So Sue Me

Way back in the summer of 2006 I wrote to a doctor who runs a site by the name of www.pathguy.com. This doctor was discussing the risks and benefits of a test that my former employer (the creepy lab) was providing. Naturally and because I am concerned about public health (seriously, a more healthy public means that my risks of catching something from the unwashed are reduced), I wrote to the doctor to contribute my two cents. Actually it was not really my two cents that I was able to contribute, but rather my first hand account of two deaths resulting from the false hope my shyster former employers were selling.

Here is what I wrote originally. I have blocked out the names of the people who employed me, the test they offer, and they lab they run.

To Whom It May Concern:
Where to begin about the negligence of the █ test?
First off I should say I am a former employee of Drs ██ and ██ ██ and I can give a first hand account of the negligent conditions under which the lab operates. I find it shocking that two people are able to operate what is essentially a "mom and pop" medical facility with little or no oversight or accountability. Since having terminated my employment with the ██ I have attempted to contact the FDA and other regulatory agencies regarding what I believe is criminally negligent activity going on at ██.
To respond to your request regarding deaths as a result of a false belief in the work of the ██ I can tell you about two. The first involved a woman in her late twenties who died of advanced lung cancer. According to what I was personally told by the doctor who ordered the test for her (██ was the doctor's name, she is a chiropractor working out of Oregon) the patient believed that the ██ test was so accurate that it would trump the biopsies and other more conventional cancer diagnostic methods.
Firstly this is the kind of loophole that the ██ exploit. Rather than requiring a certified a pathologist, oncologist, or even internist to request their test they will accept the signature of anyone claiming to be a doctor. There is no credentialing involved and there are many instances where the "doctors" ordering AMAS tests are holistic practitioners or even those who own herbal treatment shops. Certainly the ██ are not the only parties at fault in the death of this woman, but their credibility played the primary role in her death and dying belief that she was cancer free because of the ██ test.
The second death I am aware of was of an elderly man who ignored the results of several PSA tests in favor of believing the false negatives he was receiving from ██. I do not have nearly as many details about this instance as it occurred when I first began working for the ██.
These are the only two confirmed deaths I am aware of although during my nearly two years at ██, not a day went by that I did not receive a call from a patient saying that the had been diagnosed with cancer weeks after having received a negative result on their ██ test. More often than not these claims came from patients with early stage breast cancer. For a test that purports to be best in early detection, of all cancers, this does not bode well for patients that wish to put their faith in what is nothing more than quackery.
Thank you for taking the time to read this note. If I can be of any assistance to you in your review of the ██ test, please do not hesitate to contact me. I only ask that you do not use my name if you chose to include this information on your site. Please feel free to indicate that I am former employee however.

Obviously what is written above is anecdotal evidence. I am no scientist. I don’t purport to be a scientist. I have no ambitions to be a scientist. Ever. The only science I will ever need to know I have already learned from Bill Bryson and Radio Lab.

That being said, I was shocked to discover that a rebuke to my letter had been posted on the www.pathguy.com site back in July of last year.

Here is the contents of the rebuke with the same comical black-outs as my own letter.

I am very dismayed regarding the letter that you posted on July 20, 2006 from the person claiming to be a former employee of the █. Not because she was not a former employee – she was. Rather I am dismayed because for all of your efforts at maintaining an objective "scientific" viewpoint, I can't believe that you would jeopardize your own position by publishing something (a) unverifiable – even with the caveat explaining that you have no proof, and (b) completely unscientific. There is no science in her letter; nothing disproving anything the █ research has said. It is merely unsubstantiated inflammatory libel. If it were anything else, there would be proof.
How do I know this? I, too, am a former employee of the █. I worked at █ as a technician for 5 ½ years, and was the senior technician for the last three and a half. The author of the other letter was an office staff member whose primary duties involved assembling and shipping the collection kits – which the █ send out free of charge to the patients.
As a technician, I know a great deal about the test and its mechanics, and was also responsible for a lot of technical support and customer service. I answered some angry phone calls over the years, but I also answered many very, very happy calls, as well.
The author of the previous letter was a disgruntled employee who felt that she was not getting paid what she deserved, and who was not re-hired after leaving █ for a different position, and wanting to come back when the other position didn't work out. She has no science background; she has no firsthand knowledge or understanding of the mechanics of the test or the underlying science upon which it is founded.
I would like to address some of the claims that she makes in her letter, and perhaps some of yours, as well. If you are indeed trying to benefit patients worldwide, you will listen to what I have to say, and if you doubt me, you may do your own research – contact Dr. █ himself.
1 – █ has what I believe is termed "FDA permission to market". I don't know the exact terminology; I do know that the laboratory has regular inspections from both the state laboratory licensing agency and the FDA. They see what is going on, and have never felt anything █ has done is "criminally negligent".
2 – I do not wish to publish details why the woman in her 20's died of lung cancer. There is an obvious explanation to anyone who knows the details, but I do not wish to say anything negative about the doctor publicly – and I criticize you for publishing the doctor's name! You have no evidence to substantiate the claim; it is slander. If you want the details on why she died, contact me. I guarantee you it was not directly because of the █ test.
I should also point out the obvious here. The █ test has a 7% false negative and 5% false positive rate. That means that out of every 100 negatives, 7 are really positive! And for every 100 positive, 5 are really negative! So, for thousands of tests, that number is going to increase from 5 or 7 to 50 or 70 (out of 1000 tests). And yet, the accuracy of the █ is still way higher than any other test available! Why complain of one or two people dying because the █ test was wrong? Is it tragic? Of course. Is it criminal, or bad science? No! How many people die in the hospitals because of the OTHER tests they took that were wrong? Here's an article on the inaccuracy of the PSA – it claims that the PSA misses 82% of prostate cancer in men younger than 60. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=4012 but doctors still rely on it – why? Because they always have! So don't try to claim that a few reported deaths "because of the █ test" is an indicator that it's a "public health risk"!
3 – The author of the other letter claims that, "not a day went by that I did not receive a call from a patient saying that they had been diagnosed with cancer weeks after having received a negative result on their █ test. More often than not these claims came from patients with early stage breast cancer. For a test that purports to be best in early detection, of all cancers, this does not bode well for patients that wish to put their faith in what is nothing more than quackery".
Again, that is patently false. █ keeps meticulous phone records, as is required by the FDA and CLIA. There are relatively few complaints about false negatives – I'd say at most one or two a month. And out of the tens of thousands of tests they run, the number of reported false results is miniscule! The claim that these calls came in on a daily basis is either completely false, or an indication that this former employee did not record her messages or pass them along to the doctors to address. I'm going for the first, since I answered phone calls every single day of my employment with █, and I never heard nearly that many complaints.
I should point out that █ received many phone calls praising the test for its accurate results. Many doctors read the literature thoroughly and call to speak with the Drs. █ if they have any questions, and use the test appropriately. As a result, there are many doctors – and the number is, as a matter of fact, increasingly rapidly – who use the test for their patients with much success.
There is one downside to the test, which is that it relies greatly upon a local laboratory to follow the preparation procedure properly. There are many factors that can induce a false negative – improper storage (not freezing the serum on dry ice immediately) or using a butterfly tubing apparatus are two factors that will decrease the protein levels in the blood, and since (a) antibodies are proteins, and (b) once the blood is out of the body, there are no more proteins being made to replace the ones that are absorbed by the plastic or broken down by the proteases, both of those can cause false negatives.
4 – You raised another important question – why has no big-money corporation taken it on, and why have so many doctors not heard of the test? The answer is mainly that the █ are scientists, not business people. They have been approached by big-money corporations – I personally took several of those messages over the years – but the █ want to run their business the way they want it, not the way someone else wants to run it. Whether that made better financial sense or not is a different question. As for the other question, it takes a long time for tests to become accepted by the mainstream medical community. I read an article years ago – sent in by a patient who loves the █ test – that said that it took 30 years for the PAP smear to become accepted. So give the █ another ten years or so.
I also want to point out that in addition to being a former employee, I am a patient, also. I had a growing tumor excised from my ear, and the █ test confirmed that there was no cancer a week before the biopsy came back. Is that proof that the test works? No more than the stories from people with bad experiences. But it balances them out when you hear both sides.
The long and short of it is that yes, there is much more research that can be done on the █-█ █, and its functions, etc. But that doesn't detract from what has already been done, already been published, and already been shown to work. That independent study that showed a 59% sensitivity and 69% specificity – can you confirm that they followed the preparation procedure properly? When you do that, then you can come back and criticize the █ test. More than that, what stage breast cancer did the women have? How big were the tumors? The study was weakly done and poorly prepared, in my opinion.
**However, time after time, the █ test has been shown to be as sensitive and specific as reported when used properly. There is no reason for anyone to claim that the █test is junk, any more than the PSA, CA125, or any other cancer test currently accepted by the traditional medical world.** Feel free to contact me, and I will be happy to respond to any inquiries that come your way in regards to my letter to you.

There is just so much to say about this letter and I really should write to the doctor who runs www.pathguy.com , but I don’t think that he would be interested in being the mediator in this dispute which is essentially what he would be.

Aww. He called me a disgruntled employee. See? I do indeed know mine self.

Seriously though, the guy who wrote this letter has a serious case of battered wife syndrome. The people that we both used to work for treated him like absolute shit. This guy is Jewish and our ever brilliant bosses had no shortage of anti-Semitic things to say about him. Their one instruction to me when I was tasked with hiring another lab tech (I did a whole lot more than just fold boxes, but I will get to that below) was “no more fucking Jews.” If they had said to someone about hiring my replacement “no more fucking dykes” I would have been even more scathing in my account of their practices than I already was. Under no circumstances would I have gone out of my way to say good things about them or their work.

Which brings me to the tasks that each of was responsible for. In my second week of work I was asked, in no uncertain terms, to head out to the back yard and build a fence. I guess all that box folding showcased my manual dexterity well enough to make my employers think that I was capable of such feats of construction. That is not the only odd request I received in my nearly two years at the creepy lab. I was often asked to clean the bathroom, to clean the basement, to clean the sub-basement, to wax the floor, and to go to the basement of the adjoining house and fetch something from there. (Side note: this basement consisted of a long hallway with padlocked doors off of it. Each door had a sign that read “Do not open under any circumstances.” Also featured in this basement were animal cages caked in filth and perhaps old blood.) The best thing about being asked to do all of those tasks was that when I refused (as any sane person would) the tasks would fall to the guy who wrote the letter. I guess that would make him senior janitor as well. My job was not multi-faceted, I did admin stuff and nothing more, including fence building. The real reason that my job was reduced to just shipping boxes in the above letter, was because my actual primary duty, for which I was compensated with the same amount of money as the letter writer, was making sure that the lab technicians, senior or otherwise, were getting their work done on time. I left because they never were and I was the one who had to deal with the angry phone calls that resulted from their laziness and ineptitude. It is no secret that I left my position for the one job that was worse then the creepy lab, which is how I came to be writing here to begin with. And yes, desperation did lead me to ask (just once and in a non-begging fashion) for my job back.

But anyway, a bit about the letter writer. During his time at the creepy lab as “senior” lab technician (a term that our employer certainly did not give him) he did not have so much as a Bachelors degree, let alone any real first hand knowledge of how a lab should work. How could he? You can’t get a reputable science job WITHOUT a degree. At least I did not misrepresent myself by claiming to have first hand knowledge about something that I clearly do not. The extent of this guy’s job was to unpack boxes, label test tubes, and then fill them with our bosses’ secret serum made of 40 herbs and spices, or what ever the fuck they used, so as to detect cancer. This mixture then went into the incubator and four hours later results were produced. (Sidebar: They called their secret substance “target” and they would not let anyone know what it was made out of except that it required a lot of white vinegar. I was once told that they tried to sue the Target Corporation for use of the name because they had come up with it first…in the form of a secret chemical whose formula they refused to divulge). The inner scientific workings of the test were just as big a mystery to the letter writer as they were to me.

Also, apropos of nothing, the letter writer is an aspiring male model. This was something that my other co-workers and I derived hours of amusement from. Perhaps the reason he had no degree while working at the creepy lab was because he spent all of his money on the Hansom Boy Modeling School. This is just my own personal speculation though.

I really just don’t understand the motivation for the letter writer to have written this letter. I can only hope that in true battered wife fashion, this guy was turned out by our former employer and made to feel guilty for nothing cleaning the toilet well enough, or not polishing the floor to a sheen, shiny enough to be walked on by the likes of people as important as our former employers believed themselves to be. I really suspect that he was turned out because our former employer just couldn’t pay their employees anymore. I know that my “paycheck” (a personal check with no address listed at the top, simply the name of the company) bounced more than once, which is always a good indicator of financial stability. I am sure that this guy did not leaving willingly, because clearly he loved the place.

My real question though is this. If my letter was so very baseless and slanderous, why has my former employer (who sure as shit has been informed about this) sought charges against me? These people are insane. They tried to sue the Target Corporation. They tried to sue Mel Brooks on the basis that he stole the script for Young Frankenstein from their then elementary school aged children! I have seen the evidence of this. I have also seen the evidence of their criminal behavior, which is part of the reason I am not at the moment writing this from a homeless shelter due to the financial ruin of a lost slander suit. That and the fact slander has to be false to be slander. The truth is that the “extensive” phone records that these people keep are “while you were out” message slips, taped to note book paper. It doesn’t matter what method was used because half of these “extensive” records were faked. I know because it was my job before one of the lab’s inspection was to fake 6 years worth of phone records. I was also tasked with faking any test results that happened to have been missing at any time in the previous 15 years. Oh and those personal paychecks? They were drawn from an off shore account in Bermuda because taxes were not part of these people’s scientific vision. Nor was active American citizenship. Or medical licenses (my former employer’s son, who also called himself “doctor” attended medical school but never passed his boards or received a medical license. He now runs (into the ground) several IT companies, but quickly adopts the title of doctor when the family business requires). I guess my definition of criminally negligence is quite different from my former co-workers, because all of these things (plus the things I have not mentioned) are criminal activities that put people in danger.

I just don’t understand why people would even buy that this test will tell them they have cancer to begin with. The largest supporters of this test are a veterinarian who administers this test to horses, a doctor who writes a “health” newsletter about how the government uses scare tactics and propaganda to make people think that cigarettes are unsafe (yes, you read that correctly) and last but not least, a group of doctors who run what they call not a health center but a “longevity institute.” Certainly these are people who I would be willing to take life and death advice from.

If I am wrong or lying about this, go right ahead and sue me bitches!

Mine mine mine mine...

Mine! Actually, not mine. Nothing here in my place of work is mine. I am sitting in an office that is not mine, using a computer that is not mine and dealing with problems that are not mine. Nothing here is mine and I wouldn’t want it if it were mine. Why then do so many people I work with lay personal claims to everything that is in there sight?

I am sure that this phenomenon has something to do with personal work space, and pride in ones job, which are things that I do not care about. Perhaps if I were truly in hell and this was my career, I would say things like give me back my pen and get the fuck out of my office. If I am lucky though those things will never be uttered in this building. If they are I have certainly given up on my life.

Some of the most grievous instances of this kind of mentality are typical of the kind of out and out bitchiness that defines my place of work and co-workers. One of my favorite incidents involved "someone" eating a lettuce at a desk where one of my co-workers usually sits. Of course I was blamed for this insurrection which I presume is because I am the only one who eats vegetables…unless of course they are deep fried or have dip with them. Naturally I denied having done such a thing and will continue to deny every having done such a thing. I am the someong though, I did eat lettuce at the desk, and I did get some on the floor, and no, I did not pick it up. Why? Because the bitch that sits there has about 15 pairs of payless shoes under the desk and I was not going to be groping around down there to pick up some errant lettuce. It is no matter though, because as much as she would like to think so, I did not befoul her desk because that desk is not her's at all.

The lettuce incident is old news though. What is new and fresh is the battle over the emergency waiting room television. A short note about the configuration of my work space. I sit at a desk in the middle of a waiting room and act as I doorman, information booth, and offical channel changer. I was always against the idea of the television as I knew it was not at all going to placate people who don’t want to wait. Lo and behold my assumptions were correct. No one watches the TV, no one cares that it is there to dull the pain of waiting. All they want is for me to put on what they want to watch. In a room of 25 different people, there are 25 different things that they want to watch. I take the middle road though and I put on Fox News which pleases no one.

Patients wanting possession of the television is not the problem though. The problem is in who has control of the remote in the middle of the night, where there are no patients, no doctors, and only one nurse. Angry e-mails have been sent out by the head nurse bemoaning my and my co-worker's failure to turn over the remote at the end of the night. The e-mail says things like “the TV was purchased with my budget and now my nurses are not allowed to have the remote?”

I see three problems here. The first is the budget. The TV was certainly not purchased from this own woman’s personal budget. It was purchased with the hospitals money, and it will remain the property of the hospital. The second problem is “my nurses”. Apparently she owns those as well. That explains how they made it from the nursing home to the treatment room, they were purchased cheaply. The third, and perhaps my glaringly obvious problem is that…..THE IS A FIGHT OVER THE REMOTE! Happening interdepartmentally! Over e-mail! And with meetings!

If there is a lesson here about material possession and ownership I am not sure quite what it is but I will say that if the people I work with want to say the things that surround them here and theirs, they can have them.

Secret Rendezvous

I have a confession to make. For some months now, and I don’t know how it happened, I have been having fairly regular communiqués with the head of a Human Resources department at a major university. This person is a friend of my family who made the unfortunate mistake of making grand overtures about her ability to get me a job, while in the presence of my mother. Really, this sordid HR predicament was thrust upon me! I wasn’t looking for this kind of thing! I never thought I was the kind of person who would have respect for someone working in human resources. Even now, the thought makes me feel kind of dirty.

I must admit though, in the beginning, that the more I thought about landing the kind of job that does not evoke (at least in my mind) eight hours in the dunking chair, the more I wanted to think about such an outlandish and provocative situation. To think, me, in a situation where I did not have to open doors for people, or get vomited on, or have to plug my nose because it smells like the living dead! This is truly the stuff of fantasies and it is ultimately what drew me into the loving application pool of jobs that I am so not qualified for.

For months I have been working with my HR ally, combing through job posts, looking for loopholes to exploit or hiring managers to take advantage of, and for so long there was nothing. Then all of a sudden (and mysteriously after a phone conversation with my mother inquiring about why I did not yet have a new job) an interview was set up, or more clearly “a few” interviews “would be” set up. Never one to get my hopes up I settled for the one interview that was thrown my way. In true cronyism fashion, the interview was set up for me, then I was told what the job was, then I was told to actually apply for it. At the very least, I now understand how it is exactly that HR operates: interview then application. I have had it all wrong for so long.

After one major snag (just an HR underling setting up the interview with the wrong person and on the wrong day) things were poised to improve exponentially for me. Then I got a cold. No big deal though, what’s a touch of fever delirium during an interview? If anything it made me more charming or at least, more quirky…which always translates into more fun. Right? Right?!

I doubt very much that I would go on a first date while suffering from the fever delirium, so I don’t know what I opted to conduct an interview in such a state. Thankfully (and like most dates I have been on) this job was summarily rejected before the interview began. The reason? The receptionist was positioned in the middle of a hallway outside of the office and there was a student sleeping on a couch next to her. If I wanted to deal with that kind bullshit I would become a desk in a hospital. I did not even need to hear the functions of the job, to know that this was not going to be for me. This kind of position works out best for me because it allows me to maintain the veneer of control when really, I was never actually going to get the job anyway. It’s win win really.

On thing is certain though, I have learned that I cannot leave my current job in favor of a hot new job just because it is something different. After a while I am sure that I would have been longing for the insults, and the vomit, and the comparisons to office furniture that I have come to define my character as a disgruntled employee.

Disrespected Employee

I really thought that I would reach my most disgruntled level by being an unemployee, but really I have never been more disgruntled an employee than I am right now. I will take the nonsensical rigmarole of submitting applications and going on interviews that lead nowhere over what I am experiencing now. I would even enjoy a job that was a little more dish and soap-centric at the moment over what I am currently doing.

You see, I work in a hospital which really is more like an overpriced boutique featuring maladies of the head and neck. I think of this place as a boutique simply because the patients are referred to as customers…and as a matter of fact it is customer service week here at the hospital. When I think of customer service week I think of Wal-Mart and smocks and malcontents. Although I suppose where there is the general public, be they patients or customers or accident victims with credit cards, there is certainly no shortage of malcontents. I faithfully count myself among them because to be contented would mean I had no self respect.

Working here is beginning to be a sign that I may have self respect issues, or perhaps masochistic tendencies. Most people dislike all or some of the aspect of their job, but I am a little bit different. I enjoy what I do, because I don’t have to use my brain, I don’t really have to remember anything, and I am afford a lot of free time for doing things, like biting the hand that feeds me. What I absolutely loathe is the treatment and general presence of other employees. I work in a department that has been called “the bottom of the barrel” by the president of the hospital, and that attitude extends to the employees of the department. I am the unfortunate victim of bad company, because this title is not at all undeserved. Truly, everyone I am forced to work with day in and day out is nothing more than a sub-literate sycophantic peon. All that really needs to be said about the subject is that I am the most highly educated person in my department all the way on up to the director…and that is not even counting the bartending course I took 5 years ago.

It is not co-workers who cause the problems though, mainly because they are barely able to handle the intricacies of a pen and paper. The real source of my malcontent is the way I am treated by people who know better, physicians and managerial types. I had one manager walk by me not too long ago and refer to me as “the help”. The last time I checked I was not dusting lampshades in a Newport mansion or driving some bitter old heiress to afternoon tea. Yes, I was called “the help” from a woman who, when she ascended the corporate stepping stool from supervisor to manager was, on her first day, punched full on in the face by one of her own employees. I work in the kind of place that not only has people thinking of me as the help, but also has routine physical violence. Super classy.

Being “the help” at least recognizes my status as a human person capable of doing human things. Just the other day a physician and his patient…I mean customer…walked up to me, pointed in my face and said “maybe this desk can help you”. Why not “maybe this PERSON can help you”? I guess once you have achieved the super difficult and rare title of MD you no longer see the people at the end of your ill-pointed finger as human any more but rather, as office furniture.

When I am not engaged in being a desk though, I am primarily the emergency room bouncer. Through some combination of being nice to someone once, and offering to hold the door for a stretcher, my unofficial primary duty is to open the door for people who are too lazy to move their arms three inches to their waits, pull their ID cards from their lanyards, and grant themselves access to the treatment rooms. This is not the kind of things doctors do. They certainly did not go to medical school to open doors. Neither did the secretary go to filing school to open doors. And the janitor, he most certainly did not go to jail to wind up opening doors for himself, although he will help himself to the contents of my bag whenever he wishes.

The door is the bane of my existence, and I could (and have) go on for thousands of words extolling my dislike of the door and my unofficial role as maven of the door. The most recently display of complete and utter disrespect directed towards me was having my latest door-centric rant sent by my boss to her boss and another boss. While I am certainly not under the assumption that any of my actions are private and with out scrutiny, I do (or did) hold on to a small vestige of hope that I was respected enough to have my private e-mails to my boss kept private. I should not have been surprised by this though, since my boss is so far down on the literacy scale that she is hardly able to compose a grammatically correct subject line, let alone dozens of coherent sentences full of syntax and an overall theme.

I have expended a lot of time on the door but I have not really explained what it is I do. I work in an emergency room and my job is to make sure that patients are checked in to see a doctor. I am not in fact a doorman, or the help, or a desk, or even the help desk. I am a registrar and if you look registrar up in the dictionary it says nothing about being a desk or opening a door. Of course the other registrars are not aware of the existence of dictionaries and may have come to believe they are in fact desks. I don’t know though, because I have never cared to ask, because I never cared.

Next time, stories about how a group of interns mistook me for a lectern and took me to a conference.

HR: My Muse

It’s funny that my job, though I hate it so, does prove to make me feel so much better about myself. You see the hospital emergency room attracts a certain kind clientele that is nearly indistinguishable from the clientele found at the methadone clinic, the parole office, and the schizophrenia doctor. In fact I think people stop in on their way back from all of these places. It serves to make me realize that I never going to be the drug addict/alcoholic/vagrant/teen mother that I always feared, thanks in large part to an especially horrifying elementary school play, I might become.

For so long I believed that it was more co-workers who were blighting this otherwise “world class” establishment with their accents and chain muffin eating, but no, all along it was the patrons, with their “cure my blindness” and “stop my bleeding” demands. Really, do they really think that Medicaid covers the measures in takes to stop ones bleeding? I would ask them if they wanted a little cheese with that whine, but if they though I had wine (or cheese) I can be assured a madball to the face.

These are the people I spend my day with; the literal unwashed, and heavily begermed masses. It is not outside of the realm of possibility that I will, on any given day be, coughed on, sneezed on, vomited on, or bled on. That is just the usual stuff. Sometime people through chairs in my direction, threaten to shoot me, or beseech me to produce several rolls of tin foil so that they my produce a hat adequate enough to hide them from their assorted supernatural pursuers. These are the people with which I must work. It would be described as “colorful” if it was not in fact typical.

Sadly I wish to leave this utopia of sputum and foul odors. I am once again diving head first in the cesspool of lost resumes, hiring managers going on vacation for 3 months, and the odd stories about how Chinese people come from china. I am looking for a job again.

I have ever written a cover letter extolling my many virtues, including being pleasant, and understanding, and really loyal to my employer. At least I use my real name on these letters so not every thing is false.

Missing from my resume this time around is any job that involved soap, water and sponges, and any job that I held for less than 2 months. I have certainly done a lot of pruning.

Hopefully I will have time to document the many trials and tribulations associated with my trying to find a job. I think I might just have experienced every awful interview experience it could have ever experience during my last round of the job search. Hopefully that will prove to be a gross understatement two months from now.

Could dealing with a few HR offices really be much worse than this?

Disgruntled Employee

Jesus Christ on a cross! It has been nearly a year since I have updated this thing??
Could it be that I am too busy being a disgruntled employee (for two employers no less) and a disgruntled student of one public university that has cause this 350+ day blog neglect?

Not unsurprisingly, I am no longer washing dish in a Japanese tea house, nor am I waging war with Boston area human resources “executives.” While my kitchen days are long gone, my job searching days shall never end. One does not adopt the title of Disgruntled Unemployee if one actually planes on starting a career in the next 10, or so, years, and I certainly do not. My crusade against the world’s HR department is still on going, but it is just on hold. You may have won the battle recruiters, but you will not win the war….

Since it has been damn near a year since the last update perhaps a recap of the last 12 months is best:

March 2006: Still working in dish services, and making lunch for one or two people every 3 weeks or so, and hiring dish services protégées. Life is more or less the same as it ever was.

April 2006: More of the same with exception of sunshine, warmer weather, and a job interview at one of Boston’s, nay, the world’s, greatest specialty hospitals. My dreams and prayers and sacrificial offerings and ritualized dances have all been answered, for the only qualification for getting this job is breathing air. I don’t even have to know how to turn on a computer, speak proper English, or be able to deal with people even though my job will require all of those things.

May 2006: Because I can breathe air, turn on a computer, speak proper English, and deal with people I amazingly (and with extensive assistance from a friend) manage to get myself a job.

The celebrations and other fetes last nary a moment once I find out this job I got is not the job I applied for. The job I applied for involved work the too-good-to-be-true hours of 12-8. The job I was offered involved working the too-shitty-to-be-accepted hours of 4-12…as in 12 midnight.

In addition to this, all of my co-workers are to be 30-50 years my senior and I quickly learn that I have to refer to my girlfriend as my roommate for fear that someone will tell me they will pray for me and thus send me into a blind rage which will no doubt resolve in arbitration with human resources.

On a positive note, once released from my tutelage, my dish services student quickly became the master, and then quickly ran for the hills.

June 2006: After a training program of nearly one whole month I am ready to start working my official 4-12 shift. I bid adieu to my social life as I know it and say hello to my life as a member of the small segment of the population I have always feared: the night worker.

Now I am not saying the night worker is all bad. Like me, some night workers are victims of circumstance, forced to work at night because their baby daddy left them or their husband is morbidly obese or they are afraid the sex offender registry will find them if they work during the day or they were so desperate for a job that was not washing dishes that they were willing to try anything. I can empathize. There are some night workers though who are so reprehensible because of their laziness or propensity for bitching or their New York accents, that I just cannot bring myself to relate to them. Naturally, my primary co-worker is of the latter sort. With in my first shift with her she tells me that she doesn’t trust me, does like me, and will not be answering any questions that I might have.

I begin to think that this job really has potential!

July 2006: There comes a point in time where adults have to accept the summer no longer means summer vacation. For me July 2006 was that point in time. Sure it is great sitting in the sun all day, reading books and drinking lemonade, but it is far more exciting doing that with other people. This is not to say that there are not people available with which to entertain myself during the day. Homeless people for example are usually pretty easy to find during the day. The mentally ill are also more or less free to roam the streets between the hours of 10-6. Who is not available during the day are people that I actually want to see. My friends for example are indisposed during the day. My girlfriend makes a habit of working when then sun is up. Even my own mother finds herself cultivating so many bank stories during “normal business hours”, whatever those are. It is a different world being free during the day. TV is not that good; drinking is discouraged, and people just kind of look at you funny.

August 2006: This is the time that I begin to get ready for a major lifestyle change. By this time next month I will be working my beloved night shift, working a not so bad part time job, and attending a not so good university.

Had I not attended this university in the past I might be filled with all of the hopes, dreams and ambition of someone too naïve to realize they are wasting their time. Unfortunately for me I had attended this university, with unpleasant results, some two years previously. Being marginalized and disaffected and maybe a touch cheap, I really have not other choice to be receive my education from a bunch of bumbling state employees. It’s kind of like trying to earn a degree by going to the Registry of Motor Vehicles or maybe the Welfare Office…every single day.

It is an unfortunate situation to have to be educated by state workers, but I suppose that I really cannot blame them for carrying on the way they do. I get the sense that most of the do this to pay the bills because what ever esoteric bullshit they devoted their lives and education to doesn’t pay. I suppose that the freedom of pursuing your dreams comes with the price; in this case attempting to educate those who are resistant, or are just plan unable to be educated.


September 2006: School begins and work becomes even more painful. My first class begins at 8:30 AM and leave work at 12 AM. Minus 2.5 hours for commuting and 1 hour for getting ready in the morning I am left with 5 hours for sleeping, just as long as I am changing into my pajamas and am actively falling asleep as I walk though the door.

October-December 2006: School and work and nothing else; that is my life. I am so concerned about getting things done and not getting sick that I begin to drink Airborne like it is straight up water. I have no reason to believe that it is not, more or less, the same at straight up water except that it is filled with vitamins and goodness. Turns out vitamins and goodness lead you down the road to becoming a 26 year old heart attack victim, especially when those vitamins and goodness are full of deadly levels of heart palpitation causing, pulse raising, oxygen level dropping amounts of vitamin A. Do be warned that while getting a cold sucks getting a heart transplant sucks more.

As if things were not bad enough, it was during this time that I realized that maybe taking two ancient languages simultaneously was maybe not the best idea for someone in my situation….and by my situation I mean bitter perfectionist. It also does not help thing that my primary instructor is not that much older than me, not that much shorter than me, and not that my gayer than me. It is kind of like I am being taught by a disorganized yet well educated (yet kind of surly and really distorted) reflection of myself. Now it is one thing to be ill prepared to teach a class. That I can excuse. I can not however over look, giving short, surely, lesbian, classicists a bad name by being ill prepared to teach nearly every single class, nearly every single day. That is just unacceptable.

January 2007: January was largely uneventful with the exception of my having contracted an awful sinus infection. This is no doubt the result of being face to germ infested face with patients suffering for similar ailments. It was wholly unpleasant and only recently cleared up.

January was also the month that I decided that I shall not carry on the way I has been carrying on as far as my bitter over achieving ways were concerned. This means no more extra school work for myself (which never actually stuck), no more working extra hours, and no more work at my job longer than I have to. The inevitable results of this (when realized this spring) will bring Disgruntled Unemployee back to it roots: redundant rantings about my poor job prospects.

February 2007: I fully return to school and my old way of life, except that last semester was a picnic followed by a trip to the spa compared to this semester. Part of this is due to the aforementioned microbes living in my head, and part due to the growing discontent with both work and the quality of public education.

March 2007: Now. To think of what I was doing last year at this time in comparison to now it is kind of amazing. Last year I was washing dish in order to pay a fraction of my rent and none of my bills. This year I am getting letters from the bank asking me to invest in a money market accounts, and going to Spain. With all the unsavory aspects of my life at the moment, I suppose things can, and used to be, worse.

Hopefully I will be updating more often now that I am looking for new and exciting ways to procrastinate. I suppose that I should not worry much about getting things done since I have written more here just now than I will have to for the longest paper I am going to be called upon to write all semester, and I did it all on time while getting less than 5 hours of sleep per night and with (nearly) proper grammar and syntax.

The Last Six Weeks: A Time Line (Part II)

The End of February: Seeing as how all of my employment opportunities have been dashes, I must start anew, overhauling my resume and cover letter. This involves two major things, one is getting rid of the job I walked out of. I have already lost two or more jobs because I have tried to tell people I was laid off. My thinking is that it is best to just act like it never happened. The second major addition is admitting to being a dishwasher. Things are not so cut and dry with my resume though. While it would be easier to tell the truth about my work history, it is far more fun for me to tell lies. This means that rather than putting “dishwasher” as my job title I have listed my self as “kitchen staff”. I am sure that no one will see through the job description that I have listed and realize that I am in fact nothing more than I dish washer.

It is also during this time that I get a call from North Eastern University telling me they would like to check my references. Normally this would be no problem because I always make sure to put down people who will speak to my excellent character…or else. The problem with NEU is that they have a policy of requiring a reference from ones last or current employer. That’s right, the Great Satan strikes again. Needless to say I have no heard from them since.

Some Time in March: As if my resume was some kind of prediction of the future, I am offered the position of “lunch cook” in addition to “dishwasher” thus making my job my title of “kitchen staff” true. This means changes have to be made once again.

March 10-12: For three years now, during thee glorious days in March I have worked at the Boston Bicycle Show both as heavy lifter and bartender. This has always been a lucrative opportunity to make some much needed cash, and I actually really enjoy the work. Much to my dismay, this year was not as lucrative as years passed. In fact I made $600 less this year than I did last year. It is only fitting really because last year I did not need the money as much as I did this year.

The best part about the whole event was that it took place right across the street from the office I walked out of 3 months ago. It was delightful to spend three days being cautious about leaving the hall lest I be seen by the Great Satan or one of her many real estate demons. Thankfully there was only one minor incident that involved seeing and making eye contact with her servile and loyal assistant. I suspect, given that he despises her as well, that he said nothing of having noticed me.

Today March 15^th: NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH!

As I am typing this I get a call from Senior Whole Health, the home of morbidly obese, racist teams of ice dancing office slaves…or something like that. In true this-is-all-you-are-good-for fashion, I am offered a second interview. It would figure. These people are idiots, so of course they would want to offer me a job, or a second interview or what even it is they are planning for me.

The funny thing about this is that the woman who called me told me, in a most exasperated tone, that she was recently appointed to take over the hiring process and needed to meet all of candidate(s). Of course they just reappointed someone to this position, they only interview me, I don’t know, nearly a month ago. It seems like the perfect time for someone else to take over. At least I am getting better at spotting the red flags of a bad employment situation, as if they were not flying high during my first interview. If only I had realized these tell tale signs earlier I might have never become a disgruntled unemployee in the first place.

The Last Six Weeks: A Time Line (Part I)

Alright so I am not going to post detailed account of all the disgruntled goings on of the last 6 or so weeks. What I am going to do however is offer and estimated time line of events for those weeks so we can all get back to the disgruntled unemployee antics we have come to know and love.

Please remember all dates are approximations and or just made up:

February 3^rd: After coming to believe that “having a good voice” alone would land me a job that I later discovered topped out at a salary of $20,000, I took a week off in order to do things like nearly have a nervous breakdown, and cry for 8 hours straight.

February 10^th: Realizing that having a nervous breakdown does not look good on my resume I lift myself up and buckle down on the job search. The highlight of searching was applying for an office manager job at New England Baptist Hospital. Much to my surprise, his honor himself, the head of human resources calls me the very same day to ask me if I would be interested in an even better job doing also most exactly what I used to do at the creep lab I used to work for. To make the deal even sweeter I am told that I should be expected to have an audience with his honor the very next day at noon.

The Next Day at Noon: After meeting my Sherpa at the bottom of the hill that I was to ascend in order to make it to NEBH, I began to wonder how people with orthopedic injuries (the hospital specialty) managed to actually get to the hospital if they did not drive.

The Next Day at Noon…Once Inside the Inner Sanctum: Sitting in the ante-chamber of Mr. HR’s office was filled with the usual delights; a bunch of pamphlets telling me how great it will be to work for these people, and a crack head trying to fill out an on-line application while talking to himself about how he is going to kill his girlfriend when he gets home. I didn’t even see this kind of thing while waiting for an interview with a non-profit that let ex-cons run around their office.

After the standard 45 minutes of waiting for HR I was brought in to discuss, well not so much discuss, as be informed of, the policies of a hospital of the kind of caliber that NEBH is. This included to very creepy things. One was what is called the “Rose Endowment”. The Rose Endowment assures that every patient admitted to the hospital receives on red rose. Certainly the rose endowment is a nice gesture, but one that also steeps of wasteful spending. The second creepy thing is the “Dress to Impress” policy. This states that peons like myself would have to dress as if I were attending a semi-formal affair each and every workday. That kind of thing is fine with me, but if I were to say be in a position like the head of HR I would have to wear a three piece suit. I personally was impressed that someone who could rise to the ranks as head of HR could dress himself at all, even in a one piece sack of some kind.

Proceeding the waste of time that was the HR interview, I was brought to meet the people I would be working with if the great Baptist God in Heaven were to let me work at one of His fine hospitals. This was perhaps the best interview of my life. Since I really cannot put a snide or sassy spin on it because it was just so good, I will just leave it at that.

I certainly left the hospital, and descended down the crag (Sherpaless this time) feeling elated. I felt that I had certainly aced this interview. There was one thing I did not mention about the above HR interview though, because I thought it so insignificant and so trite that it could not possibly have any bearing on my getting a job at this blessed institution; Mr. HR knew the Great Satan whose office turned me into the Disgruntled Unemployee.

February 12^th-17^th: Think that I so have the NEBH job I spend the week seeking closure at other places I have employed. I send out some e-mails, that are not really so nice, saying, more or less, “Why the fuck have I not heard from you.” Some how this still results in my not hearing from anyone.

February 18^th: On my way to work I decide to check the mail, this is generally very common. Inside the mail box I find a letter from NEBH. I have been rejected from the job. The only was this can be is because his honor, the gatekeeper of well dressed Christian care givers has, with out my permission, contacted the Great Satan, thus exposing me as a liar. A rage ensues.

February 21^st: Thankfully I had another interview lined up for today, just in case something crazy happened like me not getting the NEBH job. I am thankfully I have the interview, but I am full of bitter resentment because I know that my resume is going to once again fuck me over.

Thankfully I am glad that my resume was shit because this was the weirdest interview, or I should say interviews, that I have ever had. As soon as I entered the office I was told to sit and wait. The receptionist didn’t know what I wanted and she did not appear to be doing anything, but sit and wait I did. After a few minutes I am told to approach the desk. I do so with caution. After stating my reason for being there I am told once again to sit and wait. About 20 minutes later a morbidly obese man comes out and takes me a conference room, he then tells me that this is the room where I will be meeting with “everyone”. This is all well and good, except for the fact that he takes me back to the reception area to wait for the first person I am going to meet. This should have been a sign of weirdness to come.

After a while, a morbidly obese woman comes out and tells me to come to the interview room, which by the way was not the room I was originally introduced to. Because we have climb all of three steps to get to the room she was no out of breath and need a full 3 minutes to rest before asking me questions. I wish she had passed out from all that physical activity because it would have given my time to escape.

After berating me for insulting the South End and then insinuation I lived in a gang war zone, she then began to tell me that there was no order to the office, no job description because everything was so unorganized, and that all most all of their clients did not speak English. In a nut shell, a dream job.

After she weebled out of the room it was time for round two. The most significant thing about this round that I was asked one question; “How would your best friend describe you…if, that is, you have a best friend.” I don’t remember what I said but I am sure that it was a bunch of crap.

The third and final round was by far the worst for what this last woman lacked in morbid obesity she made up for in sheer insanity and ignorance. The first problem was that she blinked too much, surely a sign of absolute insanity. Because I just didn’t care anymore I listened to about half of what she had to say. I wish I had listened to the whole thing because the half I heard was laugh out loud funny. First she compared he team to relay race runners, then to ice dancers, in a long and drawn out analogy that did not shed any light on what “her team” actually did. I am really hope that she was saying these things because the Olympics were on that week and not because that is really how she thinks of her managerial skills. Her final speech was the crowning jewel of this and every interview I have ever had. In trying to inspire me and make this place seem like just the place for me she tells me that she learns something new every week. In order to drive it home she tells me, with a anecdote, that she was not aware Chinese people had been coming to the US for the passed “100 years.” That’s right, she thought Chinese people had just started coming here “in the last 20 or 30 years.”

I think that’s enough for now. More to come tomorrow!