Quit for Good Cause- Verbal Harrassment

by V.

(NJ)

I live in New Jersey and working in a hospital working for the FInance Dept. I was there for 2.5 yrs and worked my self up to the senior lead of my department. The hospital then decided to eliminate my entire department and gave us 60 days to find work within the hospital or we would be laid off.

I fervently looked for work within the hospital and was hired as a Medical Secretary for this particular outpatient department.

I worked with little supervision because my boss worked in a different building and would stop by from time to time. His clinical background does not allow him the knowledge to grasp the in’s and out’s of the particular specialty I was working in. And he admits to it all the time and states that this department was given to him to lead without a choice from hospital administration.

Point being is he is unaware of the time and work needed to efficiently run this office. So I run an office of 4 clinical practitioners whom treat patient’s and I am the only one answering the numerous call’s that come in from patient’s, doctor’s office’s, state department’s, and unit’s within the hospital.

I coordinate all schedules and work with department;s within the hospital if certain procedures need to be collaboratively done with a physician and so forth. I handle the faxing, charting and filing of all report’s, as well as the registration process. I am a 1 woman office.

All the while my boss has made comment’s to coworker’s of mine that he did not feel that I did enough and did not see the need for 2 secretaries (the other one is his secretary.) At 1 point he held a meeting with a practitioner and that practitioner pulled me and the other secretary whom has since then left and stated in a discrete manner that “the boss” is questioning the amount of work we have and that she believes it’s a good idea if we start jotting things down.

I communicated with the other secretary and we decided to do a productivity for a week detailing our responsibilities and at the end of that week we sent it to him. He then questioned it and told me, “This means nothing to me and the time spent doing this, could have been spent on something else.” He then denied ever telling the other practitioner his concerns.

At one point during my employment he came into my office to speak about the amount of work I have and that he does not believe it to be enough and then told me that he will “see how this goes and then my job would be reevaluated.” I immediately called my HR recruiter and told her of the situation and she stated, “well you can look at the job posting but it’s tough I suggest you sit tight.”

We had a press agecy survey done on the hospital and our department received very low satisfaction scores. The direction of the survey concentrated on the clinical treatment rather the clerical content, however he began a campaign telling my department as well as other departments that don’t pertain to us of the situation and how if there is no improvement that individual-me, would be removed. Yet to that point he had not received any patient or coworker complaint’s about me.

We held biweekly staff meetings that consisted of an attack against me for minor things such as..- since the other secretary left I had to do his scheduling which I am not used to. I put something on his schedule that had nothing going on before it, but then after that was on the schedule he put something on there before it that would then conflict with I had put on there. He then made it a huge deal, as to how I could put something on the schedule if you see that there is something on there…etc Coworker’s would say to me that they were really coming at you in that meeting. It was embarrassing and condescending at how I was verbally attacked in every meeting.

I work with a social worker whom would be in my office many time’s discussing scheduling for her patients. My boss would walk by and often see her in my office…he then pulled her aside one day and stated to her, “What could a social worker have so much to talk to a secretary about?”

The secretary that I mentioned previously that has since left because of the chaos- we would frequently talk and she would help me with various things. We worked in sync to efficiently run his department’s. He would walk in and see her on the phone with me many times and then stated to her that he did not want her talking to me anymore. From then whenever he would walk into a room and she was on the phone with me she would hang up.

He made the working relationship with my coworkers and my presence at that job uncomfortable and they felt uncomfortable talking to me.

I have made complaint’s to him about how I felt about his treatment and what he did one day in front of this secretary and a clinical practitioner was condescendingly say, “You know there’s people in Italy that hire people that would cry at funeral’s and that I would be perfect for that.”

One day I had terrible gastritis and I made attempts to locate him in his office and called his cell phone and could not get a hold of him and did not want to leave the building without speaking to him for fear that he would then lash out at me for leaving without verbally speaking with someone. I then called my supervisor and advised her of the situation and she advised me she would speak to my boss, and I then left. He then claimed in a documentation of counseling to Human Resources that I left the building without speaking to anyone.

In that documentation of counseling he is also claiming that during my move to the building he is now in that I threw out a scheduling book that is vital to one of the department’s I am no longer responsible for and that it was found in the trash. I communicated with the guys that were moving everything and advised them of what needed to be moved, everything else made it except that and I was wrongly accused of it. It’s defamation.

He is also in that documentation of counseling stated that a patient had made a complaint about me and that she was outraged by my rudeness. I am sure that this may have been a patient that I was more than likely short with on the phone- meaning rushing them through- however I was never outright rude to any patient and he has fabricated this to seem larger. And if I was short it is due to the enormous pressure felt and the constant feeling of being under a microscope because he is scrutinizing every move I make. I have been at this department since December 2009 and if I were a cause of constant rudeness and misbehavior the hospital would have receive those complaints directed at me when they call these patient’s regarding their satisfaction with their treatment during their visit. On the contrary, my boss received an email from a patient stating that I have always gone out of my way to help and that I really stand out to him, because he is aware that he is a difficult patient.

This documentation then goes on in emotional terms stating that I am “rude” and “ignore staff presence in a room”….etc Yet, I did not have these problems when I worked in the prior building or in any other job such as the finance department where I worked my way up.

During the move which he instructed me the day of that we were moving and did not give me notice or tell me to what office I was going or what I needed to bring. He just told me to pack and put the older chart’s in boxed because they were going to the attic at that building and the rest were to be filed for easy access at the new building. I then commenced to put the old charts in boxes in the same manner they were up on the shelves. They were in alpha order just not perfect alpha order. My rationale was that these were going to go to storage and if so they needed to be cataloged and then sticker’s needed to be put on them so that they could then be sent for storage and be able to be retrieved at a later time. Since that had not be done I put them in the boxes in not perfect order. My boss then came and begun screaming at “how could a secretary put these charts in boxes like that.” He was literally yelling and being demeaning, condescending. All the offices along that hallway heard him and he did not give me a chance to say a word.

I did not counter his documentation of counseling at the point because I had a job prospect that I was waiting to her back from within the hospital that I was sure I was going to get. At the suggestion of HR, she told me to hold tight until a decision was made. Well, since he did his documentation of counseling I am not allowed to transfer for 6 mos and lost that job.

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