Week One - part deux

It’s a sad statement about the quality of people the State of Nevada promotes into administrative roles when the newly promoted Deputy Administrator of the Rehabilitation Division won’t even bother to return a phone call or set up an appointment with a recently discharged member of her own staff. As I last wrote, on Wednesday the Deputy Administrator, Janice John, left me a voice mail message in response to a letter I had hand delivered requesting an exit interview. I had returned the call within a couple of hours and politely requested, this time verbally, an exit interview reiterating my desire to have an HR Advocate present - not because I want to appeal the decision to release me from employment prior to making permanent status - but because I had been treated so suspect during the process.

Keep in mind that Ms. John had been on the interview board that hired me, and it was my belief that we had a good working relationship. I was always courteous, professional, and a team player. It strikes me as very peculiar that, after 11 months of employment, I would be refused the common courtesy of an exit interview; something that State employees are supposed to be able to receive, from what I’ve learned this week.

My voice mail message had been left Wednesday, and I requested a meeting for Friday (today). Ms. John was given ample time to return my call, and set up a "witness" on her own behalf, something she had been advised to do by the DETR Personnel Officer III she contacted, Karen Belleni. I became privy to their game plan when Ms. John didn’t hang up the phone after leaving me her message that she would call me back later - which she did not do.

Ms. John to Ms. Belleni, "I think I’ll ask her for a time... I won’t talk to her. I think I’ll just simply say we want to meet - the three of us."
"You might have someone with you, just as a witness...," responded Belleni, later adding, "I would try to keep her out of the Maryland Parkway office." Fortunately Ms. Belleni did recognize that I cannot be denied services, should I request them.

Fortunately, despite not being respected by the Deputy Administrator or the Personnel Officer III, I was able to find out most of the information I wanted and needed to know about my final pay and benefits by making about 10 calls yesterday to various agencies, each which referred me on to someone else, until finally I spoke with a very straightforward supervisor in State Payroll, Michelle. Michelle was able to explain to me that my last pay check, counter to what my supervisor mumbled to me as he escorted me out of the JobConnect on Monday, will be pay period 17 and will arrive on the regularly scheduled pay day in two weeks. My annual leave will be paid sometime in March, depending on how quickly accounting operates, after I have received my last check and accrued my last portion of leave (four hours every two weeks). As for my insurance coverage; I was specifically discharged on the 31^st of the month so that I would have no insurance for February.

The insurance issue was the most flabbergasting to me, given that I had incurred hand strain and back pain due to my job and the poor equipment I was given; was seeking treatment through my personal medical insurance (paying my own co-pays, etc); and have not even received word back from the neurologist as to whether the problem with my hand is carpel tunnel syndrome; and bam! The powers that be decided to make sure I had no access to insurance to continue my treatment. I didn’t file a worker’s comp claim, as I could have, I simply handled it through my insurance, although my unit supervisor, my supervisor, and the Deputy Administrator were all aware of my work-related physical problems.

The attitudes of the administrators in the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation exemplify what I absolutely cannot stand about working in social services. My job as a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor was to assist people with disabilities to find work. Yet when employees of BVR have problems at work, that can be temporarily disabling, they are ignored, swept under the rug, and treated as unimportant. Even in the larger organization, the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, I worked with a woman who had to use a cane to walk. Do you think the Site Administrator would give this devoted, but disabled, employee a handicapped parking space near back the door? Absolutely not - the back parking lot was reserved for supervisors and tenured folks.

In his famous "I have a dream" speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. stated his desire to reach a point in time in which his daughters would be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. My dream is for State programs such as Voc Rehab to be judged, not by the tone of the good they are supposed to do, but by the content of their character.