BLFC Incoming!
Man, I am so ready for a furry con. Things have been crazy in the lab, and my manager has been less-than enjoyable to deal with.
A short background of my line of work, and my current lab. My official title is Medical Laboratory Scientist, but basically we're the guys in the hospitals that run your lab tests. Someone once described it as "we're the magic black box, where blood or other samples go in, and results come out." And I honestly can't describe it any better. In the process of your doctor ordering tests, the nurse or phlebotomist drawing your blood, the period in between where stuff happens, and then they come back to tell you your fine, aside from slightly elevated ALT and AST levels, I do that "stuff." I do enjoy the profession, and actually really like my current place of employment, since it allows me to work with many of the different specialties in the lab. But my manager lately has not been making it very enjoyable.
Since I work nights all alone, I don't often get to see other people. At best, my manager would try to come in early once a week to see the night tech and talk with them, at least that's how she described it to me when I first interviewed for the job. In actuality, though, she'd often come in minutes after I was scheduled to be off, and it's not uncommon to go 3 months at a time without seeing her. And until recently, she was the only person in management for the lab (we have a very small staff.) But a tech was promoted last fall to being the lab supervisor, so I felt things were better in that I'd see the supervisor tech more than half of the mornings I worked, and important information could now be given directly to her, rather than writing an e-mail and hoping my manager would read it within a week, and unsure if she'd ever respond.
So I had my yearly review last Friday, and everything was fine except for a few points. Last year I thought that my manager took the stance that if she had something she said you could improve upon, she'd point out something that you did really well. This year, I got the opposite impression, she scored me well on several points, but then she marked me down on a few others; and these are things that were fine last year, and I haven't done anything different than last year when I was marked as 'meets expectations.' Either her expectations for me have changed in that last year, and she's never said anything, or her perception of how I'm doing my jobe has changed, and again, she hasn't told me anything. When I asked her for examples of what I had done wrong, she just sort of waved the question away and provided a hypothetical scenario about what she presumed I was doing, rather than any specific example of doing what she thought I was doing, or not doing. And the couple of things she marked me down on were things that I had literally been told by several techs in the past month, without being prompted, that they really liked how hard I worked and how I always did the most I could to solve a problem. And the supervisor, who I see all the time, wasn't even asked about my performance for the review. Only the manager could weigh in. The person who I only see a few hours combined every year, and the person who, for 2016, I have seen a total of 2 times. Once for a lab meeting at the beginning of the year, and the second for my review, 4 months later.
It's all terribly frustrating, and I am looking for other places to work at in the meantime. I'm not in any danger of losing my job, because as many of the day techs tell me, my manager says she likes having me there, especially during the night when there's only one person and you don't have many resources to provide backup. But in dealing with her personally, it's a total different story.
Anywho! I bitched a lot more than intended. Sorry about that. At least BLFC is next week, and I can be a shaggy dog romping around for most of the weekend. Plus a meet up for pipes and cigars with other furs, and a couple of side plans which I hope come to pass. *wags*
I hope everyone has a great day! :D
-Barnaby
A short background of my line of work, and my current lab. My official title is Medical Laboratory Scientist, but basically we're the guys in the hospitals that run your lab tests. Someone once described it as "we're the magic black box, where blood or other samples go in, and results come out." And I honestly can't describe it any better. In the process of your doctor ordering tests, the nurse or phlebotomist drawing your blood, the period in between where stuff happens, and then they come back to tell you your fine, aside from slightly elevated ALT and AST levels, I do that "stuff." I do enjoy the profession, and actually really like my current place of employment, since it allows me to work with many of the different specialties in the lab. But my manager lately has not been making it very enjoyable.
Since I work nights all alone, I don't often get to see other people. At best, my manager would try to come in early once a week to see the night tech and talk with them, at least that's how she described it to me when I first interviewed for the job. In actuality, though, she'd often come in minutes after I was scheduled to be off, and it's not uncommon to go 3 months at a time without seeing her. And until recently, she was the only person in management for the lab (we have a very small staff.) But a tech was promoted last fall to being the lab supervisor, so I felt things were better in that I'd see the supervisor tech more than half of the mornings I worked, and important information could now be given directly to her, rather than writing an e-mail and hoping my manager would read it within a week, and unsure if she'd ever respond.
So I had my yearly review last Friday, and everything was fine except for a few points. Last year I thought that my manager took the stance that if she had something she said you could improve upon, she'd point out something that you did really well. This year, I got the opposite impression, she scored me well on several points, but then she marked me down on a few others; and these are things that were fine last year, and I haven't done anything different than last year when I was marked as 'meets expectations.' Either her expectations for me have changed in that last year, and she's never said anything, or her perception of how I'm doing my jobe has changed, and again, she hasn't told me anything. When I asked her for examples of what I had done wrong, she just sort of waved the question away and provided a hypothetical scenario about what she presumed I was doing, rather than any specific example of doing what she thought I was doing, or not doing. And the couple of things she marked me down on were things that I had literally been told by several techs in the past month, without being prompted, that they really liked how hard I worked and how I always did the most I could to solve a problem. And the supervisor, who I see all the time, wasn't even asked about my performance for the review. Only the manager could weigh in. The person who I only see a few hours combined every year, and the person who, for 2016, I have seen a total of 2 times. Once for a lab meeting at the beginning of the year, and the second for my review, 4 months later.
It's all terribly frustrating, and I am looking for other places to work at in the meantime. I'm not in any danger of losing my job, because as many of the day techs tell me, my manager says she likes having me there, especially during the night when there's only one person and you don't have many resources to provide backup. But in dealing with her personally, it's a total different story.
Anywho! I bitched a lot more than intended. Sorry about that. At least BLFC is next week, and I can be a shaggy dog romping around for most of the weekend. Plus a meet up for pipes and cigars with other furs, and a couple of side plans which I hope come to pass. *wags*
I hope everyone has a great day! :D
-Barnaby