Oh be careful little mouth what you say...

[Cbarton]

Looks like the old Sunday School Song was right...


In my job as an Oncology Pharmacist, I precept or teach students in their final year of pharmacy school. They spend one month with me as I show them what I do and teach them about how to apply the skills they have been learning. It is fun and a rewarding expericence. One of the things we try to teach is professionalism, something I just learned my last student had none of, the hard way...

Earlier in the month, I was on my lunch break in my office. I eat there since I'm always being interrupted if I leave to eat (my beeper is called my 'electronic ball-and-chain' for a reason...). My student is out at lunch as well. I call my wife on my cell to keep the office line free. She is stressed from her master's degree courses, plus a PC that is not working right (later found 2 viri and 4 malware). I reassure her and tell her I will take her in my arms and fix thngs when I get home. My student walks in durng the phone call (door is closed but we use electronic keys, all the students I have get programed for entry). I finish the call and we get back to work.

Later that week, she starts to gossip with one of her classmates about my cell call to my wife. They (not sure which one or if both) start to misconstrue what I said to my wife and play it up as phone sex. One of the other pharmacists who has students hears them talk about it, puts the apparent 2 and 2 together and fills out a report accusing me of creating an aura and atmosphere of SEXUAL HARRASMENT for my students in my office.

The people at Human Resources and my bosses meet. They decide to confront me. I am called into my bosses office and told of the charges. Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about. I told him I had no memory of a 'phone sex' conversation with my wife, esp. on the job with someone in my room. I'm not that kind of guy. I had two choices (1) Resign my postion to protect my resume and ability to get a good referral off my resume or (2) contest it and either be (a) proven innocent or (b) found to be guilty and be terminated on the spot!

Yes, I was accused of sexually harrassing my student for being a good hubby and reassuring my wife....

I denied the charge. So I was given the rest of the day off I since I could no longer concentrate on my job or my students (gee..I wonder why...). So the day was spent seeking after outside counsel from trusted friends and pastor, calling an attorney, meeting with my wife to try to rmember ANY call that could have been taken that way, and preventing mutual panic by either one of us.

24 hours later, they found out the truth and the charges were considered unfounded. All from the malicious gossip of two students. The reporting pharmacist had no axe to grind but was reporting what she heard, like anyone would in our position of influence. Plus being 40ish, white, male, and in a 'power' position makes me a sitting duck for such charges. I had already turned in my grading sheets on her, including high marks for professionalism. If I had only known...

The laugher is that on her evaluation of me, nothing was mentioned. She gave me PERFECT marks on all catagories, telling me how great I was and that I should be teaching at the university. Now I wonder if that was truth or a smokescreen. No way to know.

SO....be careful on the job everyone. A normal, private call to your spouse on your lunch break could get you fired!

If this wasn't true and so nearly tragic to my career, it would be a great sitcom script....

 

[nessonite1]

Someone filed a report against you for sexual harrasment based on someonething someoneelse said that he didnt even witness himself??
Man people are so quick to jump the damn gun when it somes to stuff like this.

 

[waddleman1]

And....this jerk files this claim against you....because someone, came into your office unasked, and heard you talking to your wife. People these days, they'll jump on anything.

 

[BigNorm]

from your wife's night in shining armor to a sexual pervert, not that's a huge jump because of some stupid gossip and a nosey co-worker who jumps the gun.

 

[coloman]

It's too bad that something like that could happen at your place of employment or any other for that matter but that's a sad fact of life today. I am glad to hear that the charges were determined to be unfounded and that you won your appeal. I don't think I could be as forgiving as you are as far as your coworker is concerned. It's very unfair that one student with a BIG mouth could start a rumor and get things so totally blown out of proportion. Like you said you found out the hard way to be careful of what you say even if only one other person is within earshot but now you know even though this situation should never have been allowed to progress as far as it did.

 

[Dussicar]

YEESH!

And all my friends wonder why I have issues with college students!

Pretentious little punks. They all have WAAAAYYY too much time on their hands and not enough brains to use it with.

My advice is to invite them out to a nice vegitarian dinner and then chase it with their P.E.T.A. membership cards down their throats sideways.

Sorry. I don't mean to over-simplify this disasterous situation. I just see this mis-directed nonsense a lot when dealing with these types of kids.

Hopefully, in the future, the enormity of this situation will rear up and bite them in the ass in the form of regret and concience. Perhapse a proper apology will be sent your way when they truly grow the hell up.

I can only hope this does not hurt your reputation.

 

[Cbarton]

Yeah, dussicar, it has not (yet) harmed my rep with the rest of the staff. The fellow pharmacist was only doing what she, myself, and the rest of the hospital are trained to do, which is be on the alert for the real thing.

To me, the lack of professionalism with this student was shocking. This was not your typical barely over 20 years old girl but a woman in her later 20's, maybe even 30. I would have expected more maturity form her, esp. since she is married as well.

Plus, I am in the government sector as well, so every policy comes with a 'hair trigger' approach that deals with race and gender. Not too much 'white male bashing' and, like with me, the system usually DOES work.

I am weighing the options of contacting the college of pharmacy to make them aware of this laspe in professionalism, which makes the school look bad as well. I am on the adjunct faculty with them and 2 other schools (which means I am unpaid staff basically, although the hospital gets paid for the students we teach) and willing preceptors are hard to find, esp. with the higher enrollments in phamracy schools these days. Not that I would stop, but these students need to know that yes, Virginia, there is still such a thing as being responsible for your actions. I doubt I can lower her grade at this point (I scored her high for professionalism, and if I lower that score her letter grade would go down). I have to wait until the pharmacist who coordinates the students returns from a conference in Uruguay that she was invited to speak and participate in.

My bosses were real upset because (1) they nearly lost a highly skilled oncolgy pharmacist (not a lot of us around) (2) they spent 10 hours of their time on this (including thier own time off duty chasing down leads and (3) we expect greater than this from our students, for we grade HARD at our facility. No grade inflation here! They went out of their way to seek out the truth beacuse they knew I had always been honest in the past with them, even if it maade me look bad. But, 'even though there is no real evidence, the seriousness of the charge' required them to put me through this. (thank you former Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D-Wash) for creating this precedent we have to follow now!)

It is a shame that this happened. But since others before misbehaved and others ignored it, now we have to jump the gun on everything. The irresponiblility of the 60's and 70's has risen up to bite us all in the rump.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

You can't say anything today without someone picking up on it and twisting it to something new and worse. At least you caome out of it relatively unscathed, Ky.

 

[general zod1]

Kyhawkeye
Glad you survived that crap that was said about you I am glad I drive big rig Person to person contact is kept to a bare minimum

 

[coloman]

I like your style kyhawkeye. In regard to your comment on former Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D-Wash) I really think our elected officials need to find something better to do with their time then to create stupid precedents that cause unnessary problems like you had to deal with. Under the First Amendment we still have the right to free speech in this country and we should be able to say what we want to when we want to without the fear of it being taken out of context.
I have an idea that would keep them too busy to come up with all the crap they do. Just take away their special program and make them retire on Social Security like the rest of us have to and they would change their tune and their tactics in about a New York second.

 

[HOLLYWOOD]

the hollywood brother thinks this is terrible and the hollywood brother even feels sorry for you. What sucks is that the hollywood brother wonders if this has hurt your character at your job at all?

 

[Cbarton]

the hollywood brother thinks this is terrible and the hollywood brother even feels sorry for you. What sucks is that the hollywood brother wonders if this has hurt your character at your job at all?

Not yet, for only those I haven chosen to involve know about it and plan to keep it that way. I felt the worst for my 2 students I have this month, since they had to witness this, esp. since one this month is female and had to show that she had nothing to worry about. But, for now, all is well.

Besides, I'm such a character anyway that no one will no the difference...(rimshot)

My biggest hope is that the other two learned their lesson and are held accountable. Not out of vengence or spite on my end, but so that it does not happen again to any others. I was lucky and had the truth and my bosses on my side. Another preceptor or employer might not be as fortunate...

 

[sole seeker1]

I am weighing the options of contacting the college of pharmacy to make them aware of this lapse in professionalism, which makes the school look bad as well.

IMO you need to go ahead and report the lapse. You have a responsibility to the student and her future employers as well. She obviously needs to learn the lesson of accountability. I shudder to think of the repercussions of a person who will one day occupy your position who has not matured enough to be responsible. I think that is at the heart of the issue.

By the way, fifteen years ago (when I first signed on with my current employer) one of the secretaries was gossiping about the person I replaced.

She was overheard detailing some of his womanizing pranks - she did not mention the subject by name, she just named the person by his (then) title, Chief of Security.

My boss came to me and gave me much the same choices you got, KY.

An internal investigation followed and the hierarchy learned she was talking about my predecessor.

In my mind, that was a more honest mistake than your situation, KY. Just the same, the secretary was chewed out by the big boss for gossiping. The potentially serious damage to my reputation from the tale was pointed out to her and the rest of the staff.

Sorry I got so long-winded. I guess I feel pretty strongly about this issue.

 

[Cbarton]

Our student coordinator is back from Uruguay now, so we'll see what happens.

 

[Hungarian21]

YEESH!

And all my friends wonder why I have issues with college students!

Pretentious little punks. They all have WAAAAYYY too much time on their hands and not enough brains to use it with.

that hurt.....😛XD

 

[SyDemon1]

The problems of gossip seem to plague every office. My girlfriend suffers from major politics in her company because of gossip. Quite amazing how some individuals can mouth off groundless statements about others and have listeners instantly convinced they are true. They must have a high rating in their Speechcraft (sorry too much Morrowind gaming).

Personally I see a certain equation:
Politics = bad mouther * believer * actor
where
Politics is the result,
bad mouther is the number of gossipers
believer is the number of people believing the bad mouthers
actor is the number of people that will openly change their political stance towards the victim of the gossip, regardless of truth

Gossipers are unavoidable (I may have done it myself without realising it)
Believers are unavoidable (friends are inclined to take another friend's word for it)
Actors can be minimised if only people be more professional about their working attitude. Private affairs aside, when there's critical work to be done, one cannot afford to let floating stories about a colleague prevent one from working effectively with him/her, especially if the stories are not even work related.

 

[Journia]

that hurt.....😛XD

Ditto.

 

[F.L. Atlanta 10]

gossip is deadly. glad that things worked out for ya kyhawkeye.