Eileen Gerace- Journal #2
                The employees that make up the Human Resources Department are all female.  Anderson Hospital is interesting in the way that most of the directors are female as well.  There are a few male directors and they can be very commanding when dealing with the other directors.  For example, the Director of Housekeeping set up a meeting with the Administrative Director of Human Resources, Robin, to discuss one of the Human Resources’ clerks (Alicia) nose ring.  The clerk put in a clear plastic ring in attempt to disguise her piercing for the entire year that she had been at Anderson Hospital and no one has ever complained about it.  The Director of Housekeeping has been with Anderson for only a few months but has perceived her nose ring as a violation of hospital dress code. Alicia was confused because Robin is her boss and is also the person who makes up the dress code for the hospital.  Wouldn’t Robin have already confronted her about her nose ring if Robin thought it was a problem?
                Most of the time the male Directors come into the Human Resources office, they are complaining about a mistake on their benefits or another employee.  Vicky, the Human Resources Benefits Specialist, has caught onto this pattern that the males have followed at Anderson.  Last week, the Director of Finance barged into the office without greeting anyone and entered Vicky’s office without knocking.  Vicky asked him if she could help him with anything and he hollered at her to fix his benefits plan because it had been off for the past three pay periods.  Vicky responded, “You’re the Director of Finance.  You have the capabilities to do the math yourself and come to me with the appropriate actions I should take.  I have tried contacting you with questions and you never have responded.  So until you tell me exactly what you want me to do, I will continue to do nothing.”  I was surprised when she told him off as I think the rest of the office was.  Vicky has been with Anderson so long that she is very well known and respected for her work, which is why she got away with telling this male director off.  He said thank you and he would be back with a better answer for her in the next week after he talked his benefits plan over with his wife.
                The Director of Surgery is a very professional and respected female. Her extreme professionalism causes everyone to stand on his or her toes when she walks in.  When she walks into our office she is greeted by every worker and everyone seems to get busy the moment they finish greeting her. She is a very nice woman with a great deal of professionalism.  She is always on time, usually five minutes early for a meeting.  She dresses extremely professionally.  She speaks powerfully with her tone and selective wording in her speech. 
                I was caught off guard last week when I saw her at a basketball in which the girl I baby-sit for was cheering at.  Unbeknownst to me, her daughter cheers on the same squad.  The intensely professional Director of Surgery at Anderson Hospital was the loudest most radical person in that gymnasium.  She was screaming at the junior high basketball players and was standing up on the stands cheering loudly for her daughter during her cheers. It was the first time I had seen her in anything but a business suit; she wore an “Eagles Basketball” t-shirt with jeans and gym shoes.   I wondered why she felt she had to be so severe during the work hours but at night she was a completely different person?  It was amazing to me that someone can completely transform for professional reasons. Her makeover could be for personal or professional reasons. It could be that she might feel the need to work harder being a female director and prove herself a little bit more than a male might have to. 
                Everyday people are coming and out of our office to apply for a job or to be set up for the job that they were just offered.  When they are starting employment at Anderson, the new employees will be sent to a hospital training seminar (no matter how much previous hospital experience the employee has).  The ideas that classical theorists believed comes to my mind when I see the training in action.  Anderson Hospital wants to train and organize their employees to fit what they believe is the best.  It does not matter how what department a new employee is going to work for because all employees will get training together.  There is no one on one time with each employee and the person who is training.  There could be up to a hundred people that are being trained at the same time and the same way.  Anderson wants everyone to come out of training with the same experience- the same ideas, procedures, and regulations to follow.  The training process preserves and maintains how Anderson controls its staff and organization as a whole. 
                I spent some time in the Director of Foods Services (Cathy) office while the Human Resource department took a long break last week.  Cathy talked about her employees in a way that reminded me of scientific management.  She flat out said that her employees were not the most skilled workers but her managers monitored them to find a spot in the department that they could be proficient at so they would keep them around.  The managers would shift the schedules so that this would be possible.  Some employees would complain but the managers felt they needed to do the temporary schedule changes because in the end it would benefit the whole hospital. 
                A new employee started working in Food Services and was training the same day that I was in Cathy’s office.  Cathy informed me that the girl had some speech disabilities so she would be able to work in an assembly line in the kitchen because communication could under certain circumstances be necessary to keep up with the food trays.  Cathy told her managers to try to put her in the dish room, even though her application did not indicate any interest in the dish room.  Nonetheless, that day the managers started training her in the dish room.  Cathy told me that the next day the managers stopped one on one training with her however they would monitor her from time to time.  It turned out that the new employee was a good fit for dishwashing and they were glad they hired her onto the Food Services team.