were not notified until June....even though the employee who took the data home reported the theft immediately. The VA and Congress are shocked at the elapse of time in that case...what would they say to the elapse of time in THIS case? If those "higher ups" are held accountable, shouldn't our "higher ups" be too? What's the deal?...which is what a blog reader was asking in his comment to "Dead Horses" this morning....since I doubt regular readers would spontaneously go back and check the comments on such an old page, I'm mentioning it here, so you'll all go read it...sums up the situation as is stands today about our Data Theft incident...
I think that whoever is our in-house media person needs to contact the press about this before a dirty, underhanded leaker does it. (Hey, Dirty Underhanded Leaker, I think you should get busy!!)
Meanwhile, it's the 4th of July (almost)! Happy Birthday, America! Let Peace and Freedom Ring!
Comments since last post on Wish List and Dead Horses.
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