Hi y’all, I hope this is the right sub for this. Sorry this is a long one, I’ll try and sum it up as best I can while still giving appropriate context.
TLDR: Boss “jokingly” shoved my forehead, and then guilts me over text for trying to take a mental health day
Last year (from end of May to beginning of September), I worked at the front desk of a medium sized OBGYN office. When I started there, there were two other women working the front. Sandy (names have been changed) and Judy. There were some pretty obvious red flags that I ignored because I believed it was my dream job. Things like little to no training, poor communication, etc. Later in the summer, I started having more and more responsibility over things that I hadn’t been trained on, like sending over medical records or going through the patient inbox. At this point, Sandy (who had the most experience at the front desk and knew what she was doing) had left, and shortly after this, Judy leaves too. By now it’s September. I have been working there 3 months, and on top of running the front desk completely by myself, I’m now training the medical assistants who have been pulled to help me up front. I’m having panic attacks every morning at this point, and the office manager remains verbally supportive, but is still not helping with training, and I’m regularly being pulled into her office because of inadequate work. We are also in the middle of moving our entire office down the hall and expanding at this point, so there is a lot of construction and loss of internet for many days. This brings me to the specific incident. Our desk has been cut in half in order to get the printer out. The internet has been out for a few days, and when it comes on, there are 70+ voicemails for me to go through. My OM has told me that she wants me to print all of the paperwork for the patients coming in the following week. While doing this, I’m also putting patients on the phone on hold, answering the medical assistants questions about checking a patient in, and about 4 other tasks to keep the place running. OM comes out, sees me assisting one of the medical assistants with a question, and reprimands me for not staying focused. Mind you, this whole place is falling apart as we speak and I’m running around trying to keep everyone happy and on time. I go back to printing. A few hours later she comes back, and when she asks me how far into the week I am and I let her know I’m only on X day, she goes, “you’ve been working for 8 hours and only on X?” I nod, and she “jokingly” puts her palm to my forehead and pushes my head back. She does this in front of the two MAs working up front with me, and when none of us say anything, she goes “you know I did it out of love, right?”. I was mortified. I left work that Friday evening and never returned. When I texted her Sunday to let her know I was overwhelmed and needed a day off, she guilted me (I have these screenshots, but I’m not sure how helpful they would be to actually post or even if I’m allowed to share them here). After I let her know that I would actually be quitting and not returning, she did not respond until a few days later when she told me to bring my key in by the end of the day or she would rekey the whole office and take it out of my final paycheck.
Thank you for reading all of this! Now here’s my question. Do I have any options for recourse at this point? Im finally at the point where I’m processing what happened there and realizing how bad it was. I don’t believe they have an HR department (or at least one that I saw or interacted with), but I did like the doctors that work there, and was thinking of at the very least sending a letter to them, just to make them aware of what transpired with their current office manager. It’s a weird line, I don’t want to label it as assault or battery, I honestly am not sure even if I’m blowing this all out of proportion. Thanks again for reading my novel, and for any advice!