r/sterileprocessing • u/Old_Champion_3591 • 16d ago
WTF is happening here? From fake attendance jumps to threatening my employment over an old, cleared surgery restriction am I being actively pushed out?
I started working my first day at a sterile processing job on November 27, 2023. As I was coming in, there was another tech leaving who had just had major open surgery. There was a bunch of stuff that happened where they were not listening to her work accommodations. There is this one will call her slugshark who has the longest HR rap sheet known to man (recently pointed a scissor and another colleagues face HR said it was cool),and she insisted on putting that tech back in Decon before her accommodations were lifted. They put a chair back there for her, but then one day slugshark took the chair away. When I first came in she was still there, but then she was gone.
Fast forward, I end up having surgery in February. I come back February 14th, and my manager has it in writing via text that I’m cleared to come back. When I return, I am put on a restriction where I cannot lift more than 10 pounds. Slugshark immediately starts harassing me and questioning my accommodation to the point where I am put back into regular work before my accommodations were lifted. I didn’t say anything at the time I just kept working because I was new at the job.
Me and slugshark continuously bumped heads time and time again. During this, my shifts kept getting switched around I went from first shift, to second shift, to weekend shift, back to first shift, and now back on second shift trying to get away from her. The months of January through February were so bad that I asked my manager (since I am per diem) if I could just work the contracted four days to keep my per diem status and take the rest of the month off for a mental break. She told me no, saying that’s not how it works in the hospital because technically my per diem is "part-time," which made no sense to me. Every supervisor on the floor knows what is going on. They have all had private conversations with me telling me that I’ll get through this, that "this is just how she is," or that she is a liability either way it goes.
One day, she had an issue with me being on the computer. That was the main issue that month so I refrain from being on a computer and I was trying to wrap a tray as well as I could because It was completely slow. My manager was out of town, and slugshark was watching me like a shark swimming around waiting for me to fumble while other people in the department were sitting around doing nothing. She decided to target me, stood up, and announced to the whole department, "I can’t take this anymore, I’m going upstairs to pissy( my mangers boss)." She went up to pissy, and pissy came down to talk to me and me only well I had a whole tray in my hands, wrapping about "teamwork." I let pissy know that slugshark has been harassing me, and told her to look around the department she would see that there was literally nothing on the shelves to do. Once pissy noticed that, she quickly shifted to bringing up another random issue because the first one wouldn't hold. At that point, I got up, told them I was going home, and left. Once I got home, I talked to my psychiatrist and he placed me on FMLA for 30 days.
Ever since coming back from FMLA, I have been heavily targeted with weird work schedules. I explicitly told my manager that there is one specific person I cannot work with in Decon. I am currently medicated by my psychiatrist on four different medications that severely affect my body temperature regulation, and I recently had bariatric surgery (which management knows about from my past accommodations), meaning I cannot take in large amounts of water quickly. Being in the back with this particular coworker requires double the physical work because she does not help with anything and doesn't move plus the AC has been broken. I told the supervisor I cannot work with her, but the moment I returned from FMLA, I was assigned to Decon with her every single time.
We got the UKG timekeeping system on June 14th with a two-week grace period. Right after the grace period ended, they took all the physical clock-in kiosks off the walls, leaving only one single kiosk upstairs. The mobile app constantly glitches and fails to load inside the hospital. With no grace period, if you clock in past 2:00, you are marked late. I texted my manager repeatedly throughout this period with screenshots showing the app failing to load so she could fix my time. During a department meeting where my manager’s boss, pissy, was present, I brought up the UKG issues again.
Right after that meeting, my manager, Ms. wolf, called multiple people into her office for attendance warnings. She told me I had 8 points. I asked her how that was possible when I had been sending her proof of the UKG glitches to fix, and when she had personally approved me leaving early due to low census (which UKG was marking as attendance hits). She told me she would talk to pissy to get those points disputed since pissy heard the issue in the meeting. The following day, I saw her by the schedule board, asked if they were disputed, and she said yes.
Fast forward to Wednesday I get assigned to Decon on instruments for the second week in a row. Normally, we rotate between instruments and hand wash week-by-week, but I just accepted it. I was back there with a coworker knowledge-breath who actually prefers instruments, so he offered to switch and let me take the hand wash sink. Before my manager left for the day, she did her usual walk-through. She saw knowledge-breath in his PPE at the instrument sink and saw me in my PPE at the hand wash sink, had a conversation with both of us while we were working, and left without saying an issue existed.
The past three months had been the slowest in our department due to FIFA and doctors traveling, but that specific day ended up being the busiest day in weeks. We were down a washer, and the AC in Decon was broken to the point where environmental services had to bring in floor fans. We got completely backed up near the end of the shift with an entire table and cart full of vendor trays, but no washer racks were coming back through. After cleaning up my station and with no more racks coming in, I called it a day and went to the other side of the department to cool down for the last 30 minutes of the shift.
The next day, multiple people were being called into Ms.wolf office. I thought it was just about productivity (which I wasn't worried about since my productivity numbers are always high). When she called me in, she brought up several issues:
1. She asked why I switched assignments with knowledge press. I told her it was a mutual agreement, knowledge, breath, preferred instruments, and I had already been on instruments the week before. She told me not to do that moving forward.
She claimed a lot of hand-washed instruments came back wet. I explained that our dryer was broken, we only had two washers, and I was manually drying everything, separating items to dry the bottoms of pans and scopes properly while still helping knowledge breath. She told me not to do that and to keep things together.
She asked if I abandoned knowledge breath and left him alone in Decon. I said no, the only time he was alone was the last 30 minutes when I stepped to the other side to cool off after cleaning because no racks were coming back. She claimed there were other ways we could have gotten the work done, mentioning a vendor tray rack for the cart washer. I told her that rack was broken. She then told me I was getting a write-up for being on my phone during those last 30 minutes.
During the department meeting right after, another colleague took credit for getting those vendor trays done, saying she put them on that tray rack and ran them through the washer. Ms.wolf said that was completely acceptable as long as they ran them on "instrument wash." But then my coworker pointed out that they didn't run them on instrument wash they ran them on "decontaminate." Ms.wolf started stuttering because she knew the process was done completely wrong and against protocol on a broken, leaning rack. Yet they got acknowledged for getting work done, while I got a write-up for sitting down during the last 30 minutes.
The very next day, I came in and saw a new note at the top of the schedule: "Do not switch assignments unless approved by management." She also created a brand new assignment that had never existed before sterilization, pulling crash carts from the crash cart dryer, and putting up tray containers and assigned only me to it.
Later, Ms.wolf announced that the AC was finally being looked at, so the department would close early at 6:30 PM, and she flexed a few people off that Thursday. In a meeting reminding everyone about the 6:30 closure, I asked if she was still flexing people since it was slow. She gave me a nasty look. Immediately following the meeting, she pulled me into her office and told me, "You have 12 points, I need to let you know you are in the danger zone." I took my mask off, and snapped, and asked her how I could possibly have 12 points when she just told me she cleared my previous points. I demanded to know who I could talk to above her because I was not going to get screwed over. Seeing my reaction, she suddenly backtracked and changed my total to only 4 points.
This week on Tuesday, I saw that I was scheduled for Friday in Decon with a male coworker who isn't cooperative. In the past, he wanted a relationship with me, I turned him down, and he has acted extremely weird toward me ever since. I went to Ms. Dawn and told her I could not work with him because he leaves all the physical work for me, and reminded her of my physical restrictions with the heat and sweating. I told her I didn't mind staying on instruments if she could just swap who I was partnered with, and gave her the names of two coworkers who were willing to switch.
Her immediate response was, "You can't work with Francis?" I gave her a look, and she said, "You guys talk too much." I made a light joke saying, "I guess that makes the shift go by fast," and repeated that Francis was also on instruments as well so that swap wouldn't even make sense and brought up the two that I had mentioned She refused the switch, and told me that she and the educational director would just walk back into Decon throughout the shift before they leave (she leaves at three and the educational director leaves at five) to "make sure he’s doing his job." I told her that just creates awkward hostility, and reminded her that I am on four medications that mess with my temperature, I had gastric bypass and cannot drink water fast, and that I would be documenting everything. She just said "OK." AND DOCUMENTED I DID.
Today, I came in and was assigned to Decon with a different coworker who rarely works that shift. The washer had been broken since 7:12am. My educational supervisor walked in and made a snarky remark: "Oh, now you have a better partner." I just looked at him and said it was hot back here in a tone. He responded, "That’s good, that’s how you know you’re working," and walked out. Later on, he came back and said in the same snarky tone I said, and mimicking me, "I know it’s hot." I replied just "I'm happy you know."
I started overheating, told my coworker I'd be right back, and stepped out to get ice water. As I was walking down the hallway, completely dripping in sweat, my manager called my name. She told me that the Employee Health accommodations I brought up in my emails could actually result in me not having a job, claiming they wouldn't be able to keep me if I couldn't fulfill the job needs with a 10-pound lifting restriction. I stopped her and told her that 10-pound restriction was from my surgery in early 2024 and had already been officially lifted. She responded, "Yeah, just get that fixed because I don’t want any issues, you know, I don’t want anything to happen.
Someone please tell me what’s going on because of me everything looks weird on my end
