The Promised Explanation

As promised, today I will tell how I came to resign from my job in health care on the eve of my state's mandatory closure of all non-life sustaining businesses. Which means that no one in the house is working.

I started my job as an activities assistant in a large nursing home just about a year and a half ago. From the start I liked the work and absolutely loved the residents I interacted with, especially those very special ones in the memory care unit (dementia) where I spent most of my time.

Like any job, it had it's ups and downs but I still found it enjoyable. Most of the time. The one consistent irritant was my boss. The woman obviously didn't like me from the start and kept it very thinly veiled. As time went on it only seemed to get worse. By the end of 2019 I was dreading going to work on the days when I was not in the memory care unit because it meant I would be working under her direct supervision. 

I don't have a problem with taking correction if it's warranted, but the woman had evolved into a pattern of ALWAYS assuming the worst of me. She would give me a job to do and then proceed to lecture me as if I had already done it wrong. She also held me to standards she didn't hold other employees to and expected me to always know about any changes in the program or policies when I was often in the memory care unit for a week or more at a time before working anywhere else in the building. She would jump down my throat if I didn't know and made a mistake. She also had a habit of telling me something had to be done one way and then doing a complete reversal on it, not tell me, and then yell at me.

The biggest problem, the one I couldn't ignore, was that she gave me these lectures and jumped all over me in front of everyone...other activity staff, the aides, the residents...but not her supervisors or the residents' family members. At one point the CNA's were betting on how long it would be until she made me quit. 

No one who works there likes her. She was an aide before she was made activities supervisor and she made a lot of enemies there with her attitude. As management she continues to make enemies by telling everyone how to do their job and butting in where she has no business butting in. She is a know-it-all, a bully, and what actually makes me sad (because it gives Christians a black-eye) is that she makes a HUGE deal out of being a Christian and sits in judgement on everyone's behavior while being a ginormous hypocrite. 

By the beginning of January I couldn't take it any more and after talking with my husband, I decided to ask to have my hours reduced to part-time knowing that it would mean I'd only have to work in the memory care unit and rarely, if ever, have to deal with the woman. It was great. I felt so much relief and I liked the part-time hours a lot.

Then the organization that owns the home brought in a new financial person and the poo hit the proverbial fan. It was found that the home was in dire financial circumstances. The CEO was fired and on a Monday morning in February they came in and fired 30 employees in an effort to gain financial relief. Everything has been in chaos since then and a lot more employees chose to quit in the aftermath. As a result, we have been terribly short-staffed and everyone is in foul moods and walking on eggshells.

And then the virus hit. 

No, there are no cases of it in the facility, but short-staffed and on edge already did not make for good conditions as everyone was called on to go to great lengths to ensure we remained virus free. I held on for a while to see how things were going to work out, but last week with the virus situation escalating rapidly it started to become clear that things in the activity department were going to most likely end up with me working back in the other part of the building (under my boss's direct supervision) at least half of the time. There was also the fear that things with the virus would escalate and the staff would end up sequestered in the facility. 

That is the point when I talked to my husband and he said he wanted me to resign. He said it was a part-time job and not worth the grief it was causing me and he didn't want to have me get stuck in the home for an indefinite amount of time. It turned out that the rest of my family weighed in on the matter and they all agreed.

So, this past Friday I worked my shift and at the end I put my badge, my keys, and a letter of resignation in an envelope and slid it under my boss's office door. When I got home I sent her a very nice text explaining that I was resigning and thanked her for the opportunity to work there and said that I had enjoyed it and loved the residents, but that my family needed to be my first priority. She didn't respond until Saturday with a short text telling me I had burned my bridges by not giving 2 weeks notice and could never work there again. I'm pretty sure she was as glad to see me go as I am to never have to deal with her again.

My only regret is the residents. I will miss them so much.