I was written up for the first time today at my plasma job. First let me remind everyone that I really hate my job. It is a soul-less and ethically misaligned place run first and foremost by greed. What reasons I have that keep me there elude me. The one reason that I can understand why I stay is that if I work there 4 days a week, I can pay my bills and have a little extra left over for fun. This I think is the only remaining reason why I stay at that joysucking place while I build my practice.
Here is what happened: Wednesday nights I am the closer. Medical staff must stay until the last needle is pulled from the last donor. We close our doors at 6 pm and I have rarely left after 8:15pm. At seven o'clock this Wednesday, there were 30 people still waiting to be bled which meant that I'd be there until past 9 pm if I were to stay. Over the past year of closing Wednesday nights, I have developed a reasonable expectation of leaving at about 8:15 pm. On this past Wednesday, I realized that this company does not work under reasonable circumstances; if 20 donors were to walk in at 5:55pm, the company policy says that we cannot turn them away. This is unreasonable to me. It is unreasonable because the company while they will force us to work 10 hours a day, they will then enforce longer lunches spread out over the next few days to avoid paying overtime. This chaps my hide.
At 7pm, I informed my boss that as I was only scheduled until 8:30 that evening, and since I had rarely worked past 8:15pm, I had made plans that I could not break at 9pm. He was visibly unhappy with me.
Today he called me into the office to discuss what happened. I apologized to him for not giving him any recourse Wednesday night. I told him that had I known there was a possibility that we were going to be open past 8pm, I would have told him sooner so that he could find coverage. What I am realizing about the company is that there is no reasonable hour we can expect to be out of there. If we agree to close, we agree to stay until the very end. This is not acceptable to me. I will not give any extra to a job that does not treat me with respect nor compensate me adequately for hard work.
My supervisor then handed me a paper documenting what had happened. At the top the box "Final Written Warning" was checked. "What does that mean?" I asked. He said that that means that I cannot ever walk out again (without immediate termination was what he didn't finish saying). I noticed there were two other boxes he could have checked, "First verbal counsel in writing" and "Second verbal counsel in writing". I had rocked it straight to the top! "I feel that is pretty steep and I don't agree with the verbage, Scott, do I get in trouble if I don't sign it?" I asked. He said that if I didn't agree with it, I didn't have to sign it but that I couldn't ever walk out again. "It sounds like I can't ever walk out whether I sign it or not," I said.
Perhaps I have turned the plasma center into a metaphor for the world run by greed and exploiting the poor. There would be no plasma industry if there were no poor people desperate for $20 a pop. The employees are also part of the exploitative machinery. The problem with running a business based on a value system that pushes production without regard to the human effort behind the production is that there will be very little morale and a lot of unhappiness and consequently poor production. Hence, the business plan behind ZLB Plasma Services perfectly described.
It is so absolutely clear to me that I am long overdue to leave that place. And yet mysteriously, I persevere. There must be a reason why I am still there because otherwise I wouldn't be.
I can't wait to find out what it is.
Maybe the reason you are there is so that you can learn how to quit soul sucking jobs.
Sorry your employer is so douchbaggish Dr. Lee. You deserve a better boss.
Posted by: kate | December 02, 2006 at 01:46 PM