So here is what happened, in a nutshell: I've been "warring" with the housekeeping department at work for close to two years now. They slack on vacuuming and taking the trash out and dusting and all sorts of other shit. I've been emailing their supervisor for the last two years. Usually when I do say something, the housekeeping staff that works at night will clean shit for about a week and then go back to their lazy slacking ways. It's really fucking aggravating. But last week took the cake. The floors in my docs' offices were looking so funky that there was shit all over the carpets and one of the patients took notice and brought it to my attention. The poor little dude offered to COME IN AND CLEAN HIS DOCTOR'S OFFICE HIMSELF! One of our veterans (whom we are supposed to be serving) actually felt bad for his doctor and offered to come in after hours to clean the office himself. That. Is. Fucked. Up.
Of course, that is so beyond embarrassing for a patient to say about an office in my clinic; but this is something that's a little beyond my control, because unless I bring in my own vacuum cleaner, I'm shit out of luck to keep the shitty carpet looking a little less shitty. I have, however, on occasion, tracked down one of the day shift housekeepers and asked him or her to drag the vacuum cleaner out of their closet so that we could borrow it in our clinic to vacuum. THAT is ridiculous, since folks actually get paid to clean our clinic and the whole fucking hospital.
So, you know that I was just a bit tipped over when that happened, and I had to send an UBER SHITTY e-mail to the housekeeping supervisor. I sent my e-mail, which was very professional, but so blatantly bitchy (as I cited the six different dates when I e-mailed this same person since 2012) that I could hear eyes rolling as people read it. That e-mail was oozing with snotty bitch-hole evil. I giggled as I hit "send." Yes, I sent that bitch to everyone and their brother and let it be known that I had a veteran offering to come clean his doctor's office because it was filled with spider webs, spider sacs and shit all over the carpet. Yes. It was THAT bad. I included my boss. I
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Needless to say, my hissy fit via e-mail produced the desired results. Sometimes, you just have to get professional psycho on some bitches when nothing else works. But, I would caution against doing the whole "evil e-mail" thing without following a few key pointers:
1. Proofread, proofread, proofread! If you want to be heard, you'd damn sure better use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. The fastest way to get your e-mail just scanned, skipped or discarded is to allow it to be filled with grammar "gross errors." You look stupid, lazy and careless. Who the hell wants to help you with shit when you don't even care enough to proofread?
2. Be brief. I struggle with this one because I'm one of the wordiest bitches around. When I write out my snotty e-mail, I let myself have my verbal diarrhea for the first draft - and that's only because I need to get the shit off of my chest. Kinda like a therapeutic catharsis of sorts. After the first draft, I go back and cut out the wordy shit or condense things where I can. I also go back again and put bullets or numbers in to make it look all organized and shit.
3. Throw in a few hundred dollar words - but not too many! You throw in one or two words that bitches have to look up, and that makes you look smart. You throw in more than that, and all you look like is a pompous asshole. One of my favorite phrases to end an e-mail is, "The aforementioned is offered for your edification." Boom! Looks all legal-like and shit, which usually makes people get a little squirrelly.
4. Throw in figures, dates, and any other "stats" when you can. And then offer to provide said stats to them upon request. THAT pisses people off to no end - when they know you have facts to back your shit up, but you were kind enough not to embarrass them by publishing the whole article or cutting and pasting the whole e-mail in the current message. And then you pull out the, "I'd be happy to provide you with those articles/e-mails/spreadsheets if you need to refer to them" line - hahahaha - that shit is GOLDEN right there. *Key note: do NOT make your facts and figures up. Make sure they're real. If you make that shit up, you deserve to have it blow up in your face. Trust me - I have called out one too many a fucker on their made up shit and they have looked so ridiculously stupid that nobody would ever loan them a minute of their time to hear anything else they had to say.
5. Name dropping: IT WORKS. I don't mean name-dropping like you know Taylor Swift's cousin's housekeeper's next door neighbor. Who gives a shit?? No, I mean like - you straight up refer to the fact that shit has gotten so fucking serious (hence your tantrum) that not only are you letting your boss know, you're letting your boss's boss know. And then you cc: them on the e-mail. DO NOT FUCK WITH THE CHAIN OF COMMAND. If you want the top dog to hear your hissy fit, you'd better make damned sure that each of the 27 middle-managers between you and the top dog hear your hissy fit too. Fucking with the chain of command blows up in your face. I highly recommend against it. You piss off ONE person in that group of 27 middle-managers, and they can fuck your shit up for future tantrums that you might need to throw.
Follow those simple rules and RANT your ass off (with "controlled aggression") in your e-mail, and you, too, shall yield the results that you desire. In other words: throw a tantrum to get your way. Usually, you get what you want because they just don't want to hear your ass anymore. Works for me.
2 comments:
Sounds like your efforts were successful. I'm betting they'll continue to clean the shit out of that office, if only to keep from inspiring another of your bitch-a-grams.
Well done!
Any chance you could get our millionaire governor to expand Medicaid in TN while you're at it?
HAHAHA! Squat, my victories are small...taking on Medicaid expansion is probably a little beyond my skill set.
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