Welcome Back, Meaning! (aka The Parental Retreat)

DAFUQ was I thinking??

You know when you’re struggling with something at your new job and your boss comes at you in full-on, Anal Annie “test mode” and you silently and proudly accept said challenge and conquer it LIKE A BOSS!?

Well, that didn’t happen.

I HATE being tested. That has to be one of the worst ways to get me to do anything. Sad, because it really does mean anything…

There is really no logical reason why I didn’t do what new-boss-lady demanded in not-so-many-words I get off my rump & do. It’s a task that has tested my capacity for patience and just how many fucks I’m willing to give since pretty much week 1.

Maybe if she just came to me directly with her concerns OR, if she would have just sent me the call from the mom she claimed was riding her for a date for her kid’s specialist appointment (I off-and-on hate this with a passion), maybe it would have gotten done. – Who wouldn’t do something at the behest of a concerned parent? There’s more of a connection that way. More so than when your boss is just breathing down your neck all day with her OCD, anal-retentiveness.

I’ve not had great rapport with Anal Annies.  Apparently I’m driven to missions of self-defeat in their honor so, *fantastic* for my upcoming end-of-probation review… Ugh.

Plus that whole “mom’s been riding us” thing feels like fabrication bent on supporting the whole “test” thing. I’m convinced that was 100% BS. But I’m still in the wrong for not just getting it done. Sucks to be me right now.

It’s not like I’m shirking my duties and secretly shredding all the brightly-colored off-grounds forms the pediatricians (2X/week), dentist (2X/week) and nurses (after almost every kids’ appointment) hand me; the way it was before they hired me. Appointments are getting done a hundred percent effectively now. It just so happens I procrastinated (srsly, WTF was I thinking?) for 3 whole days before my sweet, tiny, young boss called me to her office to “talk”.

The talk came with an unspoken warning: Get it done or else lose this job that I really do love… for the most part. Said talk also came with boss-lady twisting some of my words around but that’s another story…

Perhaps if all the “whys” and “wherefores” were made clear to me from Day 1 it would be less of a moral challenge. Maybe it’s all my fault for caring about such things but WHY, in the name of all things filed under the label of “Fit Parent”, do we allow the parents of these kids to feel entitled?  Why is this courtesy the Health Center provides (shuttling their sweet progeny to and from all kinds of medical appointments) seen as obligation?

Maybe I’m not sure how RTCs operate. Maybe there should have been a more in-depth training provided to clarify the mystery of why my department would be seen as neglectful, or if we would really face charges as such, if we don’t immediately hightail it to the nearest specialist recommended by the pediatricians or psychiatrists you, dear “Parent”, signed your kid over to for “routine and/or emergency care” on the day your child was admitted. Also, since when is an EEG or foot molding for podiatric inserts “routine”??

I’m not so sure I’m cut out for the task of being administrative assistant/appointment coordinator/parent liaison for a Nursing Director who hasn’t even been an RN for 10 years.

I am really not cut out to take heavy doses of attitude from a parent just because she feels inferior for denying my polite request for assistance, at the behest of Toddler-Boss, with taking her child to a multi-day test in a hospital, AND then being accused by T.B. of getting an attitude with this parent. Hell no. Why do we let ourselves be verbally abused by parents who feel they have a right to take a vacation from being parents? We don’t have legal custody of these kids – they are simply participants of the program we work for.

My best bet right now is to make peace with the above and come to grips with everything that came out in my meeting with T.B. on Friday. Can’t imagine any of you would have an easy time with someone in a higher position twisting your words around and accusing you of things you didn’t do, but I’ll save that for another blog post.

No worries, though, dear readers – I don’t give up on stuff I love that easily. What brings the love right now is being in a position that lets me feel useful and gives me a chance to make a difference in the lives of special-needs children. Oh, there’s more on that note; trust me – I might currently be allowing anger to box me in and sabotage the FUCK out of all this, but I do have plans for more posts about love and other hug-worthy topics that don’t get me all W-T-EFFed.

Ciao for now; but I’ll be back soon. … IF I don’t get myself fired first.