Burning Bridges Part I

I had the following e-mail exchange with my boss Thursday and Friday. I was really hesitant to do this to him as he just took over our area at the first of the year. My previous boss, who had first-hand experience with me speaking my mind, had asked me to give the new guy some time to adjust before I started sending my zinger e-mails his way.

Fuck that!!

Names have been changed to first initials only to protect my ass from legal action as there are no innocent parties involved.

I've been corresponding with a co-worker over the weekend who has worked here much longer than I have. He doesn't think I will get fired based on current policy. Damn, damn, and double damn.

Anyway, on to the adventure:

Boss 1/26/2006 5:06:23 PM
R - can you let me know which Anger Management Class you attended? Thanks.

Me 1/26/2006 5:39:11 PM
Actually, I didn't.

Boss 1/27/2006 8:26:21 AM
Is there a reason that you missed the class - there were several offered?

Me 1/27/2006 6:32:05 PM

I did not attend anger management because I chose not to.

The reason is simple: I've grown tired of the constant insults to my intelligence and integrity from people who provably lack both.

Let's review the year, shall we?

- On-call pay - eliminated.

- Overtime pay - eliminated.

- Work-from-home - eliminated (I only accepted this job on the premise that I would be working from home at least one day a week).

- Flex time - eliminated.

- Our area renamed to Non-Clinical Applications (or as R insists on spelling it in the IS newsletter, "non-clinical applications") just to make sure we understand where we fall in the greater scheme of things.

- Our ability to accomplish anything was seriously hampered by a civil war between our "leaders", who collectively have to be the most immature people I have ever had to deal with. That says a lot when you consider I routinely work with high school kids.

- Indiscriminate dumping of applications on members of our group without [my previous manager's] knowledge. My experience was typical: someone from another group marches into my cube, drops a pile of crap on my desk, announces, "you will take this over," and walks away.

- Our ability to accomplish anything was further hampered by management insisting we record our time in five different places in half-hour increments, with one of the primary tools not having enough licenses.

(I could go on for pages, but it's 6:30pm on Friday which means this is on my time.)

And just to start the new year off right, I find out that "ass-kissing" now counts as 40% of our evaluation, while technical skills and the ability to actually do useful work were both pushed down to 20% each.

Here is an e-mail I sent to [my previous manager] and several others in our group a few months back:

[Editor's note: my response is on top with the original message following in italics.]

Desktops and Servers - critical to the continuing function of the medical center

Non-Clinical Applications (or, as R had it in the newsletter, non-clinical applications) - bunch of slackers that are capable of absorbing an infinite amount of work from critical parts of IS like Desktops and Servers because we don't really do anything anyway

Got it. Thanks for the clarification, K. It's always good to know where one stands in an organization.

>>> K 9/21/2005 4:45:00 PM >>>
You will remember that R announced several weeks ago that K and A were shifting some responsibilities; I have another shift to announce today. We've decided to move the support of GroupWise from Desktops and Servers to Non-Clinical Applications. M will be taking this responsibility over from S.

This year, even more than in the recent past, Servers and Desktops is a central resource, a critical resource, in almost all of our opportunities. These opportunities include RadNet, Barcode Meds Admin, the Cerner upgrade, PowerChart Office, quick signon, merging networks with [two other hospitals brought into the medical system] and many more. This change in support responsibilities will help to free up more resources where we most currently need them.

This impression was confirmed by demands from the IS management team that every one of us slackers in non-clinical applications justify our existence to a group of people that are clueless as to what it is we do here. Not once. Not twice. Three times, BossMan. That's not a hint; that an outright announcement that what I do here is considered unimportant.

And so I have drawn a line in the sand. You may argue that this is a stupid thing to quibble over, but it had to be something. At this point, I actually hope I get fired. The work environment in IS has steadily declined over the last couple years to the point that I could care less if I ever see the inside of [my place of employ] again.

Hope that clears things up.