Oh My!

For many years I’ve worked in a small (7 person) call center.   Over the years I have written about this and that.  The different personalities and characters of those I work most closely with.  What I enjoy about each , what exasperates me from time to time.  I’ve written about situtations that have brought us closer together, and situations that have sometimes caused rifts.

I’ve worked with 5 of these people in excess of a decade, spending as much, or even more time with them than with my own family, and through this extended contact, we’ve all become an odd sort of extended family, dysfunctional though it may sometimes be.

One women of whom I once wrote we will call “Ms. Stir The Pot”.  She’s a bit of a character.  Large, loud, and when not amusing others, exasperated me to wits end.  Her stories were often misleading (whether by intent or omission I’ve never quite figured out).  Discretion is a foreign concept to her which which leads to her repeating things that ought not be repeated, and often leaving out or adding intricate tidbits that are cause for confusion and leads others to sometimes question her motives.  This  “stirs the pot” from time to time.

However, to be fair, I ought not judge since I myself am writing about this which is not exactly the epitome of discretion,  …. talk about “the pot calling the kettle black”!

18 months ago (after years of threatening to quit whenever troubles came her way) she actually did quit.  She put in her 2 weeks notice right before Christmas.  The reasons she gave were as varied as the people she told, but she made sure that all of us knew she did NOT have a job lined up (which worried me as she had just been diagnosed with some major health concerns.  Diabetes, an adrenal mass, liver and kidney problems).

To one she told the tale that our boss was picking on her and she couldn’t take it anymore.  (My opinions was that was not exactly true, a fairer assessment is that our boss was warning her that her odd behaviors and frequent foibles were going to get her into trouble if she didn’t knock it off and pay more attention to her job than the latest office gossip.

Shortly after that warning, she started a rumor that our boss was having an affair with an administrator, and two physicians, and was out on six weeks leave  … and according to Ms. Stir the Pot, it was for vaginal rejuvenation surgery and a breast augmentation.   (I happened to know the truth, that our  boss’s husband had been diagnosed with cancer and our boss was consulting with two physicians and one administrator to find a way to by-pass our local cancer center in favor of Cancer Treatment Centers of America  … which was a bit of a sticky wicky being the health insurance that our boss had chosen didn’t cover “out of network” providers.   Though I knew this, I wasn’t at liberty to discuss it with anyone else at the time.

Somehow this news made it back to our boss, and she went BESERK ….. confronted Ms. Stir The Pot (who denied everything) …. and made Ms. Stir The Pot’s working life difficult.  Last minute calls offs were suddenly and automatically given to Ms. Stir The Pot.  Vacation and Holiday consideration were suddenly problematic for Ms. Stir the Pot.  There always seemed to be some reason or another that our boss would find fault with her, the way her voice sounded on the overhead paging system, how she handled emergency calls, how she documented (or failed to document) changes in call schedules or problems.

To another she indicated she had only a few months to live and wanted those months to be peaceful.  To someone else she said she just needed a clean slate to start over and that her and her boyfriend were planning to move to the beach.  One woman claimed she told her that she had threatened to quit, and our boss had replied “Good, it’s past time for you to move on.”

The truth came out after she was gone.  She had applied for a job at a local neurologist’s office, and when offered the job and just about the same pay as she was currently making, went to our boss and threatened to quit if our boss didn’t give her a raise and stop picking on her.  Our bosses response (according to our boss) was actually more along the lines of   “This is probably for the best.  I single out those with unprofessional behavior  and lack of work ethic.  You fall into that category almost continually, therefore I am accepting this as your two week notice.”

Given no other choice, she accepted the job at the local neurologist’s office and began her new job the Monday after her last day with us at the hospital.  I might never have known except that I kept expressing concern about her not having a job with all her health concerns, at which point our boss invited me into her confidence to reassure me that whatever I had been told had not been truthful.

End of story?  No!!!

A few months passed.  One of the women we work with discovered that Ms. Stir that Pot had lost her job at the neurologist’s office due to the fact she couldn’t learn their computer system quickly enough and wasn’t working out.  Another couple of months passed and I ran into Ms. Stir the Pot at the grocery store and she said she was working at a cell phone recycling facility reprogramming used cell phones for re-sale.

A year passed and our hospital changed ownership.  Our boss was let go along with just about every other Director, and a whole new administration began.

At the beginning of summer, one of the other’s I work with learned that Ms. Stir the Pot lost her job with the cell phone recycling company.  The story Ms. Stir the Pot told her was that she had suffered pink eye and bronchitis for 5 weeks and had called off for 3 days.  When she returned to work, her eye was still red.  Her boss told her she needed to go home and stay home until she had seen a doctor and been treated for the pink eye as it is very contagious . Ms. Stir the pot claimed she had been to an urgent care and couldn’t afford the prescription for pink eye, but had been on an oral antibiotic for the bronchitis for over 3 days so she was sure she wasn’t contagious.  It didn’t go over very well, they terminated her on the spot.

Somehow that sounds almost right …. my guess would be that she either didn’t actually go to the doctor or an urgent care because (she hates to spend money on doctors and has this idea that Hyland’s homeopathic remedies are all she ever needs) ….. and that she talked back to whoever her boss was that asked her to go home to spare the other’s contracting pink eye ….. or it could alternately be that she never really had bronchitis or pink eye, and that she called off work and was seen shopping or going out to dinner or out and about when she was suppose to be home sick … but whatever the reason …. she lost her job.   When I heard it, I felt terrible for her.

 

Then a month ago, one of our long time operators retired.

Guess who they replaced her with?  Yep …. Ms. Stir the Pot is BACK!!!!!!

But here is the real kicker.  I helped her.  Why? ?????

Because after working with her for over a decade,  being familiar with all the bad luck in her life both personally and professional, her flaws, her peculiar humor, her ignorant ways ….. we all decided (ALL of us) that we’ve missed her, and that together we can stand united and not let her get away with any more crap as long as we point it out right away at the moment it happens, and by applauding when she gets things right, and guiding her when she’s confused about policy, and frowning at her when she begins to stray off track and talk about all the wrong kinds of things.  We miss her because we are all dysfunctional in some way or another, and after working with her for decades, her being gone has been like having lost a member of our crazy work place family.

I pray I don’t live to regret this.