Back in the early 90’s I was working in health care. I worked a full time position in one facility and had part-time jobs as a “float” at 2 other facilities. As a float, you go to whatever floor the facility needs you on for your shift. I worked all overnight shifts (11pm-7am) with an occasional day or evening shift sprinkled in. I had been doing this already for years. In Rochester, NY working in healthcare facility to facility you get to know a lot of people.
One night I was scheduled at one of the float jobs. When I woke up before the shift my eyes were itchy, red, gooey and irritated. I had slept until the very last moment and did not have much time to get ready. As I drove to the other side of the city, my eyes got worse and worse. I was really concerned. I’d had pink eye before and knew this is what it felt like.
When I arrived to work, I went right to the nursing supervisor’s office. When I walked in, the evening supervisor was there with an agency supervisor covering for the night shift. I told both supervisors that I woke up with a terrible case of pink eye that seemed to be worsening by the moment.
The agency night supervisor took a long look at my eyes and announced that there was no way I had pink eye. She then said that she would fix whatever it was and proceeded to tape a gauze patch over one eye and told me to get up to the 7th floor. I objected and told her that I really know its pink eye, it’s unmistakable and that it would not be in the best interest for the patients or other staff. She told me I was off base, wrong and to go to work. As I was walking away from the supervisor’s office I heard her say to the evening supervisor that she was sure I had purposely irritated my eyes in my car to get out of working. I turned around and walked back into the doorway. I said, “If I did not want to work tonight I would have called in sick from home, not gotten up, dressed in my uniform and drove 30 minutes across the city, that’s for sure.”
When I got home from work the next day after an awful, itchy, messy, painful night, even more exacerbated by the gauze I went to my doctor immediately. Guess what? I had a really bad case of pink eye. My doctor’s office called the facility right away and they had to quarantine the unit I had been on for several days.
A few weeks later I was given another floating shift there. When I showed up to the supervisor’s office for my floor assignment, there she was. She spun around like a misfit Barbie smiling at me. Her bright red lipstick matched her healthcare-senseless shiny red stilettos.
She said grinning evilly, “I’m your new weekend night shift supervisor.”
So, I replied, “Let me get this straight. You are now my supervisor if I continue to work here?”
She said, “That’s right.”
“Then I quit. Good night ladies.” I responded and out I went. I only worked at that location two or three nights every few weeks and was fine letting it go, but felt really badly for the staff that was left behind to be mismanaged and abused by that woman.
Jump ahead a few years. I had a full time position on a new 15 bed locked, experimental, restraint-free unit for brain damaged, violent and sexually aggressive adults. It was the first pilot program of its kind in New York State. It was a wonderful job and I worked with great people.
All was moving along great one night when we heard the familiar beep of someone key-carding into our unit. I heard a clip-clop clicking echo, turned to see red stilettos attached to the Barbie-like, red lipstick wearing grinner. She was being introduced to all the night shift because she was going to be our new part-time supervisor. She walked up to me and grinned.
I said, “Hello again. Welcome to MY facility.” After touring our unit she left. As soon as the doors locked behind her I told my coworkers the whole story from before.
It was only one shift later when I was called into a supervisor friend’s office. He closed the door and told me how grateful he was to have heard my story about that red-shoed woman a few years prior over some beers on a day off. He said that she had immediately written a report against me letting the facility know that we had had conflict in the past because she caught me purposely irritating my eyes to get out of a shift and was a problem at her past job. He encouraged me to tell my side of the story, for documentation purposes right away, and I did.
The next shift she was on I let her know that I had read her report against me and that I documented my side of the event. She let me know that she would be sure myself and my friends would all soon be fired from my unit. That did not sit well with me, and I admit, I felt frightened that she was capable of twisting things and possibly firing my friends. It was within a week that she filed a report against one of my friends saying she had threatened her in an elevator. Then filed another report against me stating that she did not see my do my full rounds because she had supposedly watched through the windows from outside. All the staff wrote counter-reports stating the opposite. Stories of conflicts between her and staff on other floors were piling up. So I started a petition against her. I got signatures from staff of all 3 shifts on all floors of the building. There were 3 full 2 column pages of signatures from not just nursing staff but housekeeping, office staff, day services and more.
The facility called me during the day, as it always is when you are an overnight shift worker, to tell me to gather “my people” to have a meeting about this conflict. The meeting was to be a few days away. I had one more shift with her before then. It started off with a bang. She strutted onto our unit clicking those heels all the way down the hall. Dre, Onieda, Roderick and I all stood up. She stormed up to me pointing her overly long, fake red fingernail into my face and said, “I know what you are doing and you won’t get away with it. I will ruin you.” My girl Dre spoke before I could, and man oh man, Dre was one tough woman. She launched herself over the nurses station, not even bothering to open the gate and went off on little Miss. Red Shoes. Less than an inch from that woman’s frightened quivering nose Dre yelled that no one comes round threatening anyone like that and that she was in the mind to stomp the shit out of her. We restrained Dre dramatically and little Miss Red Shoes frantically ran away down the hall to the swipe pad yelling that this was all she needed now and we were all done for.
On this experimental unit we had a dog. This dog was pet-therapy and a member of the staff to all of us. We enjoyed the break to take him out for his walks and most of us were smokers too, so it was an even more welcomed break. After we had all calmed down, I took the dog out for his walk. I walked around our unit, pondering how to save Dre from being fired. The dog finally decided where he was to do his business so we stopped. I looked up into the star filled sky breathing deeply so worried that I had been the cause now of a worse yet- true report against my dear friend. As I was reaching into my pocket for a rubber glove to pick up the dogs deposit, I realized that the dog had chosen to poo right next to Miss. Red Shoes car. A sign maybe? I will never know. What I do know is that in that moment I grinned just like her and pushed that whole turd under the handle of her driver’s door, warm and fresh.
When I got back on the unit we all laughed until tears ran down our faces. It was so hard for me to even get it out I was laughing so damn hard. She did not come for rounds the rest of the shift. We knew she was no doubt frantically typing a crazy, scathing report against Dre and us all.
When our shift was over we all went outside and instead of getting into each of our own cars, we all piled into Dre’s van to watch. She did not come out for a long time, but eventually she did. We watched and laughed with our hands over our mouths like wild 9 year olds inside that van. There she was, pristine and red. She unlocked the car door and went to open it. She reeled back looking at her hand, then sniffed it. Gut busting laughter was pouring out of the van at that point. She turned and marched back into the facility aggressively.
The next night when we all reported to our shift, my friend supervisor was there to greet us with paperwork in his hand. He had some of the evening shift stay a few moments late so he could talk to all of us. We went into his office. He said, she had been fired. She was fired because that morning after filing awful papers against us and requesting police report against Dre she ran back into the facility screaming that I had put dog poo under the handle of her car and written a threatening note to her. When she could not produce the note, they assumed she had made the whole thing up.
Is that Karma? Was it some kind of divine plan that I ended up having to scoop poo right next to her car? I will never know, but to this day, remembering how hard we were all laughing in that van, trying to be quiet, is by far one of my funniest lifetime memories. For the record, I have been able to live with the truth of my actions with no guilt.