The letter

I got the letter on Friday Oct. 16th. The one I've been dreading and knew would come since the day Columbia Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee signed the "partnership" agreement in 1995. It's time for everyone on the east side campuses (they don't call them hospitals anymore) to re-apply for their jobs. Now, the letter doesn't come right out and state that, it's put in a more employee friendly way. We actually have to state what are our job is, when we would like to work, and then our managers will place us in new positions. Now, I realize that I have completed my math requirements for college, but any 5th grader could pretty much tell you that CSM will not have enough job openings for all the employees currently working for both CSM Milw campuses. Columbia Hospital, which just celebrated its 100th anniversary this past summer will be closing in the fall of 2010. We are the ones who have lost in this merger and I really don't care what management tries to state otherwise. We bailed St. Mary's out of a financially ruinious situation, suffered the wage freeze when it happened and made CSM what it is today. Not St. Mary's. But we are the building closing.

And the trend to adopt St. Mary's way of life has been ingrained since that "partnership" agreement 14 years ago. Columbia lost it's identity, many of the employees have left, and there are few who remember Columbia Health System which competed with St. Mary's. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am making a life decison in changing my career. I've never thought of work as a career. I've never had ambition to get to management, have a high paying position, or otherwise make my work my career. Work has always been a way to pay bills and allow me to do the things I really cherish in my life. My hobbies, live without debt, be comfortable, play, and help others when they need it. Work is not the end all be all for me, and it never will be. My parents were hard working salt of the Earth people and that's pretty much where I get my work ethic from. Work is not my life. But it does take up a huge portion of it, and if that is going to be the case, I feel I should be happy where I work.

I've already told my boss that I will not go to the new hospital. Even if it does have a lake veiw. I want nothing to do with it. My office will be at a different CSM owned building, and luckily I have the type of job where I don't have to be onsite in order to complete my duties. But of late, I've been really trying to figure out if I want to stay. I've spent 20 years there, and come this January, it will be 21 years. I had hoped to make 25 years, but I'm not so sure I want to. Something about this whole new hospital deal makes me bitter that Columbia was used as nothing more than a financial springboard for St. Mary's to get a new building. And now, because the building is sold, Columbia is slowly turning into the (now closed) St. Michael Hospital and the standards are no where near what they used to be. Why fix, repair, clean, paint, upgrade, or care about a building that is being abandoned? Let the new owners take care of it. Even if they want that building. I'm guessing it will be torn down and new construction will be put up. I have solid tiger eye maple doors going to my office, a marble window ledge, 15 foot ceiling, wood trim, and plaster walls. I seriously doubt the new building will have any of those features or workers who even care enough to notice the difference.

It's going to be a blood-bath when the openings are announced. Not only will there be bitter unhappy people who didn't retain jobs, but the ones who do will be left to work short when all the non-job people quit. There will be no new hirings because who would be crazy enough to take a job just for a few months? So the ones left behind will be worked ragged until they too quit. The job lettings have happened twice now in the past year, and I expect more will come in this year. I worry about the quality of care and the reputation damage we will suffer, and I'm not sure I want to be part of that. I already get every horror story people can relate when they find out I work for a hospital. As if I alone either had some influence over their care, or can fix whatever problem they encountered. Especially when they find out that I mainly do billing. From my experience I've pretty much surmised that no one likes billing people.

In 1999, my husband and I won at auction, along with several other people, dinner with Anthony Daniels(C-3PO from Star Wars) when he was in town for Gen Con. The dinner was at the (now closed) Polaris Restaurant atop the Hyatt. He is a wonderful person in public, and I mean no disrepect to him, but at the very beginning of dinner, he went around the table trying to guess what everyone did for a living. He got to me, and had a very hard time guessing. In fact, he came back to me. After several wrong guesses he caved and asked me what I did. I stated that I did billing for the retail pharmacies for CSM. His smiled faded and he launched into a lecture about how you could die in a waiting room if you didn't have your insurance information in this country. I couldn't get a word in edgewise to defend myself because he continued to tell a story of an injury he suffered while filming something, had to go to the ER, and was insulted because the intake worker didn't recognize him and asked him for his insurance card. The person with him made a big production about who he was and apparently he got the treatment he needed. But then he also launched into how he would NEVER have been treated that way in England.

I knew, even back then and having had my current job for only a year, that was the way people were going to react to me when I told them what I do for a living. So, why then did it take me this long to make moves to leave? And why do I care so much? It paid the bills and because Columbia was one of the best hospitals in Milwaukee at the time. I also started out as a Pharmacy Technician, not in billing and enjoyed that job much more than what I do now. It's too bad they don't pay techs what I make as a billing coordinator.

So, those are my somewhat uncheery thoughts for a Sunday night. I miss Columbia and I am not looking forward to the coming year work-wise.