eric135

Star Trek Movie Review... 8 stars out of 5!!

GODS, what a good movie. I mean, I could just write that sentence for the next few paragraphs. Everything about it was great -- the characters, the acting, the action, the special effects, the one-liners, all of it.

If you're a Trekkie concerned about [whatever], just stop all that silly nonsense and go see the movie. [No spoilers until after the jump...]

• They totally explain the subtle (and not-so-subtle) divergence from the Star Trek Canon. At this point, they can do whatever they want with the upcoming movies and it will be ok (trust me).
• Every scene where you are introduced to the original characters is electrifying.
• When the first shot of the Enterprise 1701 came on screen, I shed a tear. She's an important character in the film and story and she's great in a bitch fight. She really gets a chance to clean her claws.
• The action is great. More importantly, it carries the film forward, and never seemed pretentious, extravagant or unnecessary.
• You get to know James Tiberius Kirk, and you know why he's the kind of guy that he is.
• The magical friendship between Spock and Kirk is pure and real and will make your heart ache. The neat thing is that, every once in a while, you can see William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy while watching Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto.

[Spoilers after the jump]

...of the myriad verbal and written reprimands that I have written over the past four years, it turns out that I have written up three times as many male workers as female workers.

I don't know why write-ups are on my mind of late.

One of my co-workers was talking about write-ups on our unit, and she told me that I was "known for being more lenient when disciplining males, but am more knit-picky toward females."

Well, as a leader, I am well aware of the fact that some folks have perceptions that I can't help them with. But this one sort of hit home, because in my business, there are more females than males and I always strive to be fair. So when faced with this criticism, I of course went back and looked it up.

As it turns out, of the myriad verbal and written reprimands that I have written over the past four years, it turns out that I have written up three times as many male workers as female workers.

Which puzzles me even further. I mean, given our demographics, I really should be writing up females about four to five times more often than males, but for whatever reason that isn't happening.

And contrary to the opinion of that coworker I mentioned at the beginning of my post, one of the men I gave a written warning to wrote a letter to the clinical director that I personally had a bad attitude toward him because he was an older male with grey hair (which really shocked me given that I was, even then, 75% grey myself).

What seems to piss me off, possibly on a sexually biased level:

• I obviously don't like foul language. Although I am relatively tolerant of "casual" profanity, I have a peculiar distaste for profanity that is yelled or spoken in anger.

What I seem to discipline evenly across the sexes:

• I don't like it when folks disobey the chain of command (some of my write-ups were for workers from other departments that were rude to my staff instead of coming to me with problems).
• I don't like it when folks make patients feel guilty or bad for being sick (that just gets my gall considering what industry we are in and how we are paid for a living).
• I don't like it when folks go to another charge nurse when I've already told them "no".

Interesting... Something to keep in mind for the next appraisal year...

Maybe knowing what we look like down the sights of loaded shotguns is an ideal way to get to know your boss?

I rarely get written up. No, really, it just doesn't happen very often. Of the handful of times I've gotten a write up, it almost always has been due to by absences (we get in trouble after the 6th absence in any 12-month period, and the trouble gets very serious at 9 absences a year). But having a history of kidney stones, I have always had a straight-forward attitude about my attendance: I do the best that I can, and I try to make up for it by doing other things (I worked a total of 24 extra shifts in 2008, plus a lot of extra "projects" for the unit).

So it came as a surprise when the interim clinical director asked me to meet her in her office.

I had assumed it was to be introduced to the new permanent clinical director, but I realized pretty quickly that the tone of the meeting was serious.

The exact details of the write-up are not all that noteworthy, in that, like almost every other employee I have ever had to write up for this infraction or that, I refuted the factual basis (and even questioned the truthfulness of the interim clinical director). Most of the complaints were that I simply didn't like the interim CD and tended to make that pretty obvious in our daily interactions.

Suffice it to say that I made the decision to live with the write-up and work toward building a relationship with the new clinical director. I decided, after a few days of thought, that it was more important to move on to the bigger problems of two inpatient units that had been through more than a year of hell, and needed to get over all of the conflict and just move on.

It was a good decision, in retrospect. It has been five months since that write-up day, and the new clinical director and I have forged a good professional relationship, despite the fact that we have both, literally, seen each other from the business end of a loaded shotgun (the write up meeting took 90 minutes -- I've never had a write up meeting that lasted that long, with basically me arguing with two clinical directors -- much of the meeting was heated and even mean-spirited, myself included). We've been able to work together on several projects, and I've come to trust her judgment and her sense of fairness and justice.

Maybe that initial meeting -- little ol' me seated on one side of a wide desk with two "bosses" taking turns arguing one point after another -- helped me get to this point faster than my peers. Nurses on my units are amazed at how quickly I "turned around," from considering to resign to becoming a real partner in difficult times. Of all of the charge nurses, I have become the new CD's main supporter.

Maybe knowing what we look like down the sights of loaded shotguns is an ideal way to get to know your boss?