Nicole's Finally Quits / Coworker Wackiness
I've kept this news under my hat for a while, but for about two months now, Nicole has had a plan in place to quit her job and as of two days ago, she's officially unemployed! The job was working as a receptionist and office-staffer for a small psychiatrist practice out on the other side of Portland. The place had about a dozen doctors and was profitable but was habitually short-staffed and managed by a woman who had no experience or business being a manager. The owner herself was willfully blind to the condition of the front office and even the doctors seemed to turn a blind eye to how overworked and micromanaged the small support staff to which Nicole belonged was. To boot, the management put in place shady business practices-like not accepting certain insurance solely because they don't pay out as much as others, favoritism, and denying vacation time but allowing management to take time off whenever-that are possibly illegal. Dozens of times over the last year that she's worked there, Nicole would come home from her hour-long commute and fight off panic attacks and the stress that she carried home from that dead end job. Enough was finally enough.
Nicole worked hard and fought through the stress to make it to the one-year mark before turning in her two weeks notice in mid-May. Her last day was last Friday, and it surprised me to hear that the management wasn't making any effort to keep her. They were knee deep in interviewing replacements when Nicole left, but from the sounds of it, they were unsatisfied with who had come in so far. The place is doomed (Or at least in temporary dire straits) and we're gleeful about it.
Nicole has become good friends with her immediate coworkers there, so she'll be able to find out what things happen in the coming weeks. Personally, I'm thrilled that she's free of the crappy place. A lot of people complain about their jobs or just simply have bad jobs that they put up with, but this place in particular was unique in its steadfast self-destruction. It'll suck that we'll both be relying completely on my income moving forward (Especially with the new apartment we're moving into in three weeks) but that's life. She'll take a few months off to relax and eventually rejoin the workforce in a job that will treat her better. That's the plan, anyway.
On my side of things, my new job is into its eleventh week with no real hiccups. I'm learning more and more all the time and slowly getting comfortable taking risks. Since I finished training a month ago, my trainer has simply become my swing-shift relief when he comes in in the mid-afternoon and I go home. The guy had an accident at home one night a few weeks ago and bumped his head on a falling metal bookcase support. He was out of work for nearly a week and it put a lot of pressure on me to run our area along during that time. There's still a lot I don't totally understand or know yet (And that's a process that'll take months or years yet to get good at) so it was a rough period of time. He's getting chummy-chummy with me too, as the other week, he had me visit him at his house to help him move some furniture. Turns out he's a bit of a pack rat and I ended up helping him dispose of a lot of damaged property that was left to the elements in the back yard. That was an interesting day.
My other coworkers in my immediate area are all a bunch of crazy goofballs. They're friendly enough but they sure can be crude, sarcastic, and even a little mean to each other. It's hard to keep up with their dialogues if they suddenly include me in whatever they're talking about. For example, two of them could be having a disagreement with each other about how best to do something, and it'll boil down to straight up insults before they turn to me and call me out to agree with one of them about how stupid the other is. It's funny to a point but I wonder if people's feelings are actually being hurt or if they're all just good friends having a laugh and I just don't know them well enough yet to pick up on it. For the most part, I believe they see me as "an alright guy" so I'm going to keep it that way until I'm truly comfortable. At least I can't say there's a dull or boring moment at my job!
Nicole worked hard and fought through the stress to make it to the one-year mark before turning in her two weeks notice in mid-May. Her last day was last Friday, and it surprised me to hear that the management wasn't making any effort to keep her. They were knee deep in interviewing replacements when Nicole left, but from the sounds of it, they were unsatisfied with who had come in so far. The place is doomed (Or at least in temporary dire straits) and we're gleeful about it.
Nicole has become good friends with her immediate coworkers there, so she'll be able to find out what things happen in the coming weeks. Personally, I'm thrilled that she's free of the crappy place. A lot of people complain about their jobs or just simply have bad jobs that they put up with, but this place in particular was unique in its steadfast self-destruction. It'll suck that we'll both be relying completely on my income moving forward (Especially with the new apartment we're moving into in three weeks) but that's life. She'll take a few months off to relax and eventually rejoin the workforce in a job that will treat her better. That's the plan, anyway.
On my side of things, my new job is into its eleventh week with no real hiccups. I'm learning more and more all the time and slowly getting comfortable taking risks. Since I finished training a month ago, my trainer has simply become my swing-shift relief when he comes in in the mid-afternoon and I go home. The guy had an accident at home one night a few weeks ago and bumped his head on a falling metal bookcase support. He was out of work for nearly a week and it put a lot of pressure on me to run our area along during that time. There's still a lot I don't totally understand or know yet (And that's a process that'll take months or years yet to get good at) so it was a rough period of time. He's getting chummy-chummy with me too, as the other week, he had me visit him at his house to help him move some furniture. Turns out he's a bit of a pack rat and I ended up helping him dispose of a lot of damaged property that was left to the elements in the back yard. That was an interesting day.
My other coworkers in my immediate area are all a bunch of crazy goofballs. They're friendly enough but they sure can be crude, sarcastic, and even a little mean to each other. It's hard to keep up with their dialogues if they suddenly include me in whatever they're talking about. For example, two of them could be having a disagreement with each other about how best to do something, and it'll boil down to straight up insults before they turn to me and call me out to agree with one of them about how stupid the other is. It's funny to a point but I wonder if people's feelings are actually being hurt or if they're all just good friends having a laugh and I just don't know them well enough yet to pick up on it. For the most part, I believe they see me as "an alright guy" so I'm going to keep it that way until I'm truly comfortable. At least I can't say there's a dull or boring moment at my job!