Work dynamic making me stressed and quit
I’ve been a DA for 6 years and the start was initially kinda rough due to a very poor first job experience but eventually I quit crying about it, found a new job, made fast improvements, learned so many skills AND gained friends throughout the years that I now hold it close to my heart and am very prideful of what I do for the community.
Despite this deep love and despite how much I LOVE the way my office is neatly structured (procedure wise) as well as my role as PCC and DA, I don’t think I can continue anymore just by how it’s been between me and my coworkers. It makes me sad knowing I’m so early on in this career but am already so burnt just from working with the staff here. One of the DA’s is—and I’ll say it blatantly—lazy. “Allergic to work”, as my therapist said. She’ll huff and puff during work hours all day, leave the office to go make phone calls to friends or smoke for ten mins at a time, watch videos or scroll on social media in between patients when they could help up front or do sterile (sterile is backed at the EOD even when i help out), pass patients on to me or the other DA even when we’re clearly busy on the phone or with another patient face to face because they “don’t know how to do xyz”, make excuses every day to come in late, leave the earliest without excusing herself , and then complain she does a lot and doesn’t get paid enough or work enough hours. The other one is HIGHLY sensitive that not even a gust of wind should touch her. She literally cries everyday. She cries for hours while actively working or when bringing patients back every time she is constructively (keyword) critiqued, raises her voice and gets up close to our face when she’s agitated, makes petty comments about how she’s not being treated well by us that patients and doctor can hear, hides away and avoids people the second she picks up on even the slightest vibe change and verbally accuses them of “hating her”, stomp and sigh around the office and aggressively rub her face but won’t communicate why or if she requires help, report whoever she thinks is against her to the doctor with no hesitation based off assumptions, threatens to put her two weeks in or accuse doctor of wanting to let her go even though he literally loves her, and also makes excuses every day to come in late or leave early. We have never had an issue with her and even praise her for always being kind and hardworking. I’ve called her the best work mom before, because she is on good days. Every. Day. Guys. Everyday. I can’t even exaggerate this because it is a daily occurrence and I physically can’t lie about that at this point. Everything I do, they can do and vice versa except I have more tasks from being the only front desk/tx coordinator/ins coordinator. It’s always:
Dr: I need you guys to do xyz
1st DA: Oh I can’t do that because __
2nd DA: yeah me neither because __
Me: … so who will do it?
Dr: I need one of you guys to step up please. You all can do this
1st/2nd: silence
Me: ok. Guess I can do it
I don’t technically manage them but I am their lead and do both front and back automatically making me the middle man. I’m sorry, I can’t coddle these grown people when I’m the youngest person in this office. When I’m dealing with my own stuff, too. When I have a lot of work to do. When I show up ready every day, punctual, and smile even when I don’t feel well. I stay late and pick up on what they didn’t finish. I was going through a literal hemmorhage along with its after effects and still showed up to work, only asked for slight accommodations, and still put in an equal amount of work and effort to the point where the doctor got worried and literally urged me to stay put at the desk to rest. I was as pale as a vampire from heavy blood loss and still put my best foot in. However, when it comes to the other DA’s, they claim they technically have“the right to show up late” when a minor inconvenience happens such as no gas in tank or didn’t get enough sleep (real shit, heard these ones before). No. You don’t get to just leave everyone else in the dust. That’s not how that works and the reason why this work environment is so toxic is because we don’t flow smoothly and there’s always at least one complaint from someone. Always some fingers being pointed. There’s a refusal to hold ourselves accountable. Why? Can’t we just work and agree to help each other out? Do we really need to complain about everything? We are GROWN and we are WORKING. It isn’t like we’re chained to the office 24/7 with no food and water. By the way, once I started recovery, they took a week long vacation one after the other leaving me to work double column for a month straight while still in pain.
They complain about the type of patients they get even though they literally verbalized how they WANT that kind of column many many times. I was even skeptical and they established loud and clear that they were okay with the way we schedule. They also contribute to scheduling, not just me, so they have autonomy. They complain about “not having down time” but in between cleanings, doctor doesn’t need them to suction meaning they get 30 min to clean sterile, notes, or simply grab a bite. They don’t answer the phone unless I ask. When I use the call light to have help up front, they don’t come and if they do they go “what do you need?” as if 5 patients aren’t standing waiting to be checked in. We do one column/DA so they don’t jump around. So for example, if they have 6 recare patients in one day, that means they have a total of a 3 hr down time—not including lunch— that is just spread out. So what’s the problem? We are also a relatively slow office. We prioritize talking and educating over simply cleaning or doing a filling. So I wouldn’t say it’s a “doing a lot of busy work”. Does it take a lot of mental, physical, and emotional energy? Of course! All jobs do, anyway but we all share that load because of the pass off from front to back to front. Not to mention I have seniority so I was tasked to take large cases, high maintenance patients, and overflow. They get the easy appointments and when they request, they get the easy patients, too.
My point is we can’t function when even one member is lacking. Problem is there’s 2 of those here. I have my days so I’m not perfect but I don’t turn it into anyone’s problem or just pass on work and neglect them with my tasks. Of course there are days where I do the bare minimum just to get by but those days are ones with no provider and no patients because I have all day to take it slowly. Yet, I still get the job done completely before I leave the office. I’m not dedicating my life and soul to work— I’m just doing MY LITERAL JOB and it seems like that is so hard for my coworkers when it’s what we’re paid to do. How we make a living. They’re not underpaid either. The new grad (first one I described) makes $28. Fresh out of DA school and still in training and probation. When I graduated DA school just 6 years ago, I made $17. The other one is in the $30’s. I am too. I’ve already brought up this concern to management and they just suggested we try “team bonding”. I don’t think team bonding will help them figure out and stop the personal issues they’re bringing to work.
I wanna emphasize that we’re a small team, privately owned, and have less than 20 patients a day. We have short days and plenty of time off. Wtf are we doing crying in front of patients and/or complaining about too much work when this is nowhere near close to other clinics that are crappy and overbooked? This is what a DA does? It’s part of the job. Our role. What happened to work ethic and professionalism in their generation?
I’m fed up having to manage their big person emotions and personal lives being mixed in at the workplace. I’m tired all the time and go home completely drained even on our short days and it’s personally affecting my life because now I don’t have energy to study or do my homework and I have to wake up at 5 the next day for work. They aren’t students. They don’t have kids. Again, I love what I do and I like them outside of work as people but it’s not manageable to work with them anymore. They seriously either need a stern manager that will give them a harsh reality check or a therapist coworker. It’s either I find a new job and most likely become stressed adjusting to a whole new environment and set of people or I just quit completely now and focus on my studies (which I desperately have to do anyway since I’m about to finish college). One sounds better than the other, though I don’t wanna leave like this; bitter and resentful.
Has anyone else dealt with coworkers like this or have been driven to quit the field entirely because of that? I hope this post didn’t come off as mean. This is genuinely what I’ve been dealing with for months and I didn’t wanna jump to conclusions which is why I held it in for what felt like forever. Now it has gotten so bad that I have to vent. It’s that repetitive lack of communication and effort. So much “I don’t wanna do that so I just won’t” and “no, you do it. I don’t want to” leading to chain effect of tension build up and a skill plateau. Worst of all, patients are being negatively affected because they think we’re messy compared to the old staff members and that the emotional DA is getting treated wrongfully by how she cries when she gets corrected nicely. We will literally just remind her to do something and tears will already have welled up in her eyes? I’ve tried my best to be supportive every single day, even rubbing their arms on those especially worse days of theirs and going, “hey, it’s okay. You’re doing awesome and we love that you showed up” but I’m talking to a grown adult with far more life experience—what am I doing??? They don’t even do that to me. They retaliate instead. This ONE time I sighed, stressed, after they said at the end of the day that they wanted to leave early for family parties. They gave me a dirty look and sarcastically went, “Oh, you’re mad at us now?”. Like yes, I WAS because I had a literal exam after work that I needed to get to on time and I even TOLD them that the day before and they said they’d do anything to help me leave early. Because they left early without even saying bye, I had to stay back to clean their rooms before messaging my professor and rescheduling my exam.
So, yeah. I can’t do it anymore.