Want another Ehell story? There have been so many Ehell experiences in my life that I could write them all day. I think that I will move on to my experience at the department of health of NY. It was years ago and no one can remember me by now.
I got hired as a data gatherer on the subject of TB among the prison population. When this kind of job is open, it is easy to be one of the few hired – no one wants to do it. I needed a starter job with my newly minted advanced degree and I expected nothing much better.
Just to explain how the state posts jobs, they read something like this: "must have advanced degree or 15 years experience” – is this close to equivalent? An advanced degree is education; 15 years experience is doing some clerical job and getting in close with the decision-makers. They just aren’t equal approaches to a job.
Ok, once again my boss was a former RN, with experience working in prisons. Unless your husband is a corrections officer, no one with any degree (RN, MD, DC, DDS) works directly in a prison unless they are serving a community service responsibility or can’t work anywhere else. Let’s face it – no one wants to work in a prison. No one finds themselves working in one unless they have exhausted any other avenue where a healthcare degree would have a nicer environment.
Lynn was the director over me and three people. She was a horrid person – she had seven kids by a “lousy” ex-husband and never wasted a minute in talking about this. I had come to this job with a lot of enthusiasm and didn’t want to sit around chatting. It took me a while to realize this was the job – listening to Lynn talk about what made her angry. The actual work was so minimal that it could be done in 20 minutes a day. Welcome to civil service!
My immediate supervisor was a very nice woman LPN named Geri. Lynn was a friend of Geri but still Geri was a good supervisor and, when necessary, would defend me against Lynn. Why did I need to be defended? After a while I started to chafe at the bit when we had no work and the only job we had was listening to Lynn. We also were expected to ask her questions and tell about ourselves – two things I loathed to do for what was seven hours a day when we had no work. This job was in a prison – did I fail to mention that it was maximum security?
Soon Geri and I were moved to another location and Lynn realized that all the communication for our office location went through Geri. Lynn soon despised me but knew that Geri was the only one who could decide about my fate. So what could Lynn do? She found a way to fire her friend! It seems that despite 9 months on the job, the position called for an RN and Geri didn’t have the credentials!
Now the fun began. Lynn had her friends at my prison break into my office and hang all the personal files of the inmates from the ceiling with scotch tape. She also would come by weekly with a big grin and “find” errors in my work, even if she had to (in front of me) create them so they would be there! Of course I would be called back to the main office in Albany, NY (66 miles away) where I would be subjected to a disciplinary hearing about all my “problems” on the job. Lynn’s supervisor was a career employee who just wanted promotions and hated being in charge of such an unglamorous project. She also didn’t want to go near my workplace since it was in such a dangerous location and she was a mild, frightened woman.
Lynn, it now was apparent, had complete reign to do what she wanted and how she wanted it. I knew that the goal was that this was to be without me. I was fired after a few miserable months and the few minutes of work were now done by Lynn and her toady employee, giving them both a full 3 hours of work a day.
State employees – you have to appreciate their behavior and their workloads – after all – you pay for them and you pay alot for people like Lynn.
