Treated like a child by management

TODAY WOULD normally be just an ordinary work day for me; I’d get in to work, slurp my coffee, wake up and get busy. However, instead, I find myself on a three-day suspension.

I work as a mental health counselor in a treatment apartment program in Rochester, N.Y. I work with people who have chronic mental illness and have drug and alcohol addictions. Many workers in this particular field have similar experiences and have horror stories to tell from the job in trying to help the people in their case loads and in their struggles with management. This is my story.

I started this job nearly three months ago and so far I've learned a great deal about the way we treat our poor and oppressed and, most shockingly, how the entire for-profit mental health care industry treats the workers who dedicate their lives to helping them.

They told me in new-employee orientation that my job is to provide these "consumers" services. When I sat down with Human Resources and they told me that counseling services and tuition assistance program for workers had been taken away, I should have immediately known something was up.

Regardless, about a week ago, I made a mistake on the job. I wrote the wrong dosage and frequency for a psychotropic medication for one of my "consumers." I was writing in changes to the medicine log along with 12 others. We use the log to supervise the distribution of medications daily, so they have to be correct 100 percent of the time. The result was that my "consumer" got the wrong dosage and was at risk for a possible psychiatric emergency. When the "med error" was found--days later--my supervisors, who aren't paid much more than me, closed their office door and I overheard them talking about me and what to do.

Needless to say, it didn't sound good, and at no point during the week was I called in to discuss this mistake with them. All throughout the rest of the week I was stressed out and got sick; I felt like everyone was talking about me behind closed doors, I felt like everyone had it in for me. I felt like I was going to be told soon, "Ken, you have a meeting to see the school principal. You're in big trouble."

Instead, I was told nothing until on my sick day off--a sick day where I couldn't even afford to see a doctor so I just rested--when I got the call. I was made aware that I was given a three-day suspension, without pay, for the written error.

If you're like me, in your early twenties, your stress gauge probably exploded years ago because the $10 an hour you need to manage rent, gas, food, school loan debt, medical emergency funds (because like me you don't have health care coverage) won't be coming in full in the next pay check.

Management didn't even give me the decency of a meeting to work through the mistake and explore ways to stop it from happening in the future. Honestly, I know that I made a mistake. I know that my resident could have had an emergency. I know that it would have been loads of paperwork and meetings to straighten it all out and I know--I know, I know, I know, I know--that I made the mistake.

But then, I was told that I have to come in to look over suspension paperwork the same day I resume my regular week schedule. So now, I'm forced to walk into my office in front of my coworkers who know what's happened and I get to sit there and feel completely humiliated. I think to myself, "I decided to work in one of the hardest positions in mental health without decent pay, without affordable health care coverage, without reachable benefits and most importantly without any recourse from abuse by management. I have to walk in, like you walk into the principal's office at school, so that I can have my mistake read back to me, as if I was just oblivious to what I'd done."

I feel embarrassed, abused and treated like a child. And because I'm an "at-will" employee, management reserves the right to decide the degree of the mistake and type of punishment in no particular order of precedence. I've worked here less than three months and, for my honest mistake, I got a suspension.

My coworkers and I talked about this--believe me, we talked. Apparently, they all made the same errors when they first started out, and I found out that the supervisors made errors just as dangerous as mine. But I got suspended and they got warnings and write-ups. Management nepotism couldn't be clearer: Those they don't like, they set them up to fail; those they like, they set them up to succeed regardless of how hard they work or what mistakes they make.

I worked very hard to show these supervisors that I care about the residents and that I can do the job and, in return for making an honest mistake, they don't show me the least bit of dignity, respect or honesty in creating better support on the job so that mistakes like these are avoided in the future. How are my fellow workers and I supposed to serve this population to the best of our ability if the company treats us like children?

Management has a double standard when it comes to its "consumers" and workers. They say that us workers are only there to provide service to the "consumers," but what management doesn't care about is providing the providers with an honest standard of living: decent pay, affordable health care, benefits, treatment like human beings, dignity, respect and an honest, safe, stress-free environment to work in. If they even considered doing this based on what we need, my fellow workers and I would be able to help their "consumers" even better.

I go back to work tomorrow and I'm going to keep my cool, stand up straight and do my job to the best of my ability. But what management doesn't know is that I'm a socialist worker, and I'm going to ensure that a time of reckoning comes in the future. A time where workers like me will call the shots and will decide on what's best for workers and the poor and sick human beings that they call "consumers." Hey management, why don't you think about that one for a second?
Ken, Rochester, N.Y.