Please Help Me With This Work Situation!

In My Humble Opinion
1

So Friday, mere minutes before lunchtime, much later than usual, we got our paychecks. Inside the envelope was also a notice that our employment statuses will change. Mine will go from “40 hours full-time” to “36 to 40 hours part-time”, and I will 1)have to pay more for my health insurance and 2)no longer be entitled to the Medical Reimbursement Plan, which means I’m reimbursed by the company for any expenses not covered by health insurance, such as copays and deductibles.

I’m pissed off like nine motherfuckers. I guess they think I should feel lucky, as some people were busted down from 40 hours to 32 hours. But I’m not feeling lucky, I’m feeling screwed over. I’m one of the more competent employees, and I’ve been told many times how valuable I am by the doctors I work for. This change is, I believe, not so much the associates’ decision as the management’'s- not the same people.

I have a rough draft of my resignation letter, that I’m planning on handing in on Monday, Dec 22. Maybe. Please take a look at it, and give your opinion on whether I should do this or not. Yes, we are in a recession, but given my field (dermatological medical assistant) and my location, I am in high demand and don’t doubt that I can find another job within two weeks maximum.

The letter:

(appropriate greeting)

Please be advised of my intention to have Friday, January 9, 2009 be my final day here at ______. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with each one of you and appreciate the opportunity to grow and learn at your office for close to five years.

My intention had been to stay employed with you for a very long time to come, providing myself with long-term, stable employment and you with a competent and dependable employee, truly a win-win situation; however, I find your recent decison to change my employment status from “full time” to “part time” and the loss of attendant benefits unacceptable. Particularly unconscionable, in my opinion, is the apparent expectation that I will continue to work very close to 40 hours a week, although I won’t continue to be compensated for such. It saddens me to know that the physicians that I have served so diligently are so willing to reduce my family’s financial growth.

I do welcome any attempts to compromise and continue my employment with your organization, to both parties’ satisfaction, however, the absence of such an agreement will constitute acceptance of my resignation.
So what do you think about that?

2

I’d want more information before resigning. Is your employer struggling financially? Are cuts being made elsewhere? Are the doctors still getting raises or bonuses? Have their costs gone up? Are they losing patients? Did the cost of your benefits increase dramatically?

They had to know how people would react to a cut in pay and benefits, but they did it anyway, so they must have had a good reason. One thing to consider is that if they accede to your request, they should do it for other employees too. They might decide it’s cheaper to find and train your replacement.

Can you find out more? Assuming you liked working there and would have stayed but for this, it’s worth finding out what’s going on.

And you know what they (the experts) say – it’s easier to find a new job if you already have one. I’d hold off on the letter until you have an offer from a new employer.

3

It’s a little soon to be making such a final decision. You can quit any time, don’t rush into a decision you could regret.
You might be in high demand during a regular economy but if other offices are also cutting back you might not find it that easy to get a new job. Yeah it sucks but it could suck worse. It sounds like they did give you a little special treatment by keeping you above 32 hours.

Did your letter say how long this new situation will last?

I second everything that Auntie Pam wrote.

4

I would strongly advise you to make your initial pitch orally, i.e. not in writing. Why? Because nobody likes to think that they caved into a threat, which is how management will feel if you send them that letter.

I would advise you to go to your boss, alone and tell him or her (sweet as pie) that you are very disappointed about the recent change of terms; that you really enjoy your job; and is there any way that they could put you back the way you were before?

That way the amoung of ego involved is minimal.

If the boss says “no,” I would continue to work there, but look for a new job in the meantime. It’s risky to assume you can easily find a new job, and there’s little downside to looking while you still are employed.

Once you get a firm offer with a start date, I would just resign and remember Mrs. Lot.

5

Okay. I know. Goddammit.

I have this policy of never going backwards, only moving forwards. This violates that policy. How come I can’t violate their policies but they can violate mine? :stuck_out_tongue:

During recessions, policies may have to be reviewed, including my own. I guess.

Fuckers. (Not you, them.)

6

[QUOTE=brazil84;10599635
]
I would strongly advise you to make your initial pitch orally, i.e. not in writing. Why? Because nobody likes to think that they caved into a threat, which is how management will feel if you send them that letter.
I would advise you to go to your boss, alone and tell him or her (sweet as pie) that you are very disappointed about the recent change of terms; that you really enjoy your job; and is there any way that they could put you back the way you were before?
[/QUOTE]

See, that’s the rub. I can’t go to the office manager, who is in charge of the policy, because this is her own idea, and I don’t see her budging from it. She has let 30+year employees walk out over some petty bullshit, she will accept my resignation in a second because that’s how she rolls.

I could go to any one of the four doctors and I’m almost one hundred percent sure that all of them would support me and “put in a word” for me, or whatever, but then again, if they are looking at financial distress, who knows? And there’s no way for me to know if they are or not, because they don’t share those company details with peons like me. Plus, there’s the risk of me speaking directly to a doctor about this being perceived as “inappropriate”, especially as I have, over the years, formed personal emotional bonds with each of them. It may appear as if I’m using those personal bonds to get special treatment.

It’s looks like I’m going to have to suck it up, now that I’ve thought about it and heard my own doubts from others. But I don’t like it.

7

I strongly advise you to line up the new job before you turn in your resignation. I know you believe you can find another job quickly so do that before you turn in any sort of letter.

8

Right now, you are in a position of weakness. If you have another job lined up, you can negotiate from a position of strength. If the boss is enough of a fool to let someone go elsewhere and try to hire someone in an in-demand field for “part time” benefits but full time work, well, good luck.

9

I would be very wary of putting angry and self-righteous thoughts in print at work, no matter how much cause you think you have.
FWIW I would have been royally pissed too, particularly at the way they let you find this out when you opened your christmas paychecks. Jesus, what kind of idiot thinks a bombshell like this is best delivered via a letter rather than an open announcement? It’s cowardly and crappy of them.
BUT crappy as it is you don’t yet know the full situation, and blowing them off in print creates a permanent record that may look different to some future employer a couple years from now.
I don’t think any criticism from you is going to change the company’s plans.
So IMO you have nothing to gain but a fleeting sense of vilification, versus lots to lose in terms of creating future hassle and enmity.

10

G’morning!

There is presently one MD for every 321 patients in the U.S. Recessions and depressions tend to make more people sick, not less, so I highly doubt your employers are suffering financially. I’d verbally ask for the reason for the changes they’re making and why I wasn’t informed in person. If you receive an answer within your realm of acceptability then keep your job. If not, do some research on your options, and if you find a suitable alternative to where you’re working now THEN tender your resignation. JMHO. YMMV.

All the best - Jesse.

11

I’m in the “less hours is better than no hours” corner these days. It’s not that easy to find work. It sounds like your employer is doing what he can to keep his staff employed. Sure, it sucks and sure, it hurts. But until you have another gig, a bird in the hand…

Good luck. It’s a very frustrating situation.

12

Find another job and walk! That kind of behavior is unconscionable, especially since you get the privilege of working the same amount of hours for less pay. If you are in demand, you can get another job and shove it in the office managers face.

13

I’d find another job *first *(if reality is as good as your confidence, then you won’t have a long wait). Being unemployed is worse than a reduction in benefits.

I wouldn’t bother to try to negotiate with them. The way they notified you of the change was really chickenshit. Suppose you convinced them to restore your status–how happy would you be to continue working there, knowing they’re still screwing over your co-workers, and that they could give you more bad news anytime? In an envelope?

As to your letter:

*It saddens me to know that the physicians that I have served so diligently are so willing to reduce my family’s financial growth. *

Leave that out. An employer has zero obligation regarding your family’s financial growth. They owe you fair compensation for the value of your work. This will just sound like whining. Also, you said that it wasn’t the physicians’ decision.

*I do welcome any attempts to compromise and continue my employment with your organization, to both parties’ satisfaction, however, the absence of such an agreement will constitute acceptance of my resignation. *

Leave that out. If you want to compromise and negotiate, you do it *before *you submit a resignation letter. As leverage you could even approach the boss and say that you have another job offer but you’d like to stay if they can make it worth your while (as long as that’s true). But don’t put anything in writing at that point.

By the time you write a resignation letter, you should really mean it. And BTW, if you are in an at-will employment state, there is no such thing as “accepting” a resignation. Resignation is not a matter of agreement. You are notifying them that you are leaving, there is nothing to accept or reject. This depends on your state, however.

14

Your best option is to line up another job and either leave or bargain from a position of strength.

It *might *also be possible to bargain about how you personally should be classified under the policy. If you feel you can demonstrate that your qualifications and contributions are more in line with the people who are full-time than the people who are part-time, you can try bargaining for reclassification. Do this in a level-headed way based on your qualifications and contributions. For this to work, don’t even speak out in criticism of the general policy.

While healthcare is somewhat recession-resistant, my guess is the more lucrative parts of dermatology are not. So keep an open mind about what the business is facing financially.

Best of luck.

15

Bummer. I strongly second the advice to find a new job and THEN resign. And then I’d hand in a simple letter. No sense burning bridges because you just never know.

16

Find another job first. I know you’ve said your job is in high demand, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable quitting a job until I knew I had another job lined up. If it takes you a couple or six months to land something, you have the luxury of staying at your current job and being able to pay your bills. And if you are in high demand, and find something fast, so much the better.

Once you do find another job and are ready to quit, take the middle paragraph out of your letter. A resignation letter should just say “I’m leaving, effective on this date”. If your superior asks why you’re leaving, just say “I need more hours than I’ve been getting since we started these cutbacks”. I don’t care what field you are in or how easy it is to find work, it’s never a good idea to burn bridges, and handing in a resignation letter that essentially says “you suck, I’m tired of you money grubbing bastards and I am outta here” is probably not a good idea. Even if you never go back, you might need a reference, or it might come back to bite you in some way or another. Keep it brief and polite. You’ll get your point across without looking like an ass.

17

You probably should do some research before you make posts like this. Both government and private payers have been steadily cutting reimbursements for years. Furthermore, people who don’t have jobs or have their hours cut (especially if there healthcare is tied to their employment) see healthcare providers LESS frequently during a economic hard times, not MORE. The fact that almost all healthcare in the US is paid for by third parties, who by necessity must then put a lot of conditions on payment, increases the overhead of the typical physician’s office drastically. And if the original poster lives in an area where there are too many physicians, the situation will be even worse.

As a healthcare reimbursement consultant, I would advise the original poster to suck it up and be happy she/he has a job. I would feel very, very lucky if, in an office where most people have been cut to 32 hours, I’ve been told I’ll be working 36-40 hours.

18

I know you’re feeling hurt but don’t let that turn you into a world class dumb ass.

Forget about that idiotic, emotional resignation letter and all the personal blah blah, blah in it. It’s not professional, and will only bite you in the ass in the long run.

1: Find and secure another job that meets your specs FIRST - Any other route is abject stupidity

2: Write a VERY short, professional resignation letter, and leave al your hurt feelings out of it. They are meaningless to the issue at hand re making a clean cut, and will only serve to paint you in a negative light.

3: Profit!

19

First, I sympathize with this crappy move on behalf of your employers. Busting someone down from 40 hours a week to 39 and then calling them part-time so they can take away your benefits is complete and utter bullshit. My next move in your situation would be to have a nice, polite chat about this, and how you weren’t expecting it, and is there anything that can be done to leave you where you were? If that goes as you expect (with no changes forthcoming), I’d go find another job and give them the short and sweet resignation letter after you find one. If they ask why you’re quitting at that point, I’d politely tell them that you had to find a job with full benefits and leave it at that.

20

First: Start date
Then: Last date

don’t rush it!