#230 - PN

Have you ever had an employee or worked with someone who was truly awful at what they were trying to do? #230 is a case in point. She kind of fooled me because she is so personable, but I should have remembered that I was not hiring her to be a greeter at Wal-Mart. She worked for me for exactly 8 weeks. It took me at least 8 months to un-do all the damage that she did. She was hired to be my receptionist which included the inputting of patient charges everyday and balancing the appointments with the charges at the end of each day. O-M-G! Let me just say, you would think she had been hired to balance the national deficit.




First of all, she talked...and she talked...and she talked. She was one of those people who wanted to know everyone you knew (which of course, she did) and then she wanted to talk about them in detail. She wanted to know who you were related to, who you were friends with, and who lived in your neighborhood. She would go through her fact finding mission with EVERY SINGLE PERSON who walked through the doors of our office. It didn't matter if she had work to do or not. I once caught her putting a doctor's office on hold for over 5 minutes, so she could finish her conversation about someone's sister's brother's grandbaby's mother who was dating the man who lived next door to her cousin's cleaning lady's gardener. I mean really? OMG. First of all, totally inappropriate with patients and on company time and second of all WHO GIVES A CARE??????????



My second problem with her was that all the connections weren't wired together upstairs if you know what I mean. The simplest tasks took her FOREVER and then they were still wrong. Then, the worst part...not only were they wrong, but when I corrected her she would argue with me. AHHHHHH!!!! I know that I think I am always right...it is a character flaw and I'll admit it. But....I was always right!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean in this situation, I could not help it!!!!



So after she was there for about 5 weeks, I left for a week vacation. When I came back, I had requests for private meetings with more than half of my office staff. She drove them all crazy while I was gone and basically they let me know it was her or them. No contest. She obviously saw the writing on the wall because a week or so later, she gave notice. She said that she had gotten another job that was going to pay her more and she would have a lot more responsibility. Her exact words were, "No offense, but this job has too much down time, and I like to keep busy." Really??????



So I let her ride off into the sunset thinking that the sounds she heard from my office was crying for what we had lost as opposed to the rejoicing of us all. I honestly can say that she goes through life with no clue because she continues to list me as a reference for new jobs (turns out that the new job running a MRI machine was not challenging enough for her either). The last time I saw her, was in the drive through at the pharmacy. Even though I was talking on my cell phone and the pharmacist at the same time, she managed to update me on her medical status by yelling at me through her passenger window. Sigh! Once again, "You can't fix crazy."