The First Week on my Own

Orientation is now over! I had my first shift as a nurse yesterday. It was good, bad, ugly, and crazy all at once. One of the girls told me that she "made sure" that when the charge nurse made the assignments that the two of us were given easier assignments since it was our first shift on our own. I know that she meant well but the night shift is really no comparison to day shift in anyway. I walked in thinking "Oh, that was really nice of you to think about us," and it quickly turned into, "Even though you were trying to be helpful, your night assignment is the shittiest assignment for a first "On My Own" shift during the day." I had people going everywhere at all times and more surprise stat orders than you could feed a pig! On top of that, I had an urgent situation that kept me on my toes and one in my assignment that was not only monopolizing time but terrorizing other departments and messing around with equipment making life very unpleasant for everyone.  I some how made it. I may have left very very late but I did not end up cowering a corner crying while ripping out all my hair. My mentor (preceptor) and many of my coworkers said that I did a great job my first day on my own. Even the charge nurse who I had to ask for help escalating a situation said that I did a great job because "No body every knows unless they ask." It felt good that my co workers checked on me to see how my day was going and to make sure that I was okay. It was also nice to have a fellow orientee on their first day who helped me out and was going through the same thing right beside me.

Things are moving along pretty smoothly right now. Wedding planning is moving along. I ordered my dress on Saturday and it went more smoothly than I thought. My mother said that she wanted to see the dress before I ordered it and I automatically thought of what happened with my sister. She ended up not getting the dress that she wanted and shopping for a long time giving into all of my mother's "demands" while trying on dresses. Now, my sister did find a dress she loved but from where I was standing she was kind of brainwashed into getting a dress that my mother wanted her to get. Of course, she tried to get me to try on a lace dress and other dresses. Then she wanted me to try on belts, I hate belts. In the end, she tried to put a veil on me. I had enough at that point. She said that she likes the dress and we (Jenny, the sales lady, and I) kept her in control but she kept trying to "improve" everything. "Well, how are you doing your hair? Will you put ribbons in it? Why not? How about flowers? Why don't you want a belt? You should wear a veil, you know that right?" In the end the comment was, " You might be thinking simple and that is not "BAD" but you are going to look too plain." I can safely say that I will not be wearing a veil or a belt because I like my dress and I think that she needs to back off. At lunch, she told me that I need to choose more "traditional" music. I don't like traditional wedding music, so I will not be letting her in on anymore planning. I just get annoyed because she does not realize that she wants me to do things that I don't like.

She is still pushing to meet with Marc's parents. He said it is not going to happen but she keeps nagging me about it. Like I can make his parents go to dinner with you because you feel the need to give them duties and plan out what you are wearing for the wedding. FYI, I can't. She is just going to have to deal. She is also pushing me to apologize and "make up" with her mother. She keeps telling me "You need to fix things by Christmas." She gives me this guilt trip every time and every time it just reminds me how she thinks that her mother calling me stupid, undeserving, and a horrible person is my fault and that the second time it happened she told me I was a horrible person and that I ruined Christmas for everyone. She seriously thinks that I am in the wrong and that I am at fault for everything. She also thinks that I made up the fact that her mother called me all those things and the second time smacked me in the face when she was in the room to hear AND my FATHER told her it happened. She only thinks of herself and what is good for her. She put her self in the middle of this and "it made her so sick" that she "couldn't eat" knowing that there was a "rift"  and that I had hurt her mother. She never asked ever about me. She just yells at me and insists that I need to fix all the harm that I have done. Apparently, the fact that I don't come to family events and avoid all of them at all costs has not made it cross her mind that I don't care about repairing a relationship with this woman. It is sad because I miss the rest of my family but unfortunately no one crosses her.  Until my mother gets her nose out of it and realizes that she hurt me as well by calling me a liar and telling me everything is my fault, I really don't want to see her or them. I can safely say that I don't think about any of unless she brings it up, which pulls me out of my beautiful world that had been being built quite nicely with someone else!

Keeping my chin up and my thoughts positive because being on my own at work will be rough and the wedding planning will be crazy but I have people that I love and who are great all around. The support system that I have formed outside has been almost a dream!

Going From the Inbetween to the New Normal

It is the halfway point! I am three weeks into orientation and three weeks away from dealing with patients, families, doctors, and the regular shit storms that follow on my own. I think I can handle the patients and the families but the doctors have become probably the most "delicate" group to work with in the list. I think that they will be the most challenging to deal with because even if you have all the information, a pretty sizable portion of them have no problem ripping a nurse a new orifice because they have to call them to clarify an order that makes no sense or is dangerous for the patient. The floor is busy I think just about everyday I have had a person (if not more than one) make the day a complete bubble of insanity. I have been lucky because my preceptor is amazing and does not get mad and yell at me when I tell her I don't know this step or this is as far as I can take this because I do not know where to go from here. She uses it as a teaching moment and then we work through it together.

There have been perks to this new job. I finally have a paycheck in which my life can be comfortably lived. I am no longer working two jobs or one job to the bones of my fingers just to be able to go to the grocery store and put gas in my car. Now, don't get me wrong, my job is crazy busy and I don't think a nurse ever really just gets to stand around or even sit for more than a few seconds without something popping up. Everything is earned.

On a funnier note, I decided to get a new phone. I am way over due for one and I can afford it. I went to just shop around because there was one that I had my eye on. While I was looking through my options at the store, I some how managed to, while bringing my arm down to my side, drop/launch my phone on to the platform of the wall display. I managed to shatter my current phone into three pieces, plus the battery. The sales person then stated, "I think you maybe one of those people that require an otterbox so that your phone survives more than an hour...." I really did not take offense to that because it seemed to be true at that moment. It is a good thing that I decided to get a new phone because when he tried to transfer my contacts it wouldn't work. It seems that I managed to damage the data/charging port of my phone in the drop/launch.

The apartment is lovely!!! I still am spreading out way too much, lol! I am not sure how he puts up with it because I can safely say I have decorated the living room with all of the things I use on a regular basis this weekend. I have to make sure to clean it all up.

The wedding planning is going well. The printer and I have set a plan to have a final invitation printed and packaged for purchase by November 20th. If we have them this early it will be easier in the future. He has been slightly freaking out because he was thinking that the big stuff was going to be the issues but he is now more worried about the millions of little things that are involved in the planning. It is good that we are a head of schedule so we will get to the small nitty gritty things faster then we need to but they will be a lot of things that if they are left until the last second they will be forgotten.

The beginning

It has started. I am three (?) weeks into a 6 week orientation phase and I feel that it is so far so good. I am getting used to the unit and increasing my patient load one week at a time. Yesterday, I started my week of three patients per shift. This new number might take the whole week to get used to. I felt good about the situation and I felt like I did what I was supposed to do but I had a BUSY assignment. It was one of those shifts where it takes you over twenty minuets to get out of a room, and it has nothing to do with the tasks that need to be preformed. I did however have my first (current) taste of overtly aggressive people. I have had this happen before but this was the worst ever and I actually started walking out of the room when this would happen. It may not be the best way to handle things but it was better than yelling.

My preceptor is pretty nice. She is really laid back but we have a meeting at the start of shift, our breaks and at the end of the night. This gives us time to catch up and get on the same page. So far, she said that I am doing great but that it will be easier to judge what I need to work on/improve when my patient load gets higher. I can understand that. I know that I told her last night that I was feeling a little frazzled because of the assignment but I knew that I needed to be introduced to it sooner rather than later. I really appreciated that she did this on a weekend because it was not as busy. She does things that makes sense I can agree with that. 

Getting back on track at the gym has been rough. My schedule rotates days and nights so it is kind of rough to get my body back into the swing of things or into a swing that I can keep up. Since it rotates, I don't have certain days off every week and I do not get the same shifts every week. Making a schedule and sticking to it is a little hard. I am still only able to walk on a flat treadmill which is the worst workout ever. I need to find a way to spice it up. Some weight training would be good but every time I am done one the treadmill I just want to shower and leave, no matter how pathetic the workout was. The gym is just set up so weird. When I was running outside I would come in and to arms and abs no problem. When I finally get cleared to run outside again, I am going to have to invest in some cold gear just to get in a good run. I will still use the gym for weights but the cardio outdoors seems to suit me better.

I still wonder if I made the right job decision... I don't think I will ever know but I have to go through all the steps to find out.

The beginning has begun

I am officially an employed RN! I went through the painstakingly tedious orientation that dealt with the benefits and history of the company. It is the second time that I have experienced this particular part of orientation but we must do what we need to do.  After that it was a week of classroom work and presentations to learn the policies and procedures of the specific hospital that I am working at. This is not so bad but it is just as tough to sit through 8 hour days now as it was for nursing school classes. The big difference is that I was getting paid to do one and not the other. Friday was my first day on the unit. It was really a day to learn where everything is located and to get the feel of how things flow. I can safely say that my unit will not be boring! My preceptor so far is pretty awesome. She laid out the plan to get me up to speed with being on the floor and I am agreeable to it. I am actually really happy with who they placed me with because she seems to be pretty open about how everything is going to go and she seems to be someone who will be a constructive teacher. I still really wish that I would be in the critical care units or in the emergency department but this will be a good place to get in and get my feet wet. Many people have told me that the floor that I am starting on will be a good stepping stone to either place later on. So I think that I will have to make a plan and see where I want to go in the next year or two. I know that I want to start back to school after about a year off and just working. This way, I will have at least half of the tuition forgiveness taken care of and a year of experience that is uninterrupted and concentrated under my belt. As for school, it will be a choice between RN to BSN or RN to MSN. Both programs will take about the same time but one will take me to just a bachelor's and the other will take me to master's (rolling my bachelor's degree in along the way). I guess when the time comes it just depends on how many degrees I want to have. I figure that I might as well go with the RN to MSN because I will end up with more at the end of the same time period.

This Saturday marked a BIG milestone for me, despite how small it seems to everyone else. I am FINALLY working only one job for an extended period of time (and possibly for the rest of time!). I am not long on the management team at White House Black Market and it feels good to not have to go into work on my day off. The stress of dealing with a person being promoted to a position that she can't handle and everything that was being piled on top of that is great to be free from! I know that another person of the management team is also leaving. She found a position that will make her much happier and give her a better schedule in life. I am really proud of her because I know that she was really unhappy with where she was in the company and how she was being treated. Our district manager even admitted that she did not have a "fair shake" with the company. I know that the store manager is not happy with they way things are going. She is in panic mode right now. Half of her management team has jumped ship in two weeks and right now there is a HUGE possibility that the other sales lead will be leaving as well. I am hoping that she gets through her interview and gets to interview with the district manager. She is being passed over for a promotion to assistant store manager. She has been told that she needs to post an add on craig's list for a new ASM. I know she is angry and I would be too. I think that a new job with a new company would be good for her. She needs to go somewhere that the company is not against them just because of the store they are working in. I started to see this when I first started working there. I had been promoted for about a week or two and I felt very pushed to the side and always berated even for my best efforts. Making numbers and big accomplishments were never a reason to celebrate because they were not as great as if another store had done the same thing. We never got credit for doing amazing things that never happened in our store.

Tomorrow will be me second day on the floor as long as we don't have class. As far as we know, our whole orientation class, is under the impression that we will be on the floor on tomorrow so that is where I will show up. I do have to talk to our unit manager about some schedule conflicts for the classes that I am scheduled for this month.

There is stress but it is a different kind of stress.

Leaving the old and starting the new

Tomorrow is orientation for the hospital system I will be working for. I will be sitting through an orientation day from 730am to 5pm. That is a very very long day. I have done this once before and can safely say I may just fall asleep for part of it. After tomorrow, I will be at the hospital that I will be stationed at for the rest of time. I am still questioning whether the money was worth it but I guess we will see soon enough.

In the same step, I am only one week away from being out of retail. This means that I may not be living paycheck to paycheck anymore. My work hours will still be quite insane. They will be rotating shifts and I will have to work holidays but I am already used to never having weekends or holidays, ever in my lifetime.  I know that with this field of work that I will never have these days off until I am about, oh say 90 and dead, but I guess that it would be worth it. I am hoping that this will make affording life and a wedding much easier than it currently is. Leaving retail will be one of the best things ever! I have been there way too long and have dealt with too many stupid things that I can't believe even happen half the time.

It also looks as though I am getting out at just the right time. On my heels, Sam is leaving as well. She is waiting for her job acceptance letter and some specifics before she submits her 2 week notice but as of this morning she is still set on leaving. After she (and the rest of us) found out that the plans for the store were not going to pan out as they were told to us and our store manager who was leaving, things got really really bad. There was a really shady plan going on and they brought in an ASM from another store to see if she is ready to get a store of her own.  Not cool. Sam has not been happy and I don't blame her. This person that they brought in has no idea what she is doing. She has not hired any new associates, delegates tasks to people who do not get compensated for these tasks, offends customers and sales staff, and she is very poorly organized. There is much much more of her incompetence than can fit on a blog. On top of this, her private life is interrupting the functioning of the store on an everyday basis even when she is not there. These are not the traits of a good or competent leader. Half of her management team is leaving with just the two of us finding other jobs. She is going to shit her self and freak out when Sam gives her notice. This is going to leave her without resources and a team to do her work for her. She is going to have to do it herself, which will never happen. Her store manager at another store that she still reports to and the DM think that she is behind everything, even when she and I sign something. I am hoping that they wise up and see that this was a horrible move on their part. I know that the DM does not like our store in any way shape or form but the way she acts towards us is really just belittling and unprofessional. I feel as though these girls that I am working with are not getting the recognition they deserve for the jobs that they are doing and that needs to change. I am hoping that two members of the management team leaving and a third trying desperately to get out wave a HUGE red flag that something it wrong.

To be getting out at the right time is good. To be taking a step in the right direction is amazing. The new is scary but it can be done.

Moving on Moving on

It is getting close to move on in the job world. I have accepted a nursing position and will be starting at the end of the month. It is not my dream job but it could be much worse. I have either six months or a year if I decide that I want to transfer. I am hoping to be able to spend at least a year to two years on this floor and then move on to critical care or emergency nursing. I have to start somewhere.

It is only Tuesday and I am not sure how well I will survive this week, let alone the next few. This new stretch assignment assistant manager that we have been surprised with is not going well at all. She is being the face of the manager at another store in the district. I am not a fan of how she thinks that if a person does not buy something, the sales team did something wrong. I can safely say that people really do walk into our store just to waste time and browse. We can only control so much but this whole world of behaviors and ambushing is really starting to get to me. I think it is getting to me way faster than it did at my other store because this woman is up in my face. She does not think/act like any one on our store team knows what they are doing at all. We have one girl who has a bonus sale almost every time she works and this woman is wondering why the sales associate is looking at her like she has three heads (that she would like to chop off) when she is asking her "What did you do wrong? What behavior should you be utilizing?" blah blah blah.  I look at the woman like she has three heads because even though I took a break from the company, I think I still out rank her in years of service... That is sad. I don't know why this woman is on the path to get her own store because today, I has to deal with screwed up registers and insanity. I had an issue even opening the registers because this super genius closed all the empty register drawers with the key in the register...Smooth. She apparently has the extra key and if she were not there this morning, I would have had a hell of a time trying to open the registers, without the bank, let alone the store. So, I finally get the registers open and what do you know, register two is short a dollar. All the paper work from the night before says that the register was closed even and with a deposit. I was really unhappy not to find the dollar that was missing. I was happy to find that he did not mix up the register bags like she almost did the one night.She is just a wreck and none of us have any respect for her as a boss because she has shown us sooo many times that she can't handle it. She has no communication skills and is like a puppy that needs Ritalin.

On other notes in life, I have not been running or going to the gym. Sadly, I have to get my foot checked out because it hurts to wear regular shoes. I have no clue what I did to my foot but it does not seem to be good. I wore some new not really broken in shoes to a wedding in mid August and thought that this was the issue. I was hoping it was just a bruise and nothing more. I kept running and working out at the gym and it just continued to get worse. It was starting to get better for a while and then it flared up again. I am hoping that it is not a break of any kind. Broken feet are not fun. I am also hoping that it is not anything that will require any sort of surgery because with starting a new job, getting married, and just trying to stay sane there is no time for surgery and the recovery period that comes along with it. I am hoping that the worst thing that happens is that they boot me for a while. The best would be just a bruise and I can get back to running.

without getting trampled on or taken advantage of

I am not sure how much longer I am going to be able to run on all engines without all the supplies I need... I feel like I am always at work ( I understand that is mostly my doing) but how is a person supposed to not be homeless without a paycheck?? It has been confirmed that I have done more than my fair share of schedule manipulation and extra hours to help out at work and get things to where they need be, but some how people seem to think that I am not doing ANYTHING to aid the store. Just this past week, the other person in the same level position as me, found out that I was switched to an opening shift because the spot needed to be filled so that the store could be opened for the day and this caused an open spot in the evening. We called a new associate to see if she would be able to fill in but the answer was no. We also had three potential new associates that would be able to fill the gap but, one was not in the system, another not going to be working for another week, and the third decided that she was not coming to work for us anymore. The two other associates that are barely ever at the store were called and both declined to come in and one girl tired to trade a shift (??)! All I heard about the rest of the night was how SHE was going to have to work ALL day, blah blah blah. In between the bitching and moaning I kept hearing, "Unless you want to work a split shift... You can work a split shift!" which was followed quickly with "No, I can not work a split shift" in an increasingly annoyed tone.  Needless to say, the other girl ended up working the double shift with an attitude of a 5 year old (with tantums to match) along with complaints of how she doesn't have a enough hours so that she can pay her bills. Answer me this, if a double shift falls into your lap when you can't pay your rent WHY would you try to give it away and complain about working it when you KNOW you need the money?! I was more than done for the night. I also did her a favor when she asked and she became extremely angry with me and started to cry...Yeah... then she expected me to drive her home after she refused to talk to me and was basically a brat! When I said no, she turned and ran away from me and the next day proceeded to tell the assistant store manager that I hate her and that I really did not have anywhere to go that night. I can not wait to get out of retail. I like the store and I really like my assistant store manager but I can not deal with this girl much longer. Last night she was getting upset because I had a bonus sale and she did not. It just feels like such a drain to have to bring the attitude and moral of the store up all by yourself and it is twice as hard when she starts to get like this. I saw something last night and was informed by this girl that she did something that I found really shady and I don't know what to do about it. If anything is off I will know why and I will be going to the assistant.

I am still going after nursing positions but so far nothing. I am hoping to hear from at least one of two positions this coming week and then I am also hoping to get a call back for an interview that could be my dream job... I had a phone screening/interview yesterday as I was driving to the store. I am hoping that this HR office calls me in because it would be possibly the ultimate thing for me to at least even get an interview. I am hoping that my answers were appropriate but I didn't realize how much I struggled in school with work and all until I had to tell them everything over the phone. I can safely say that I have never been fired from a job but the hostess job I had and was never told that I was no longer working there does look VERY sketchy but I hope that ignore that.

The wedding plans are going. I found my dress! As soon as I have the time and I clear down somethings, I will be getting measured and placing the order! My mom wants to see the dress and I am okay with that but she is only seeing it when I go to get measured. My one sister made the mistake of  taking her to see the dress when she was still looking and ended up leaving behind the dress she fell in love with and going on a wild goose chase for another dress. That is not to say that she did not find another dress that she loved but she let someone talk her out of it and I don't want that and I will not tolerate it. My mom seems to think that we all need to try on bridal gowns and then MUST try on a lace dress. Not sure what her obsession is with lace but I am not in the position to spend that kind of money and I love this dress. It is perfect for the venue and fits exactly what I want. I am the one that has to wear it not her so I will see how truthful her comments were when she said she likes the dress BUT still wants to see it BEFORE I buy it....