Day 14: I Know Why It is Called "Work"

*** Let me preface this by saying I love my chosen profession. I DO, however, quite dislike my place of employment. ***

I am in a crappy mood as I write this, mostly because I am sick and tired of the same crap from my place of employment. I recently had a partner that began using illegal substances to bolster his body building training, and he put me through a lot. It was a challenege to have him as a subordniate to say the least, and unfortunately right now I do not have a direct supervisor to help me deal with things.

I was contacted by another supervisor and asked to make sure that my partner's evaluation reflected his work attitude. He had had a few confrontations with various supervisors over the last few months (pretty much all females by the way!) One night he kicked in a door at our station after it locked behind him, and I told him to write an incident report on it. He said he would, and never did. So I got written up over the door, and he got nothing. Its just a letter in my file.... but it gets me that he doesnt get in trouble for not obeying an order, only I get in trouble because I didnt make sure it was done. (Which I completely accept responsibility for... however.... we ran 8 calls in 10 hours and I was exhausted, had reports to do, and after asking him 3 times to make sure it was done I just kind of forgot about it.)

So today, I get my evaluation and it is horrible! There lots of nice things to say about me as a paramedic.... never had any QA issues, never had any patient complaits... does the job well, always informs my supervisor of things... but apparantly my "failure to control my subordinate" (hello?! he was doing ILLEGAL DRUGS!) leaves me in the bad supervisor category. The other place they docked me a lot of points... my attendance- BECAUSE I just had to use 48 hours of sick leave for my broken finger that occurred ON DUTY! Shouldnt that be illegal? It was bad enough that I had to use my own leave tim because of the F%&^ED up way this department handles workers comp injuries... but then to give me a 1 out of 10 for attendance for that? For the rest of the year I only had used 60 hours of sick leave and one was for my father in law having open heart surgery and the rest I had notes for all of them. 60 hours in a year of 24 hour shifts is very low on the sick leave scale compared to my coworkers. At least I dont call in sick to go hunting or watch a NASCAR race! And there was a note on there that I had to use leave without pay for a sick day, which was an accounting screw up on behalf of the department (they docked me 48 hours for the same shift when I broke my finger.) The department screwed up... not me.... and they had to credit me back the hours. But now the stupid person doing my evaluation (who isnt even my direct supervisor by the way!) gives me that on an evaluation.

I am so sick over this... I am so tired over this... I honestly feel like I was set up. I was contacted by two chiefs when it came time for my ex partner's evaluation and they spoke with me regarding things that had happened with him, then used that as ammunition against me after they got me to say what they wanted on his evaluation. The kicker to this whole thing.... My former partner's evaluation was better than mine! He was the one who did all the stuff in the first place!

I guess I need to just stop caring, and perhaps this is just one more sign that this is not what I am meant to be doing. I hate everything about this place.... the way it is run, the way they treat the employees... and I was sadly, sadly mistaken when I thought that this career was about helping people.

I think I am going to file a grievance over the evaluation, especially because the sick leave hours counted against me was workers comp and the leave without pay was an accounting screwup that got fixed.... I just am so exhausted I dont even know if it is worth the fight.

The evaluation doesnt count for anything... we arent getting a raise this year (usually 1/2 of our 6% raise is merit based) so its really a joke. But next year, when I have a new supervisor finally, I dont want them to pull my previous evaluations and see a bad one. (My other ones have all been above average and excellent!)

I think it bothers me the most becasue of all the things I do, I do a great job. They are just counting me down because I had issues with a freaking Roidhead.

Sorry for the venting. Needed to get it out there.