Forgiveness is not easy. It’s sometimes very hard to forgive those who’ve wronged or hurt you in some way.
My particular battle with the subject comes from the loss of two jobs over the years to what amounted to simple disagreements and self-serving pettiness on the part of those who wronged me.
Three years ago, I had been working for five years in Housekeeping at a local hospital. I was a "Floor Tech", and my job consisted of cleaning and buffing floors, and carpet maintenance and cleaning. It was a good job, not great, but full-time, Mon-Fri, holidays off and benefits. Paid well enough for this area, at least.
Now, having worked there for five years, I knew my job well and had my assigned areas blocked out into "zones", so I could get from one to another in the quickest and most efficient way possible, and when the areas were either unoccupied or closed, so I wouldn’t be bothering anyone as I worked. I got few real complaints about my work, and my supervisors, overall, were happy with my performance.
In early 2001, our dept. director was called to a Board meeting; he was told that the hospital was going to construct another building, and that they needed to know that he would be able to keep both the new building and the old clean and cared for. So, based on the data he was given, he crunched a few numbers and returned the next day to reply that he was going to have to hire an additional 10-15 people for the Housekeeping dept. in order to maintain both areas equally well. He was then informed that no, he would maintain both areas with the staff he had. He replied that that would be nearly impossible, and that both buildings would suffer. The board replied that he should find some way. He asked them how, and found himself out of a job. His position went up for an in-house bid within a week. Many qualified people applied, but one was chosen that was not qualified.
Linda was brought up out of Dietary to run Housekeeping. She was a rubber stamp. She knew nothing about hospital housekeeping procedures, and that was precisely why she was chosen. When told by the board that she was going to have to keep two buildings clean, she probably replied "great!" and that was that.
She was given a three-week crash course in Housekeeping, and, based on that vast amount of experience, proceeded to rework the entire dept., junking a system that had been implemented 15 years before, and had been used virtually unaltered by three experienced, trained and qualified directors before her. It wasn’t long before she started knocking heads with people. The hospital noticed right away that she wasn’t up to the task, and hired two trained coordinators as supervisors to basically run the dept. for her. The dept. had managed very well, in all the years before this catastrophe, on one director and one supervisor. Linda was massively unequal to the task.
They eventually moved her office back down to Dietary, and installed the two supervisors in her office. They ran everything, and she, the Director and dept. Head, simply signed whatever they sent her and forwarded it on. The voice mail, traditionally the voice of the dept. head, was now the voice of Jim the (control-freak) head supervisor.
At any rate, I continued to do my job as I had done it in the five years past. This, of course, began to run against the grain of the plan of Linda and Jim, who came up with another, less adequate system. They insisted that we had to follow their scheme, which actually made it harder to fulfill our tasks. See, their plan might have you doing something on Level 1, the basement, then having to go up to Level 8 or 9; from there you might go back down to level 4. All of this takes time. As I said, I had my areas arranged in zones, which cut my travel time, and knew when I could and couldn’t get in my areas to work; also, it takes time in a busy hospital to get from place-to-place. Their way of doing it added at least 20-30 minutes, in and eight-hour shift, of travel time to our schedules.
I got called on the carpet several times for continuing to stick to my way of doing it, despite the lack of complaints from those dept. in my areas.
One night in November 2002, I took a broken bookshelf off the "trash pile" of broken furniture and equipment in hall leading down to our shop. The broken stuff sits there for months, until they finally detail someone to haul it all out to the dump. The shelf had been there for at least three months, and I was going to take it home and refurbish it.
Next day, I was called into Linda’s office and told that I was being suspended for theft, and that I was to bring back what I had "stolen"; it seems they were going to repair and use this broken, scratched and gouged castoff in some manner. I angrily replied, I’m sorry to say, "bullshit….this hospital never reuses furniture. Why fix shit up when they can buy new?"
I knew this as fact because I helped move the new furniture into the front offices in 1999 when they were remodeled, and I also help move out the (two-year) old furniture and brought in the $150,000 of new furniture when the front offices were moved to the finished portion of the new building. The "old" stuff was thrown out. But that argument didn’t help me. The next day, when I brought back the bookshelf, I was fired. The reason given was that I had stolen from the hospital, but this of course was just Linda’s excuse. I, and many others, had taken things home from the junk pile for a long time. Much of what was discarded was still very usable. Besides, it saved the Facilities Dept. a little work when you did that. I had asked if I could take it, by the way, but when I tried to prove it, the supervisor I asked denied it. Go figure.
The day before, just after I had left the building on ‘suspension’, the hallway ’trash pile’ had been cleared of every last stick of furniture.
Now, I find it highly unlikely that I took the only piece of furniture which was going to be kept and reused, out of all that stuff.
After I was fired, according to friends who still worked there, the shelf sat there, by itself in the hall, for over a month. Then one day, they threw it out, too.
I was fired because I knew my job and failed to adhere to the incompetent changes and dealings of our new director and her "underlings". You know, I even sat down once and showed them how I did my areas, in an effort to try and get them to understand, but it didn’t matter; was their way or the highway. I got the highway.
I later heard that the same day, someone else was fired, too, for having taken a file cabinet that had the word "trash" marked on it. Linda didn’t like them, either, apparently.
No, I wasn’t the only one to get ditched in this manner; Linda disliked many people, especially those who let her know how inadequate she was (is), and she cast a wide net. Many good people got caught up in it. As a result, people now tell me the hospital is filthy and a terrible place to work.
Now, a little more recently, two weeks ago in fact, I was let go from a warehouse job which paid very well. Why was I let go? Well, when I asked, I was told by the dispatcher that "I don’t know, but according to Mark (the warehouse manager), your productivity is low, and you gave him a hard time earlier today." So, I went to Mark, and asked what it was I had done, and how my productivity was low as compared to the grab-assing morons who spent the day screwing around and hiding rather than working, people he never said a word to or about.
His reply was "Forget it man, it’s over." So, I called him a "worthless piece of shit" and left. Even he wasn’t able to point to anything specific.
See, according to what I was later told by people who’ve worked there for a longer time than I had in, if Mark takes a dislike to you for whatever reason, he’ll talk smack about you to the General Manager and office staff until they fire you. That’s what apparently happened to me in this case.
At church yesterday, the sermon was about forgiveness; it was, after all, September 11th, and though the subject was never mentioned, it hung there, an unspoken thought, through the whole message.
It seems to me that forgiveness is something I need to work on with these two people, Linda and Mark, from my past.
They took meat off my table just because, they didn’t like me for whatever reason; the fact that I did my job didn’t matter to them. Petty differences. Petty people.
I hate them.
My pastor insists that you don’t necessarily have to love or even like the people who wrong you, just don’t wish ill on them. That’s hard, especially when someone has cost you a good job that you enjoyed, for no other reason than being an asshole.
Well, okay…..I’ll try….I’ll pray for them and wish them well, but it’ll be hard.
Anybody want to pray for me to have the strength to do this?