A few months ago, I was the Office Manager of a small medical practice. That final Friday, I was called into a meeting with my boss after having worked the reception desk all day to cover my admin’s vacation. It was just me and one of the medical practitioners there that day. We all had just celebrated my 1st anniversary working at the clinic just a few days prior.
In the final meeting, a conversation I’d had with our “business coach” was brought up. I had discussed with her that my 5-year end goal was to get the clinic running smoothly (there were so many administrative procedural inefficiencies) and eventually drop down to a part-time marketing/bus dev type role. My boss said that she needed the person in the Office Manager role to have passion for being an Office Manager and wanted to be in that role for the long haul. That, if I were to leave after overhauling and fixing the admin system in 5 years, a new Office Manager would just change everything again anyway. She then said “As the business owner, I need to find someone whose passionate for the job now. Do you agree?”
I explained that I was passionate for it—that I wanted our patients to get the care and compassion they deserve and that I loved the staff I had just built. That wasn’t good enough. I was told to hand over my keys and company card, to log my phone out of all of my accounts, and that was it.
I still feel so much shame over this. I cared about that job so much, and 5 years is a considerably long time to want to stay in the same role these days. The way I was let go was the way you would let go of someone for misconduct—I wasn’t allowed a final goodbye with coworkers, I wasn’t given a chance to help transition the next person in, and the only way I was able to hand off tasks I knew would affect the patients was by quickly assigning them on the EHR to my admin before logging off one last time. I was approved for unemployment, but I can’t shake the feeling that the abrupt ending will look bad to future employers. I’m scared to ask those coworkers for a reference because who knows what narrative was spun about my dismissal, seeing as practically no one was in the office when I was dismissed.
I left the flowers and card from my anniversary celebration on my desk but took everything else with me. I’ve been so half-hearted in my job search because I’m legitimately confused about what happened. I miss my admin staff and my favorite patients so much.