productiondiva

I work for a veterinary hospital doing a litttle bit of everything. I started on the front desk and have moved into the management level quickly. I ahve been taking classes and filling in as a nurse in addition to working the front, and doing a lot of the day to day running of the hospital. I love my job however it drive me crazy at least twice a week. The big cons are:
1. LONG fecking hours
2. I feel like I live there
3. My bosses are very controlling
4. I am making good money, but not the kind of money I need or want to be making long term.
So we work with this practice management company. It is a compnay run by a well known motivational speaker, who shall remain nameless for the time being. We have been working with them for the past year. The deal is this: We signed a contract with them for 3 years costing us roughly $50,000. IN turn we are getting business management and a whole "cultural" program designed to make us a well bonded, good communicating group... just one big happy family. So things have been going great on the cultural side. The staff is all huggy and warm fuzzy for the most part which is HUGE improvement from the way it was when I started there and everyone hated their jobs and each other. The business side of things however, has not worked out so well. See, the veterinary industry is a new one for this management company. They have just branched out from the dental and medical field which are their main two fields. We were actually their guinea pig (pardon the pun). So they don't know anything really about veterinary medicine or the field as a whole. Which would be fine if they were willing to learn. But it has come to the point where we are feeling like they caught us hook, line and sinker and are now leaving us hung out to dry. Either that or they are just really stupid, which is equally as scary when you are talking about someone who is helping run your 1.5 million dollar business. Which is a not a good feeling.

So, our clinic has a "coach" who works with us once a month or as often as we need her to provide motivation, support and general supervision. She and I have been talking over the idea of me going to work for the company on a free lance trial basis. This would accomplish:
1. More money for me
2. Networking for me
3. New program development for our clinic and the other veterinary clinics in the program
4. The forward propelling of the company's veterinary division as a whole

When the idea was first brought to my bosses, they had a freak out. They basically felt it would be a HUGE conflict of interest. They were dead against it. We talked and worked out the following:
1. We needed to be given some kind of financial break on our program fees to the company because we are paying as much as the dental clinics and basically making this up ourselves as we go along.
2. There needed to be some discussion in the open about how many hours and what I would be working on
3. I needed to get paid and get paid well
So we all talked and hugged it out and decided that they would email and converse with our coach and I would do the same and we would all keep talking about it. This was about 3 weeks ago.

Fast forward to last week when I was out sick. I got an email from our coach telling me "It looks like things are going to be a go. I am getting the ball rolling on my end in terms of compensation and contract details. Go ahead and start working on this on your own time and keep track of hours" I don't even think twice about talking to my bosses about it cause it sounds to me like they have talked to her... OH APPARENTLY NOT! So I spend the weekend working on revamping this entire project in preparation for our quarterly seminar which was this week. It was loads of fun and I had a blast doing it and being all creative so I am feeling proud and happy right.

WRONG BITCH! So I get called into the bosses office on Tuesday. He says "I need to know if you did work for _______ (the company)" I say "Well yes I did. I got an email from _____ (our coach) and she said it was a go and so I assumed you guys had talked. He says "No, no one returned our phone calls. This is really not ok. I can't talk to you about this right now, but things are not ok." Way to leave me feeling like a HUGE MASSIVE PIT OF WORRY AND FEAR IN MY STOMACH MAN!

So fast forward to Wednesday, when I am walking into work totally thinking I am going to be fired. I spent all night Tuesday night trying to call my coach by the way, and leaving about 5 messages of varying panic on her voicemail with NO return calls. I see the bosses and my manager go into the 3rd exam room and shut the door. Everyone is totally looking at me and Christy, one of my closest friends says "Dude, is that about you? It has to be if you are not in there" I was like "I think I am totally getting fired" Keep in mind that my bosses have a total tendency to react and think/regret later. They have fired people before for no reason by flying off the handle about little things. So they are in there for about 45 minutes and then I get called in to the office. OH SHIT. They sit me down and the boss says "Ok, so we had some interesting phone calls last night. They went like this:
1. To our lawyer
2. To our coach
3. To our other coach (higher up on the food chain)
4. To the CEO of the company.
They all said this:
1. Our coach: "I apologize for the lack of communication..."
3. Our other coach (higher up on the food chain) "I dont know anything about Stephane working for us... (and then when pushed he said "Well, maybe it had been discussed, but there was nothing planned for her working for us"
4. The CEO of the company "There never was or will be any plans for Stephane to work for us. She must have misunderstood"

So my bosses were like... basically either they are being sneaky and lying to us or they are really really stupid. Either one is no good. Hence the phone call to the lawyer who told us we could get out of our contract easily. So we talked it over and we have this idea. What if we use the remaining money that we would have paid towards our contract with the company, and we put it towards a salary for you. You could create a similar program in house. We could have retreats, go to seminars, go to trainings etc... whatever you wanted. It would be like a second job for you."

Let me tell you... I almost peed my pants. I seriously thought I was going to be fired and then they pull this out on me. Scary that they can pull one over on me. I didn't think they could. My next reaction was fear... that I am not good enough, smart enough, old enough or wise enough to make this happen. This is where I remain right now. So we are all thinking it over and I am waiting to hear back from the CEO of the company, who told the bosses he was intending to call me and clear up any "miscommunication". MISCOMMUNICATION MY ASS. If he knew nothing about it, then how come his personal secretary was the one who was confirming all this shit with me? Good thing I am one smart cookie and kept all the emails. Thank god for Outlook. Basically they are looking to make me the fall guy and maybe my coach too. Which pisses me off cause I thought she was my friend and I really believed in this company, the CEO and the values they preach. I am sooooo pissed! I just wanna kick someone... hard.... in the teeth.

So I am marinating on the idea. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery???