...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...