child’s
underwear on. A warm, but rainy spring and retirees returning from
the winter in Florida had brought the annual spring influx of
patients which was against the new budget policy that budgeted and
maintained staff at the most cost effective level of the average
patient count.
The new staffing levels made good fiscal
sense. The reorganization company had taken the number of patients
per year and divided by 365 to get the number of beds occupied.
They then rounded down a few to account for HMO reducing the number
of days patients stay to recover and developed a formula for the
amount of staff needed. Once the board of trustees had those
numbers in their hands, they immediately began to leave positions
open and convert patient rooms into offices. However, spring was
not average; it was a breeding ground for sickness and accidents
and old people back from Florida that did not exist according to
the new budget.
And although the layoffs had stopped as the
administration relished and languished in the planning of the
second phase of the reorganization, the staff was still worried
that their jobs would end tomorrow. At the same time, many were at
the point of walking out. They were rush around without time to
think busy with the overflow of patients. They were paid overtime
and double-time while the Public Relations Department bought ads on
radio stations asking sick people not to come to the
hospital.
Yes, the money-saving measures were effective
lines on many of management’s resumes, but they were proving to be
costly.
Some of the many changes had been for the
better and had made sense, which really pissed off the employees.
The administrators of Saint Jude’s were fed up. After years of
hearing whining that things needed changing, they had gone and
changed everything and the employees were still not happy. Crapper,
reading his remarks off a prepared speech at the director’s meeting
had said, “Ah, umm… What is their, the employees, the s-staff, what
is their problem, anyway? If they uhh… think they could do a better
job, I would like to see them.”
The staff’s problem was exactly that they
could do a better job. They actually knew what was going on and
where the inefficiencies were in the hospital. The directors
deciding how each department should be changed was like a husband
telling his wife how to give birth. The husband doesn’t know what
is going on, and even if he did, she wouldn’t listen to
him.
Every director now ran his department as a
team as mandated by “The Company.” The directors’ contribution to
the teams were to make random cuts to staff and expenses and the
staffs’ part was to figure out how to continue to keep getting
people well. Nurses, LPN, techs, aides, and the volunteers had to
work double shifts on overtime. They worked six, seven, eight days
a week. Everyone was tired, frustrated, richer than they had ever
been, and depressed.
The directors did step in at this point and
started to have pizza delivered on Fridays. But even after the
pizza, the directors still had to give lectures on morale and
explain why things had to be the way they were. Mr. Seuss, in that
way that he had, summed it up best when he said, “We are a team, we
have equal say. Just make sure you do it my way. So remember this
before you get in a tiz. It was the team (not me) that made our
department the way it is. The team is me, the team is you. You
decided to make yourself work the whole week through."
Supervisors in the departments, people of
experience with expertise in what they did were replaced with
pinheads. A new position called “Team Guider” was created for the
pinheads. It was not a supervisor job, but completely different in
that a team guider needed to have a college degree. Good
supervisors were removed because being good was not a qualification
and because, as everyone knows,everyone that graduated from college
was an intelligent well-rounded human being.
The supervisor of the
underwear on. A warm, but rainy spring and retirees returning from
the winter in Florida had brought the annual spring influx of
patients which was against the new budget policy that budgeted and
maintained staff at the most cost effective level of the average
patient count.
The new staffing levels made good fiscal
sense. The reorganization company had taken the number of patients
per year and divided by 365 to get the number of beds occupied.
They then rounded down a few to account for HMO reducing the number
of days patients stay to recover and developed a formula for the
amount of staff needed. Once the board of trustees had those
numbers in their hands, they immediately began to leave positions
open and convert patient rooms into offices. However, spring was
not average; it was a breeding ground for sickness and accidents
and old people back from Florida that did not exist according to
the new budget.
And although the layoffs had stopped as the
administration relished and languished in the planning of the
second phase of the reorganization, the staff was still worried
that their jobs would end tomorrow. At the same time, many were at
the point of walking out. They were rush around without time to
think busy with the overflow of patients. They were paid overtime
and double-time while the Public Relations Department bought ads on
radio stations asking sick people not to come to the
hospital.
Yes, the money-saving measures were effective
lines on many of management’s resumes, but they were proving to be
costly.
Some of the many changes had been for the
better and had made sense, which really pissed off the employees.
The administrators of Saint Jude’s were fed up. After years of
hearing whining that things needed changing, they had gone and
changed everything and the employees were still not happy. Crapper,
reading his remarks off a prepared speech at the director’s meeting
had said, “Ah, umm… What is their, the employees, the s-staff, what
is their problem, anyway? If they uhh… think they could do a better
job, I would like to see them.”
The staff’s problem was exactly that they
could do a better job. They actually knew what was going on and
where the inefficiencies were in the hospital. The directors
deciding how each department should be changed was like a husband
telling his wife how to give birth. The husband doesn’t know what
is going on, and even if he did, she wouldn’t listen to
him.
Every director now ran his department as a
team as mandated by “The Company.” The directors’ contribution to
the teams were to make random cuts to staff and expenses and the
staffs’ part was to figure out how to continue to keep getting
people well. Nurses, LPN, techs, aides, and the volunteers had to
work double shifts on overtime. They worked six, seven, eight days
a week. Everyone was tired, frustrated, richer than they had ever
been, and depressed.
The directors did step in at this point and
started to have pizza delivered on Fridays. But even after the
pizza, the directors still had to give lectures on morale and
explain why things had to be the way they were. Mr. Seuss, in that
way that he had, summed it up best when he said, “We are a team, we
have equal say. Just make sure you do it my way. So remember this
before you get in a tiz. It was the team (not me) that made our
department the way it is. The team is me, the team is you. You
decided to make yourself work the whole week through."
Supervisors in the departments, people of
experience with expertise in what they did were replaced with
pinheads. A new position called “Team Guider” was created for the
pinheads. It was not a supervisor job, but completely different in
that a team guider needed to have a college degree. Good
supervisors were removed because being good was not a qualification
and because, as everyone knows,everyone that graduated from college
was an intelligent well-rounded human being.
The supervisor of the
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