Working the weekend

I heard from my conscience this morning that I hadn't blogged in a awhile and wasn't doing a very good job of keeping up to date lately - so here I am!

This was a busy week, at least it felt like it. In retrospect, maybe it wasn't as busy as it was an emotionally draining week.

I had my individual session with my therapist on Monday, she helped me come to some interesting conclusions. I keep most of those in my private blog, but suffice it to say that I think I may have figured out some very elemental things that I've been totally misinterpreting. Interesting.

I came home and went to work, only to have a blow up with Slugatha, my not so esteemed co worker. You probably can tell from my previous posts about her, that I don't really care for her work habits, actually I don't care much for her personally, but that usually doesn't affect my work relationships one way or another, especially since I work at home and never have to see them, who cares whether or not they're the kind of person I care to be around? My biggest peeve with this person is that she's a habitual liar. She's always having problems with her VPN or TA (our work platform), or her internet isn't working. She says she'll call the boss with information on a certain day and the next day at quitting time the boss has to track her down for the information and she comes up with lame excuses like, "My cell phone battery was dead and by the time I was done recharging it, you were off work." Which might fly if you couldn't talk while a cell was recharging (okay, give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she can't for some reason), but we have all of our co-workers home numbers and we also have the manager's cell numbers. They're always available - especially when they're expecting to hear from us... Another time (for about the 3rd time in a month) she said her internet wasn't working, so she couldn't work. Well, it just so happens that we have the same internet cable service. I never have trouble mine. I've worked at home off and on for 13 years and only once have I had a problem and when I called they got it taken care of pretty quick. I was a little suspicious, so I called the cable company - no there had been no outage in her area of town the night before, nor had they received a phone call from her address reporting problems. Hmmmm.

On nights when I am "blessed" with her presence, she logs in at 8 or thereabouts (I really don't care if she's a little late or not, no biggie), but then she "disappears" and doesn't actually work for hours. I've talked to my boss about this time and time again - we have a turnaround time on our jobs and I feel that it's a bunch of BS for the only other person who works night to conveniently disappear when supposedly doctors are dictating a lot. (At least that's why my boss told me I couldn't change my hours to be done by 8, docs dictate a lot between 6 and 8). At the most she'll type 6-10 reports a night. If I mention it to our manager, she says they were long reports or whatever. Always has an excuse. It really gets on my nerves. And when she does work she takes the shortest, easiest reports she can find. You'll very rarely find her doing cardiology consults or op reports. She doesn't like to do the outpatient clinic notes either, since they're outpatient I guess she thinks they don't have to be done - so she leaves them for everyone else. One time (when she was talking to me) she told me she couldn't never make enough money working for the national companies to make a living... What a shocker! The national companies pay by production - if you don't work, you don't get paid. She found a very cushy job here - hourly pay with good benefits - why work?

To be fair, I knew all this when I took the job. The person who had my job had quit in disgust after not being able to get these same issues addressed. I've tried to talk to our manager time and time again about everything I mentioned, but for some reason she always manages to find excuses for her. Which all of the other girls have noticed too, when they've had problems with her. I'm not the only one who has issues with this, but I am the one who works with her he majority of the time. My manager told me at my review (where I actually lost points for not being able to get along with this slug!) that I have to be the bigger person and try to get along with her. Okay, whatever... She's the boss. Recently she told me I don't communicate with this person very much, I need to work on that. Okay.

So, on Monday night she skipped right over some cardiology reports and took some surgery consults by a very easy dictator. I had been working on pain clinic notes (which she won't do) during the whole evening, so I e-mailed her and asked her if she could work with me that night since I was doing pain clinic, and go back and take those skipped reports. Holy Bald headed Cats. You would have thought I suggest she sacrifice her firstborn child. She e-mailed the manager that she doesn't have to justify herself to anybody. She only skipped those reports to do the shorter ones first knowing the others would be left for her anyway. (Oh, total BS). She said she does "many, many pain clinic notes", which she might - on the days I'm off. It just went on and on. I lost it. I e-mailed her back and told her I didn't care what she did or when she did it, I was only communicating with her because Tami suggested it, and basically I didn't give a damn what she did.

We got an e-mail back from the lead supervisor that we have to meet next week. At least we don't have to meet together, because at this point I have nothing but contempt for this slacker and I'm so sick and tired of her I'd be happy to quit myself, but unfortunately this year I'm taking care of the insurance, so that's not an option. Ironically, the very next day (what a coincidence) we got an e-mail from the manager saying Slugatha has to cut back to 32 hours a week because of her back problems. She'd only been back to work for a week, after taking 6 weeks off. This is the second time in less than a year she's taken 6 weeks off too. Last time it was for surgery. Supposedly this time it was for injections and physical therapy to try to avoid surgery a second time. I've got a word for her - disability. If you can't do your freaking job, then quit and let the hospital hire somebody who can... or will... whatever the case may be.

Anyway, that was Monday. (Aren't you sorry you asked now?) I was so livid and on such an adrenaline rush, I worked all through the night Monday into Tuesday. Then of course I woke up sick on Tuesday afternoon. I wasn't sure if it was the flu or what, but considering the night before I think it was probably just stress. I love stress. So I took Tuesday off, which only amounted to a couple hours, since I worked 7 hours OT the day before.

Wednesday I worked, with new directions from our manager. If I had a nickel for every time we've been told how to do our job, I could retire. I understand them completely, but guess who has to make her own rules for whatever reason. Anyway, that evening went well enough.

Thursday was my regular day off and I spent the afternoon with Amber. I had printed the pictures and vellum cover pages for Vince's birth announcements, so I played with him while she put them together and got them ready to be mailed. That was such a fun afternoon! I'm starting to call her daughteniece, the roles are blending a bit... She called me Mom Aunt, but I said that sounded like some kind of insect, so we laughed and decided on Mant. lol! She's so much fun to hang around. I suppose this is how Meg feels when she hangs around Mel. We're all pretty lucky to have each other, IMHO.

Thursday night I had my first group therapy meeting. Lindsay thinks it will help to be with other women in the same kind of "situation" and see how we're all dealing and coping. It was great. But I don't know how long I'm going to be able to go. I asked to have my schedule adjusted on Thursdays only and I'm hearing, "for how long?" Who knows? Ten years? two years? Come on, give ME a break for a change... Oh yeah, I'd be gone during the busy hours. Anyway, the group went well, I met some interesting women, it's funny to realize when you see people in public you always think their relationships are just hunky dory, but once they get home, they have just as many issues as you do. It always startles me to realize I'm not the only screwed up person in the world.

Friday was a bad pain day. I had to take some pain medicine before I even got out of bed. I think that's happened once this winter, but it's a pretty rare occurrence. Steve took off work for a bit to drive me to Fremont for the appointment. My doc changed my antidepressant to Cymbalta, which is supposed to help with serotonin levels, etc., and help with pain too. It's prescribed quite a bit for people with fibro since most of us are depressed and in pain. I think part of the problem this week was that I've been weaning down on my Effexor from 300 mg a day to 150, in order to make this switch, so I've been a lot more emotional than usual anyway. Great - can I keep my job using the insanity defense? ROFLMAO!

I worked last night, but very sluggishly, the cold came back with a vengeance since Thursday and I think that's playing a huge part of this flare up. Brother! I wish (for the hundredth time) that I could afford to live in a more temperate climate.

So there, Conscience. My week in a very BIG nutshell! I'm looking forward to using the Cymbalta and hopefully getting the pain and my depression back under control! Oh heck, I'm just waiting for 60-70 degree days and a lot of sunshine!!!

In the meantime, this is my weekend to work, so I better get back at it. I have no intention of working until midnight tonight! If you made it through this entire post without yawning or falling asleep, I'll have to design some kind of award for you. Later.