So basically, I work at the front desk of a hospital in the oncology department. It's bittersweet, but I love my job. I'm also part of our union, though union power is somewhat limited due to us being unable to strike. Before my current manager took over, the front desk always had little seasonal decorations or artistic gifts from patients, and it really helped to brighten up the place both for our coworkers and the patients.
Since our new manager took over, we've been getting stricter rules about what we can have at the front desk. No more seasonal decorations, so we got rid of those. No more personal items, so I got rid of those. I took home some of the patient gifts as well. People actually comment nowadays that it looks kind of sterile and depressing. All I had left near my desk were two small, painted rocks and a bracelet that was designed and made for me by an elderly cancer patient. I even had this clasped around the base of my pencil cup so that it was out of the way. (He was a wonderful artist, and that bracelet was something he specifically told me, “You keep it, that's for YOU.” He loved seeing that I still had it when he would come in for treatment.)
I went on vacation for a week, and I left those sitting to the side of my workspace since they were from current patients and I knew my coworker would be okay with these little keepsake items. However, she got sick and had to stay home for two days, and the only person left to fill in was my manager. So she was at my desk those days.
When I came back to work, I learned that that cancer patient had passed away. I spent a few days looking for the bracelet, expecting it to turn up in a drawer or thinking maybe I had taken it home and just forgotten I'd done so. No dice. The painted rocks were still there, but the bracelet wasn't. I finally asked my manager today if she'd seen it around and she admitted she had thrown it away.
I told her it was from that specific patient and that he also died while I was gone, and she clearly felt terrible. She said she was sorry and would always ask in the future. At first I said it was okay — mistakes happen, and though it was irreplaceable to me, maybe it didn't look valuable.
Two hours later, I'm off work and frankly, I'm not okay. I'm grieving for this wonderful man who I now have nothing tangible to remember him by, and I'm seething mad at having to live in a world where I can't have a single aspect of my life visible at the place where I'm stuck 45 hours a week. I know it makes no sense, but it feels like my manager killed him by throwing out his art.
This is just the last straw on a stack that's been growing for months. Our managers treat us like perfect robots or idiotic toddlers, whatever suits their agenda at the time. Every week we're berated for not being able to do the work of 7 people with only half that many in the office, chastised for imperfections in our work, and if anybody else in the hospital makes a mistake, it's somehow still our fault for not catching it. If a patient sexually harasses us, it's “just a case where we have to be clear about our boundaries.” If we're clear about our boundaries and the patient starts yelling at us, it's our fault for being rude.
All this for less than twenty dollars an hour. I'm sick and tired of being good and nice and perfect at everything just because I have a heart and give a damn about the patients. It's time for us to be clear about where management needs to step up, staff us properly, and let us do our jobs. Our union steward left a few months ago, and you know what? I think I'm going to step up and fill that gap.
TLDR: my manager threw away a gift made and given to me by a dying man, and it has triggered a lot of pent up anger I didn't know I had about how unfairly we've been treated. Now I'm becoming our union steward.