interviews

ah interviews, how i hate thee. i had one for a part time office assistant at a music school this morning. hmm, a little too familiar huh?? but hey, its just part time. the person who interviewed me was an older possibly russian woman who was incredibly nice but very brief. she kind of shooed me out, so i don't have much hope for it. i'm also not hiding my tattoos for jobs anymore. i wore a cute 3/4 sleeve jacket but you could still see the many tattoos, and i'm thinking granny didn't like them. such is life. i'll hide them for the greatest job of all time.
my last interview was for an office manager for a substance abuse counseling agency. i thought it would be the best job ever, but the interview showed that it would have been very PPesque. i hate when the interviewer offers no direction or leadership- ask me some goddamn questions, please.
in more interesting news, a bunch of former PPNM people contacted an affiliate from PPFA to represent us to the board and the CEO. So I'm not even sure if I will send my letter to them, because I don't want to mess with a solid wall of evidence that this awesome woman is presenting. so here, dear readers, is my letter in its raw uncut form- it may be a little off in places.

edit: i decided to just put some excerpts in.

Dear Planned Parenthood New Mexico Board of Directors:

I am writing to address the many concerns I have over the current state of Planned Parenthood New Mexico. I started as an assistant clinic manager of the Central clinic in October 2007. I had extremely high hopes for this position, as I am a staunch supporter of reproductive rights, and of the organization itself. However, I soon came to see that the current administration of PPNM is quite dysfunctional, and does not foster a positive work environment.......

After our windows were broken out in the clinic attacks in December 2007, I certainly expected a show of solidarity and unity between the administration and the clinics. Actually, there was none, and I cleaned up all the broken glass that littered the clinic by myself. Instead, they made some insincere motions about employee safety- for example, sending out an email instructing staff not to work alone. I was soon scheduled for a Saturday, alone. I expressed my concerns and was told by a member of the administration that that was an extreme email and not to worry. I insisted that I not work alone. That was just a typical incident where the administration showed no support of the staff.

PPNM seems to have established a trend of being incredibly unsupportive of their staff and clinicians. No one batted an eye at practices that I, the new person, found very disturbing. I essentially held our clinic together at a time when the entire Santa Fe staff quit, and my manager worked at the Santa Fe clinic 3 days a week. One other staff member and myself ran the entire clinic. 2 people doing everything from scheduling appointments, answering phone calls, greeting and rooming patients, and entering transactions for a full patient schedule is not only ridiculous, but incredibly unfair to the staff, clinician, and to the patients. However, no one in the administration thought that this was an undue workload. Thinking that my hard work might be acknowledged, I asked for a raise. I was promptly denied, and no one from the administration bothered to talk to me about it. Instead of trying to foster communication with employees to keep a quality staff, they have an attitude of “stop crying about everything.” And yes, that is a direct quote from a member of the administration. The pervasive attitude seems to be that rather than discussing employee concerns and possible solutions, employees should keep their mouths shut and soldier on.

PPNM loses quality employees on regular basis because of their lack of compassion and caring for the people who do the actual work in the clinics. This directly goes against the goals of both a non-profit and an organization that claims to support women and families......

......PPNM has no interest in maintaining a quality staff, just whatever staff will put up with their poor treatment and overworking. They don’t seem very bothered by the almost constant turnover in all of the clinics. Qualified employees are taken for granted, and there is essentially a revolving door of other employees who are just there to work, with no interest in women’s health or rights.

......In order to boost productivity, the schedules are extremely overbooked, and often the clinicians are not even able to take a lunch break. Staff and clinicians are not respected, and treated far worse than one would expect by a respected non-profit. Unfortunately, the term “non-profit” is often used as an excuse for the poor working conditions and low pay PPNM employees face.

When an organization is dysfunctional from administration down, it seems overwhelming and difficult to make any type of change. Any initiative I showed in trying to fix up the clinic was automatically shut down or ignored. I am sad that my time with PPNM ended this way, because I truly enjoyed working with the patients and staff. However, no one should have to put up with such a detrimental workplace. I am writing this letter in hopes that the board will intervene on the behalf of the employees of PPNM and most importantly, the patients, who will be much better served by happy employees in a positive, healthy environment......

Thank you.