I'm sharing a letter that I sent to a lawyer's office today and it also explains perfectly the situation. I need to know if I'm in the wrong or is it them?
I'm seeking your advice on whether I was wrongfully terminated. I never signed a contract to work for any length of time. I was promoted from medical records to receptionist in January. I was never called into the main office to have any discussions on my performance. I was almost never late, took overtime when I could, because the office is exceedingly short staffed, I was told many times by the head administrator that I was amazing. Even when we parted she said that I went above and beyond and was so willing to help.
However, today, 3/22/2022, I was called into the administrator's office, told that I was being let go, and when I asked why, she said that she wasn't trying to nitpick and she doesn't want to end on bad terms but that I wasn't doing satisfactory work. I asked her to elaborate. She said that because I didn't always request covid masks for the front desk (I forgot twice), I was asked not to leave a project that I was doing on my OWN desk (which I didn't. I put it in a cubby under my desk. The project was organizing papers that had patient room checks, nothing incriminating with social security numbers or diagnoses), and she said she wasn't receiving messages even though I wrote the messages for her on carbon paper and put the messages in her mailbox.
Now, they have been short staffed since I started there and before, no one was working medical records until I was hired for it and then when they promoted me to reception, they still wanted me to gather records for patients and their families. When I said it was a lot to handle and asked if the other receptionists could help out, I sent it in a text, and she never answered. When I asked the head of the nursing department if someone could help with the paperwork organization between answering phones and checking in visitors, she said no, because she didn't know the new afternoon receptionist well enough to “handle her papers”.
I have reason to believe that they fired me for speaking up and for reporting them to the Department of Labor. They wanted me to do two jobs and they claimed that they weren't doing that but really, they were. The medical records department collects the paperwork they were asking only me to file and they gather the requests for patient's records, which I was doing for two residents, at the time. When I asked the head administrator, R F, if she was hiring for medical records because someone I know needed a job, she said no. When I asked her what we were going to do with all the records requests that kept piling up, she said she would have to figure it out.
We had patients answering the phone on the fifth floor because the CNAs and nurses were all overloaded and couldn't handle the patients. When I told Mrs. F that patient's family members were yelling at me in concern and demanding to know why patients were answering the phones on the unit instead of the nurses, she laughed like it was no big deal. We even lost a patient in February who died on his room floor and was left there for the duration of a shift, and nobody assisted him.
I was literally asked to do overtime on Sunday, agreed to it, and worked a 16 hour shift from 10:30 PM on the 20th to 2:30 PM on the 21st. I was asked to train someone for reception and trained her yesterday and today. I was told that she would be working the weekends because they didn't have a regular weekend receptionist. If I wasn't doing satisfactory work, then why ask me to work on my days off, why ask me to train someone, why give me several tasks if you think I can't multitask? They also never gave me a formal warning. Instead, Mrs. F said that she didn't say anything because she didn't want to nitpick. But if I'm not doing work to your standards, how am I to know if we don't have a verbal discussion or warning? No one told me my job was in danger.
I believe that they let me go for either petty, personal reasons because there were some people who didn't like me or they got reprimanded from the Department of Labor because I was a whistle blower and fired me in retaliation. I'm not perfect but I was professional and polite. They won't tell me that I was let go for retaliation or because someone higher up didn't like me because they know that's illegal but those are the only valid reasons. Am I the perfect person who never does wrong? No, but I did what I was supposed to do and then some.
What are your thoughts? I want to get unemployment until I find something else but I have the feeling that they'd bar me from that. I have worked there for 4 months. Thank you for reading this.