B!TC# IT OUT!

[Little_Orca]

I am at a loss for words in regards to something happening at my work. It has me so worked up, that I cannot think straight. I need a night to calm down before I bitch. It's all so unfair and so very un-like my work's philosophy.

[Little_Orca]

Can't sleep... here I go...

A while back, I wrote about how hostile my work environment is getting (here).

Things are so messed up at my work right now in relation to that and another issue that I am not even sure where to begin, how to properly process this, how to vent it, or anything. I am sitting at a computer, furiously typing away as my body shakes and my vision blurs while feeling dizzy. I feel so many emotions (anger, disappointment, disbelief, betrayal, sadness.)

As you know from the other post and my mentioning of it before, I work in mental health. Crisis unit, sub acute, yadda yadda. What makes my work so "awesome" is the philosophy of the facility. We believe that everyone who comes to us is still a person. It does not matter how broken you are when you come to us, if you are off medications because you were too poor to afford them or you just hated taking them or if you are homeless or if you are addicted to drugs or whatever. You are still a person. You are dealing with hard issues. We know, we understand, and we will help you. That said, we wont do things -for- you, but we will lead you to the water, it is up to you to drink.

We have AMAZING patience with the people we work with. We get yelled at, threatened, (rarely) hit, and we are still there to help. We have rules set up to follow to keep the place as safe as we can, and so far we have been fortunate to never have had to use the restraint room (where uncontrollable people would be strapped to a board; required by law to have for our facility) in the 4 years we've been running.

The facility hires people known as Peer Supports. A Peer Support is someone who has mental health issues themselves or has a family member who has mental health issues. Either way, they have first hand experience with mental illness, helping someone with mental illness, or at the very least a deeper (personal) understanding of how it can effect the person and their family. Peer Supports of all types are welcome to work at the company and we have some whose diagnosis ranges from depression to schizophrenia to borderline personality disorder and so on. We don't let the diagnosis define them as a person; it's part of them not all of them.

I am a Peer Support; probably the only one at the facility with an MA, but I am still one of them. At the facility, there is supposed to be no "us or them" culture, we are one... But I can see clearly that that isn't true. A lot of others consider Peer Supports valuable tools, but do not take what they think or say seriously; my degree I think is the only thing that breaks that barrier in my favor.

Wednesday night, another Peer Support had an issue. "Rita" began to act strangely right from the start. We do not know each other diagnosis (unless we tell one another, but we're not forced to, of course), but she was acting very paranoid and performing behaviors and stating things that were out of the ordinary. It triggered a few people and got to the point where the clinical director had to leave a meeting with the county in order to get Rita to calm down and agree to leave the facility on her own. She appeared (to me) to be in the middle of a psychotic episode, and I hoped that she got her medications (or however she copes in order to function 'normally') and that the next time I saw her she'd be better.

I learned tonight she may not be coming back. A report was filed on the event as a formality. The person filing it had no ill will towards Rita, it was just procedure. The clinical director was going to try to cover it up or down play the events (meanwhile, one coworker was in tears and trembling that night.) HR had to be notified of this, then Rita was looked into further and she was apparently let go. I was never a big fan of Rita, our personalities did not mesh, but she was a good worker for what she did and still part of our team. Now, she is just gone.

This bothers me. This bothers me a lot, and it's not because I liked Rita. It bothers me because Rita had one incident in a mental health profession, THE PROFESSION THAT SHOULD BE THE MOST UNDERSTANDING, and they let her go (granted I don't know all the details [did she refuse her meds? did she make threats? I don't know]). It bothers me because someone else who has made mistake after mistake after mistake is out on administrative leave and Rita is gone.

The mistake maker? Glenn. As you will recall from the other post I mentioned at the start of this one, Glen is the man who has made work very difficult. He is an older man, almost six foot (if not over,) and very imposing. He has a like-able charm to him that gets people to be super friendly with him right off the bat, but as I am more introverted and inspect people before I am chummy with them, we never hit it off which caused him to assume I hated him as a result and he cornered me at work and talked to me about it... basically "We don't have to like each other, but we need to be professional." I'd never once crossed him, just simply was not part of the EVERYONE LOVES GLENN boat, and I think that irked him.

He has made several mistakes in the facility that include (but not limited to): taking excessively longer breaks than permitted, leaving work early because he had a headache (preventing someone who was throwing up violently from being able to go home because then I'd be working the shift alone), spending his time in the nurses' office to avoid work, missing safety checks, looking at pornography on the computers, looking at bikini girls after the pornography reprimand, allowing contraband into the facility, passing out dangerous chemicals to residents, talking about his sex life at work with the nurses (bringing it up only to the 'attractive' nurses,) and bringing a knife (yes, a KNIFE) to work. What finally got him put on administrative leave was he walked into the nurse's office, and took off his shirt, THEN asked her to look at a rash on his underarm. The nurse reported him, and now she is facing flack for it and being told by a coworker who is a Glenn supporter "if you did not want to look at bodies, you should not have been a nurse" (patriarchy at it's finest, people.)

And he is on administrative leave. Why? I don't know. My supervisor has a stack of papers a mile high filled with complaints about Glenn and his lack of work. She has met with her boss (the clinical director[CD]) about it numerous times and the CD is not doing anything about it. Instead, the CD is telling my supervisor that it's her fault. She is not a good enough boss to get Glenn to do what he needs to do and she is now questioning her ability. The CD also said that the three of us (my boss, "Jack," and I) should be training Glenn. We've talked to him. We've had meetings, and he has been working at the facility for 2 YEARS. He should know the ropes by now and not be making mistakes of this level anymore. To make it worse, the CD has implied that if Glenn does not do his job properly, Jack or I should just step in and do it automatically. Considering Jack and I already do that and we have been asking for support for so long, we are both furious at this 'solution.'

And he gets administrative leave... While Rita is fired. Rita should be on leave getting help, then have a job to come back to when she is better. But no, Glenn with a list of offenses a mile long is the one with a job waiting for him because "We just don't fire people here." -CD.

Bull fucking shit.

I am so angry I am exhausted, and I don't even want to go to work tomorrow... technically later today...

I wish I had my design job now.

[SeaGlass Siren]

Ugh. White male privilege at its finest.... I'm so sorry you had to go through all that little orca. Just reading that made me so upset... I hope Rita is ok.

[Celaeno]

#MermaidLivesMatter? REALLY?

UGH. Well, I'm unfollowing this Instagram account, even though she does gorgeous hair color. Hair color discrimination in the workplace sucks, but it is in NO WAY the same thing as racism and murer. This is just gross. Talk about unchecked privilege. Public pool bitches for sure.

[Sabrina the Selkie]

Wow. That's really, really gross.

[Dancing Fish]

OMG Little_Orca, that's just awful. I have a sick stomach after reading that. I'm so sorry and I respect you so much for the kind of work you do. *hugs*

Celaeno-- glad you said something, and I hope she'll change her tune when she really gives it some thought. (Yes I am an eternal optimist...)

[Mermaid Danielle]

Stressful week overall. I just want to create; paint/sew/something, but the house and my room are absolute messes right now since the basement flooded. My priorities should be elsewhere.

Hope some of you are having a better week. I'm going to try an circumvent the creative mentality by editing pictures on DeviantArt. For a little. Then get back to work. Maybe. Probably. *sigh*

1st world problems, lol. I am grateful for the blessing that saved so many of our sentimental items, for the ability to create even though I shouldn't right now, the ability to complain (lol) with people that choose to listen, and a family strong enough to get through something so stressful.

Best wishes.

[Mermaid Momo]

She deleted it and I would has left it alone but her description underneath was really petty and I could tell she didn't really learn anything


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[SeaGlass Siren]

Ah... More Unchecked white privledge...

[Little_Orca]

*Sigh*

This... Just this... I tried to ignore it, but as you can see I couldn't.



I added on to the last bit "... in other ways is not helping the ocean." as I realized I had forgotten to finish my sentence. Bleh, it's 3 am.

[Sabrina the Selkie]

And I mean, people's silicone tails DO mold, so I would assume that they break down eventually.

[Mermaid Clara]

Ugh I'm such a hopeless romantic! I'm crying because I just watched the proposal/ engagement video for my favorite YouTube daily vloggers, CTFxC aka Charles Trippy. I've been watching his vlogs 5 years. They seem so happy together and I'm so happy for them. I feel like such a stereotypical girl who cries at everything


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[Sabrina the Selkie]

Gods. Me at Romeo and Juliet every single time.

[Mermaid Mystery]

if I had a dollar for every time my dad said I look like a prostitute today…
lmao it's just a crop top and leggings. yeah I'm wearing platform shoes, but they're jelly shoes. I don't think I've ever seen a sex worker in jelly shoes.

[Sabrina the Selkie]

Wow.

[PearlieMae]

if I had a dollar for every time my dad said I look like a prostitute today…
lmao it's just a crop top and leggings. yeah I'm wearing platform shoes, but they're jelly shoes. I don't think I've ever seen a sex worker in jelly shoes.

Ask him how he's such an expert on what prostitutes look like.

[Mermaid Mystery]

SHIIIIIT lmao if he says it again i will

[PearlieMae]

Just trying to do my part!

PS: if you have video on your phone, his reaction will be YouTube gold!

[Little_Orca]

The whole silicone tails thing being horrible is still going on on the thread of a person that I'm friends with on Facebook. It's starting to get to me and it has me wondering if I should be volunteering my time with somebody who sees something I have worked very hard to get and have researched how to take care of as something that now makes (soon to be) me and other silicone tail owners enemies of the ocean. I don't want to limit or even end my opportunities for volunteering, I have even agreed to continue to make my own fabric tails so I can participate (because their rules are no silicone tails) but with so much hatred kind of spilling out and makes me wonder how long I could just smile and try to ignore it without saying something and then being tossed out anyways.

[PearlieMae]

Where is this? If you read the silicone MSDS, you find that silicone breaks down to carbon. Period.

And I have NEVER heard of any mermaid throwing away a silicone tail! Retire, yes, but trash? NEVER!