Termination

When I came back from Bonnaroo in mid-June I was expecting some resistance. My boss had gone from being really cool to being petty very quickly. Though I had asked for the days off my first day on the job and told that it wasn’t a problem, she still had trouble adapting the schedule. She had told me earlier that I would have to find people to cover my shifts. That was impossible. Interaction between staff at the clinic was minimal, largely asking favors and some small-talk at the end of the day when the patients went to sleep. I didn’t know anyone, or their schedules, well enough to ask for assistance. I couldn’t understand why she simply wouldn’t work with the information *she* had to make a good schedule.

I simply left notes on the schedule saying “out of town” and reaffirming the dates. She had already signed off on the days after losing the sheet the first time. Right before I left I notice she had me on the schedule for Monday the next week. I left a little note and drove off. She had buffeted and given me a day off before I needed. I think she was trying to make me leave and come home a day early. Bonnaroo is on a fixed schedule and no $9/hour job was going to keep me from missing out.

I came back. There were no random drug-tests I had been partially expecting. I did my shift and only had a small foul-up at PHP where I was trying to find a patient who had just been reassigned over there. Things change very quickly day-to-day and I was rightfully somewhat disoriented after nearly a week absence.

The next day I came in. I was about fifteen minutes late for my shift. I had driven from Green Cove Springs to Lakeland that morning to earn some extra cash. I left when it was dark out and made it back to my bed for a twenty-minute nap before an eight-hour shift lasting until 11:30pm. I was always a little late, I had a good excuse, and no one had ever brought up my chronic tardiness even in passing. There was a thirty-minute shift transition, so the clinic was always over-staffed in that time period. The time clock was also about ten minutes faster than anyone else’s clock or any other clock in the clinic.

I had been in building for about two minutes before my boss walked up and told me she needed to see me. I knew what was up. She walked me to the Res-5 lounge and Jim was inside. Jim was our human resources officer. I knew I was being fired. I put on a smirk and listened to them as they began, “unfortunately, it’s not working out. We’ll need your name tag and any keys you have.”

As I pulled off my name tag, I asked, “What’s not working out?”

“It’s just not working out.”

I tossed her my name tag and walked off.

I don’t know why they fired me. I broke a lot of rules there, granted, but nothing that wouldn’t have been immediately adjusted upon mention. My training was incomplete to say the least so I had a good excuse for acting on common sense and compassion.

It’s my belief then that my termination wasn’t based on any one event, but several small things. I believe first and foremost was the time I took off, so early in my “career”, to go to Bonnaroo. Bonnaroo is an open-air drug market and some patients knew this. Despite my addendum that I only go for the music, the gossip-circles amongst the patients and staff probably led to that piece of information making its way up the ladder. The FSU quarterback was also on the front-page when I got back after being taken down in the middle of a crowded street proclaiming his divinity.

I believe the circumstances surrounding Seth. He had also given me his phone number before being discharged so that I could check up on him when he got out. He told other patients. A more naïve and younger heroin junkie had asked me, very loud, during lunch whether I had called. I simply put my fingers on my lips and told him that I wasn’t allowed to do that and I would be fired if anyone else found out. Perhaps this was an example of me miscalculating patients understanding of my often too-compromising take on clinic rules and professional distance from the patients. I don’t doubt that others heard this and it perhaps spread.

I was also fully responsible for Clark’s AMA. I researched and found his daughters graduation date with only a request for his silence in return. I don’t know if word got out, but he left to see his daughter graduate.

I also won $100 from corporate for winning an essay contest. I contributed one of these entries – heavily edited, of course – and was contacted back. I attempted to work out something to where I could perhaps edit their newsletter as an alternate job… my way of trying to move up out of a dead-end job. I informed them in my last email that I wasn’t sure how long my employment would last, being that I was being paid “only slightly higher than your average Taco Bell employee.” Perhaps my hint that I had other talents than executing flawed rehabilitation programming was too strong. I never got a response back.

This attempt at upper-mobility also manifested itself in staff meetings where I would talk about problems techs were having and proposing simple fixes. This generated warm responses from fellow techs yet harsh rebuttals from the administration. My training in Student Government to automatically take on leadership was woefully misplaced in that context. Subsequently, I learned my place and kept mum. I hadn’t really spoken more than a few words to my boss since my first suggestions were shot down with, “we’re not going to change things for you.” Perhaps it was my reply that got me into trouble, that this wasn’t for me. “We have a high turnover rate… [these problems are] easy to work around once you get used to things, but are easily correctable for all the new staff that are always coming in.”

I think these things, and perhaps others I’m not even thinking of, were the cause of my untimely termination. It is also interesting to note that the only other recent college grad there was also terminated. Those who unquestionably executed orders from the top kept the jobs; those who saw that there was something wrong with an 80% relapse rate were fired. At least that’s how it looks to me. It’s hard to respect a system whose odds of success are lower than flipping a coin.

It took me a month to find another job. I had two interviews in three weeks for office jobs. Temp agencies weren’t calling me back. I gave up and took a job as a server at a hotel buffet attached to a comedy club. I really don’t know what happens next with employment. It’s a weird, weird time in my life.

I’ve also changed my pen name to Tunico. “To Nick.” This is so that everything I write is dedicated to Nick, my roommate of two years and longest friendship on record… who died July 6, 2005 of self-inflicted asphyxiation. “To Nick,” phonetically.