TLDR: Head of dept I want to be hired into has discriminatory tendencies and is actually a massive bitch behind closed doors.
For context: I work in a small hospital. Not a giant, but mostly for rehab purposes.
I work in billing and insurance. But you know, billing is so boring. I dont make enough money to compensate for the work that I do and pick up from others (big surprise) and I was feeling very underwhelmed and bored with my position.
I am very good friends with a lot of the ladies that work in the physical therapy department. They are very short staffed over there and are looking for assistants to aid in physical therapy and other activities to help get people back on their feet. I was always into the idea of joining their team and a few weeks ago I spoke to our hiring manager and she okayed everything for me to start in a few weeks. Naturally, I ordered everything needed to adhere to the dress code and was telling everyone how excited I was. I figured the only thing I needed to do was speak to the woman in charge of physical therapy (let’s call her Carolyn) to make the switch by discussing a start date.
This woman constantly avoided me and gave me the runaround about why it “wouldn’t work”. None of her excuses ever made sense. I talked with her about my availability and preferred time off but told her I would be willing to make changes if I could work with her dept since I dont really have any scheduling conflicts. I told her I could work full time since that was her big excuse as to why it wouldn’t work because she only wants full time employees. She kept making excuse after excuse and running away like a coward whenever I saw her in person.
A few days go by and three different people came in interviewing for the job I want, all part time. All of them were hired right after their interview and all were hired part time. It didn’t fully cross my mind at the time, but after speaking to other people in PT, I realized she was discriminating against me and lying about the help she actually needed, because why else would she hire 3 part time employees on the spot but insist that ME, specifically, HAS to work full time no exceptions? I have never been anything but respectful to this woman, in fact I’ve maybe had two interactions with her in my entire life, she does not know me.
Now, I am mixed race. That said, my genes from my white parent overpowered everything else when I was created and I came out looking like your average run of the mill white woman. I dont know if this woman would be discriminating against me due to my race because of that fact but that’s the only logical reason I could think of considering I’ve been nothing but respectful to her.
After tossing the ideas over in my head and speaking to our hiring manager again (she was very helpful and cleared up everything on the billing departments end) I decided to take it to my boss in a formal meeting (Let’s call my boss Robert. He is also Carolyn’s boss).
Thankfully, Robert is a very nice man who always wants to do right by his employees, especially the ones that keep up well with attendance and put forth a good effort with the company.
I sat down with him and explained everything and how I felt I was being discriminated against, and he decided to call Carolyn to try to straighten things out. He put Carolyn on speaker and didn’t notify her that I was in the room listening to the phone call. OH. MY. GOD. Carolyn morphed into the biggest bitch I’ve ever come into contact with in a workplace environment. I have never been so aghast at how someone would speak to their boss, let alone about another employee. She made up a story about how I’d been calling all around the building bugging people and how she was tired of me asking about the switch and how I should “look in other departments” andsaid I should work in the positions that are less favorable because they’d be better for me (essentially calling me too stupid to work for her). She admitted to hiring other people in part time despite the fact that she told me verbatim that she wanted full time for the position, not part time. She angrily sighed multiple times whenever my name was mentioned and had the bitchiest tone in the world. She also admitted to “not caring about me enough” to know how old I was, since some positions in other departments require employees to be 25+. Robert straight up told her that he was very disappointed with how she was choosing to handle the situation by bringing in people from outside sources and ignoring me despite me being a loyal internal employee expressing great interest in working in the position being offered. Again, I was horrified that anyone would speak to their boss that way in general, let alone about me.
I left the meeting feeling pretty defeated and after talking to some of my co worker friends they were also extremely surprised and horrified by how Carolyn spoke during the meeting.
I reached out to Robert again with screenshots of texts between Carolyn and I where she was giving excuse after excuse and lying about the availability she actually needed and printed everything putting it in a folder. I also expressed how offended and disappointed I was that Carolyn would speak about me that way when she didn’t know I was within earshot. He said he would be speaking to Human Resources and get back to me. I will post an update.
This is not the first time Robert has shown distaste and taken action against a larger employee shitting on the “lesser” departments or people they do not like. Our social worker was recently fired and replaced because she snapped on another girl in billing over a stupid situation and told her to “stay in her lane”. She was fired almost immediately after.
But what Carolyn did through all of this is way worse than just a snide comment about “staying in your lane”. I’m just hoping Robert does the same for Carolyn because according to the other employees here, she’s got a God complex and an attitude the size of Mount Rushmore. I’m just hoping justice gets served here. I’m putting my faith in Robert
I will update you all in the next few days.
(For those who might say quit and find another job, we all know it’s tough to get a job these days let alone one that isn’t fast food or retail. So I’ll be staying here until another opportunity comes up. I’m already applying)