Chew you up, spit you out

It's officially happened - Gina & I have run into our first loser nurse.  By loser, I mean someone that suffers from such low self-esteem/jealousy, that she has to take it out on us.  It happened the other night at the new hospital that we have only been at for about 6 weeks.  Mind you, this is a nurse that has absolutely no authority except in her own mind.  Early Wednesday morning is when the confrontation took place.  Gina & I were on our dinner break with another nurse over in ICU.  The nursing supervisor came by & gave us a heads up that "S" (aka insecure nurse) was watching us closely.  We went back to our unit & "S" approaches us quite quickly & says "Girls, I need to talk to you."  Then she brings us into the nurses lounge & launches an all-out assault.  She was bitter that our patient load was 4 patients max (the other nurses had either 4, 5 or 6 patients).  She was bitter that we (Gina & I) had time to talk to one another & to take breaks.  She felt that if we had that much time, then surely we could increase our patient load.  Mind you, this was not a discussion - this was a one-way lecture towards us.  Gina & I stood there & stared at her like she was a lunatic (which it seems she is).  "S" went on to say that "all of the nightstaff is talking about us & that if we keep up this behavior - they will chew us up & spit us out until we can't take it anymore!  I've been here for 13 years & I won't put up with it!!!!!"  She has quite a charming personality, doesn't she?  The thing is...Gina & I only take 2 breaks...one 15 min & our dinner break.  Anyways, we eventually walked away from this lunatic & discussed how to handle this situation.  We ended up writing an email to both our manager (who is out of town this week) & the person that is above him who happens to be one of the people that recruited us to work there.  The email basically discussed what happened & that we felt it was verbal harassment & that this behavior is not warranted nor is it tolerable. 

Last night we had to work with the lunatic again - this time she was in the charge nurse role (ughhhh) - which is a power trip for her.  When we got to work, we got pulled aside by another co-worker who told us he heard what happened & to basically ignore the lunatic - that she does this quite often, that they all know how she is & that they know she is in the wrong.  He said it was being taken care of.  Ok, good start so far.  We also received an email back from the person in charge of our unit - which was an email to every nurse working on the unit last night basically saying that we need to learn how to work together & to treat the new employees (Gina & I) better...that we are helping them out by going off of orientation early & that we are not to be made to feel uncomfortable nor guilty about our patient load & that it is to remain at 4 patients each ONLY.  (The past 2 nights they had been pressuring us to take more patients & when we refused, they got an attitude.)  Our manager is on vacation & probably won't be back until next week - but I'm hoping more will be done than this because her behavior is not acceptable & I'm not simply going to learn to just ignore it.  She should not be allowed to harass us. 

After shift change, she had the nerve to come up to us & say "I talked with so & so and she said to consider last night a verbal warning and if it happens again - you'll be written up."  What the heck did we even do wrong???  I interrupted her & said "This matter will be discussed with the unit manager."  She again repeated her stupid phrase - I swear she has some type of mental problem.  Gina interrupted her & said "Your behavior is inappropriate right now."  The lunatic continued to go on & on so I finally said something like "You don't need to be talking to us, this will be discussed with the manager when he gets back from vacation."  She finally walked off.

Needless to say, both Gina & I were shocked by this behavior.  It was childish & ridiculous.  I told Gina it's a sign not to stay at this place - especially if they allow her to continue to behave like that.  She is always talking about us......we have the patient care techs telling us the things she says.  Why are people like this?  At the other hospital we work at, no one is like that...we've been there nearly a year & no one acts like most of the staff at this hospital.  The only good thing about this is that when itdoes come time to resign, we have a very good reason & they won't be able to argue that.  I won't work someplace where this behavior is tolerated.  Life is too short.

I have more to write about this past week, but my niece is here now & we're going out to dinner.  So this will be continued later...