Category: Annoyances

Annoyances

Things that Annoy Me #3

Karen

(This little girl is my inner little girl smirking at the world’s stupidity).

This sort of goes along the same lines as my “don’t interrupt me when I’m focused” pet peeve.

I mentioned I’ve been training at work. This activity is painful for me because I don’t have a lot of patience to begin with but when you train? PATIENCE IS REQUIRED. I’m feeling annoyed, I won’t lie. I’m getting impatient with this girls’ stupid-ish questions and her inability to retain what we talked about minutes before. Then I feel uber guilty because, good grief Karen, cut the girl some slack. She’s new. She doesn’t know what is happening and you’re bombarding her with a ton of information.

She’s one of these people who have to take notes on EVERYTHING. Which, I suppose, is better than never taking notes, but when you take too many notes, and then can’t function without referencing said notes, then it turns into a crutch; an excuse to stop using your brain and putting the puzzle pieces together. The problem with this approach to learning anything new is … what happens if the thing you have to deal with falls outside your carefully crafted notes?

But it’s okay, everyone has to start somewhere and I’m throwing a lot of information at her, it’s normal, right?

Yes and no. A person’s ability to learn also comes from his/her own personality. How receptive is she? How intelligent is she? Does she have the ability to multi-task, think on her feet, problem solve?

Everyone says they can multi-task, but that’s a lie. Not very many people can ACTUALLY multi-task. It takes a special sort of brain to juggle several things at once and still focus enough to get these multi tasks done.

I hate to say it, because I’m not completely convinced it’s a real thing, but I sort of think she has ADD. She is constantly talking about her dogs, shushing her dogs, letting her dogs out, letting her dogs in, she’s hot, she’s cold, she has a headache, she needs to throw another pod on her Keurig …. it goes on and on. And I think she KNOWS she’s like this because I will be talking, she interrupts me to make a comment about the above distractions and then she will reign herself in and say, “I’m sorry, yes, so getting back to A, B, C …”

I just stop and let her regroup her brain cells when she interrupts me. But I would be lying if I didn’t say it didn’t drive me crazy. Training is not a game, it’s generally not fun, it’s draining and after 11 weeks of training, I’m OVER IT. So, my patience threshold is at an all-time low. I’m trying very hard not to take it out on this girl, she’s actually very sweet and it’s hard to be truly annoyed with her … but then, it’s the over-the-top enthusiasm, too.

“Oh my gosh, I’m just soooo excited to be here!” Or, “This is exactly what I’ve been wanting to do!.” Or, “I love this sooo much.” Or, “I can’t believe I’m here right now getting to do this.” Or, “This is the best, I JUST LOVE THIS!.” Or, “This is my dream job!”

Look …

I appreciate your enthusiasm, really. It’s sort of refreshing to talk to someone who WANTS to learn and LIKES to work. You definitely don’t see that often nowadays, but girl, please, can you tamp down your overly-excited Chihuahua behavior about 15 notches because … we’ve crossed over into the weird zone and now it sort of sounds like a Stepford wife that is short circuiting.

I’ve actually had to ask her to take a deep breath, slow down, read before clicking, and I did sort of have to bark at her, (to continue the dog reference), … I feel like I’m trying to corral a 5-year old who drank one too many root beers. It’s exhausting and it’s no longer cute, or flattering, now it’s just annoying. Can we get back to training so we can get you up and running and I can stop talking to you and stop working 10:30-7:00, (because I HATE this shift), and get back to my regularly scheduled working life?

Most importantly -F.O.C.U.S

She has three dogs, and they are very cute, (how do I know? Because she posted a picture of them after they got back from the groomers), and I get that dogs, pets, are some people’s children, I get that. But when you’re constantly having to pull your attention away from work to reprimand them, talk to them, shush them, takec are of them, or, at the end of the business day, interrupt to me to say, “Daddy’s home! Go get daddy!”, I feel like I might say something I will regret, throw my computer against the wall or roll my eyes so hard I might need to seek medical help.

COME ON.

I’m all about having fun, posting funny memes and having a laugh, but when our primary purpose of spending time together is to get some work done, I’m gonna need you to get serious, retain what I’m telling you and focus – we have a job to do.

Annoyances, Work Stuff

Things That Annoy Me #2

Karen

( I seriously can’t stop laughing at this little girl’s expression!!)

“Good morning. Welcome to our team. I expect you to work faster than your peers, update every little detail if older than six months, answer all calls live NO MATTER WHAT and you must have all rooms full so that our doctor is NEVER idle. You have to run everything through me – you are not allowed to think for yourself. I don’t trust you and no one is as smart as I am. You are not allowed to put orders in, even though your peers are allowed to. You can not schedule a patient unless you run it by me, even though your peers are allowed to. And by the way, I need you to be flexible because the way we do things on this team changes DAILY. Which means, the way you did it yesterday? Doesn’t apply to how we do it today. Why are you frowning? Aren’t you happy? I don’t understand why you’re miserable. Why is this job affecting your health? We’re the best team on this floor! We run efficiently and we do everything right! In fact, every team needs to run exactly like us because we’re PERFECT.”

I’m paraphrasing, of course. But this is an example of what our assistant manager thinks and it’s frustrating, unrealistic and insulting to insinuate we don’t know what we’re doing. Can we improve? Of course. But to imply that what we’ve been doing, what we have been doing for YEARS, is not correct, well, let’s just say insinuating this to the entire clinic was enough to nearly cause mutiny.

Here are some signs you’re being micro-managed: (Source)

  1. They avoid delegation. Since micromanagers can’t believe anyone else will do a decent job, the only solution is… to do everything themselves. While they might get the results they want at first, this can’t possibly last. Eventually, they’ll come to discover that there are only 24 hours in a day. Without assigning tasks to others with specialized skills, supervisors will inevitably take on work that they aren’t as qualified to produce. If your boss is a micromanager, they might also think it’s faster to revise your work than to give you feedback on what could be improved.

Oh my gosh, YESSSS. This is EXACTLY what is happening right now.

2. You’re not allowed to make decisions. If even the smallest tasks require sign off from your supervisor, it could be a red flag

3. They complain constantly. The funny thing about mistakes is, if they’re all you look for, they’re all you’ll find. A boss that doesn’t trust their employees is always going to look for evidence that validates their paranoia. And they’re going to find it, even if it’s a typo in a calendar reminder you only sent to yourself. This type of manager can find fault in anything, no matter how inconsequential. While they might tell themselves that they are pushing for excellence, they are only sapping the motivation of their staff.

Oh my gosh, YESSSS.

4. They won’t pass on their skills or knowledge. It’s inspiring to work for a boss that you feel you can learn from. Supervisors can act as role models for junior employees who are starting their careers. For a fresh new employee, finding out that your boss has little interest in mentoring you can be a crushing disappointment. To these micromanagers, knowledge is currency. If they share that knowledge, they’re depleting their own value.

5. Feedback falls on deaf ears. While a normal boss-to-employee relationship should have feedback flow in both directions, a micromanager is more interested in a one-way conversation. Because they’ve put themselves under enormous pressure, they are more irritable and explosive when faced with criticism. They might respond to your critique with some variation of, “Well, that’s just how things work here.” Micromanagers aren’t interested in what they can do to improve–they only look for the weakness in others.

These issues are EXACTLY what we’re dealing with at work right now.

As with any job, you have your ups and downs, your hills and valleys. There are times things are going great and there are times things are definitely NOT great. I’ve been with my current employer for almost ten years – it will be ten years this coming September – and I can count on one hand the number of ups we’ve had. And by this I mean, everything is going great, we’re fully staffed, we’re all getting along, etc. On. One. Hand. All other times, there is some drama, people are quitting, a process is not working, or management is micro-managing us. In fact, I feel like we’re micro-managed, a lot.

I get why this happens. Medical assistants work under the doctor’s license – everything we do is on behalf of our doctor so any mistakes we make the doctor could potentially be responsible. It’s a big deal and shouldn’t be taken lightly. However, when you work for a management team that wants everything run through them, you can’t do anything without running it by them first, it’s suffocating.

I read somewhere that micro-managing is the number one reason why people leave their jobs. When a person is not given an opportunity to prove his/her worth, to live up to his/her potential, it’s suffocating. Our clinic right now, is definitely at an all-time low. People are dropping like flies and we all know what the problem is, but no one is willing to do anything about it. It’s like we’re all on the Titanic and we’ve hit an iceberg – now the question is – do we find a way to save ourselves or do we just sit back and wait for it to sink?

I’d like to figure out a way to save us, thank you very much.

It’s funny. I never really wanted a career in medical, I just sort of fell into it. But now that I’m here, (and I really do like the work I do and I feel like I’m good at my job), I just can’t sit back and watch our ship sink.

I need a plan. I need to convey my concerns, along with examples AND potential solutions and present them to my director. He’s the head honcho. The big cheese. The man with a plan. (I hope). I had a long talk with my nurse today about these problems and how to approach them and she gave me some really good advice. Now I just need to compile these thoughts into a nice, neat outline and present it to my director in my best “professional” voice.

Enough with the micro-managing. It’s time to take a stand and get off this hamster wheel. It’s insanity to continue to do the same things over and over again and expect a different outcome. We all agree there is a problem, now we need to get together and come up with a better plan, try different solutions. One is bound to stick, right?

Will they listen to me? Who knows. But if this ship sinks, at least I will know that I did all I could do on my end.

Don’t micro-manage me, it brings out my aggressive side. And let me tell ya, folks, it ain’t pretty.

Annoyances

Things That Annoy Me #1

Karen

I promise you, I’m not that easily triggered. Sure. I have things that annoy me, but I do what every one else does – I deal with it.

However, when I was looking for blog posts ideas, (by the way, here is a really good list of ideas if you’re struggling), and saw pet peeves was on the list and then Googled pet peeves – wow. There are a lot of things that annoy people.

Not all of these things truly annoy me, but I thought it would be fun to tackle them, one at a time.

(Also, can we just take a moment to appreciate this little girl’s face? Ha!)

Let’s break them down, beginning with the first one on the list – Talking during a movie.

I took this one step further and expanded it to include, “interrupting me when I’m trying to focus on something.”

Yes. I get super annoyed when people start talking during a movie. The whole purpose of watching a movie is to watch the movie – you can talk later. Or if you can’t, then leave the theater, or the room, and continue your conversation away from others. That’s the polite thing to do. But I think a lot of people don’t even think of it as being rude because I believe a lot of younger people have not been taught to think outside themselves.

Kevin and I don’t watch movies anymore. In fact, we don’t watch a lot of TV. Now YouTube is a different monster, but it could be applied here. Please do not interrupt me while I’m focused on … anything. Because I’m in the zone. I’m focused. I’m concentrating. My wheels are turning and my wheels don’t turn very often – so respect the moving wheels! 🙂

I try and do this as well, especially at work. When I see my doctor is staring intently at his computer monitor, that means he’s studying an image of someone’s brain or spine and that is NOT the time to ask him a question. Let the man do his thing. Or. My nurse is in the middle of writing something down, or doing something on the computer and I have to tell her something RIGHT NOW (it’s not really an emergency but in my mind, it is), and I have to tamp down on my very important thing to tell her and say, “Let me know when you’re at a stopping point and I’ll tell you what I have to tell you.”

It’s called courtesy. It’s called respect. It’s called being polite.

Something else that annoys me is when people don’t pay attention to something said in a meeting, or their thoughts wonder during a show and to play catch up they look to me and say, “What did he/she just say? Who is that character? Why is that character doing that?”

*sigh* If you had been paying attention, you wouldn’t have missed it.

Or, when something exciting happens in a movie (back when we watched movies) and I’m all hyped up and I look over to Kevin to comment on the exciting moment or comment on the revelation, (wait a minute, now I’M talking during a movie), only to find him, slack jawed, eyes closed and softly snoring.

Rude. lol

All of this to say, respect your fellow human’s space and if he/she looks like he/she is focused and there is steam coming out of his/her ears, give it a minute before interrupting. I promise, what you have to tell that person can wait.

Unless the house is on fire, then you might want to interrupt in that case.

What say you? How annoyed do you get when someone talks to you while you’re focused?