I got the most unusual gift today

One of the doctors I work with in clinic gave me my Christmas present today.

A gift card to Starbucks. Not so unusual.

What's unusual is that it's for a single cup of coffee, well, beverage. I guess that includes the blended drinks.

While other doctors are taking their clinic nurses out to lunch or getting them boxes of chocolates and/or other things like bath products, my doctor gives me a single cup of coffee!

And get this! He claims to really like my being in his clinic, and had a virtual fit in my bosses office when he heard I was going to be off work for 6 weeks over the summer. He told my boss that he's come to depend on me, and he loves how I'm running the clinic and what's going to happen to his clinic when I'm away etc. etc. etc. She stopped him in his tracks and said "What about her? She's got cancer!"

Anyway, he's very "me! me! me!", so I guess I shouldn't have expected much! He gave our communication's clerk the same thing.

What makes it even more funny is that between his salary as an oncologist and his wife's salary as an endocrinologist, their combined yearly income is about $900,000.00 per year!!!

AddieBee has it right. He is cheap. And he is self-absorbed. He really does only think about himself.

We do clinic together 3 days per week for nearly a year now. I've been in several different clinic areas during that time, and I see doctors going and get themselves coffee or lunch and asking their nurse if they would like anything. Most of the doctors will bring back a coffee or a juice for their nurse when they go to get something for themselves, and the nurse will do the same thing.

I've brought in fresh baking for our morning clinics on numerous occasions and even baked extra so he could take it home to his family. And we sometimes have to meet outside of clinic in order to discuss some clinic issues. If I initiate the meeting, I always bring him a coffee and muffin or something. Always.

Not one single time has this doctor ever asked me or my clerk if we would like him to bring anything back for us, when he goes to get himself a coffee. I wouldn't even expect him to pay for it for me. I'd give him the money for my own beverage, but he never, ever asks. I suppose I could ask him when he's going, but he tends to go on his way to clinic, or while I'm doing the nursing history on the new patient.

It depends on what aspect you consider good. For knowledge he's a good doctor. He seriously knows his stuff. But his selfish nature can get in the way. I won't say more on that because it gets into the area of discussing patients.

He has no interpersonal skills when it comes to relating to co-workers. That's common knowledge throughout the entire building. Let's just say that he's not a fan favourite among the staff, and many of the staff can't stand him because of it. He has less than a stellar reputation when it comes to his attitude towards other staff. His doctor colleagues don't respect him all that much because of it.

He is extremely condescending, blameful, and never accepts responsibility or ownership of his mistakes. If something goes wrong, he will always have some excuse for it, or attempt to blame someone else for it. Always. I learned to document everything so he can't pull that on me because I have the documentation and sometimes even the notes where he himself has written instructions (though he has even tried to deny that what was written was written by him).

He is seriously short tempered and if things don't go his way, he yells. One day he was so upset with the lab for something they "didn't" do , and he just kept on ranting at me, getting louder and louder. My regular clerk was away, and the girl replacing her was completely incompetent. It was like having someone new picked off the street every single day, to come and work in my clinic. She just didn't listen and didn't retain anything, and was more of a hindrance than a help. I was completely stressed out because I was doing my own job and about 95% of her job, and the 5% that she was doing, she was doing wrong and I had to triple check on everything which meant that our clinic wasn't flowing as smoothly as it usually does.

He is easily very easily frustrated and he will take his frustration out on the person nearest him. In clinic, it's me. He tends to use me as a verbal punching bag for all things that go wrong in his work world. And while I know it's not directed to me personally, it's hard to not take it personally when it's thrown at you day after day.

One day in clinic, I can't exactly remember what happened. It was likely that we had requested some tests done on the patient. There are some specific tests that we do on some patients to help diagnose their blood condition, but for some reason these tests are not being processed and haven't been since the summer, so it's making it difficult to really diagnose a problem. Anyway, he just kept going at me about it, and wouldn't stop.

One of the girls across the hall paged the manager to have her come up. He was so loud he was disrupting all of the other clinics, and patients could hear him in the waiting area, and I was nearly in tears. After clinic I broke down in tears at my desk. Once I pulled myself together I went to talk to my boss and asked for an assignment change. Unfortunately there is no open clinics right now, so I'm stuck where I am. She told him that I asked for an assignment change. He told her that he didn't want me to leave his clinic. He came to talk to me and told me that he didn't want me to leave and that he feels I'm doing an excellent job. I told him that I was stressed to the max, and that I felt like a verbal punching bag. Do you think he said he was sorry? No. I was crying and he could see how upset I was, but all he said was that he does get frustrated at the politics of the company, but that he never directed his frustrations at me.

It's gotten somewhat better since we had that talk, but he still has his days where he uses me as a verbal punching bag to vent his frustrations. And it causes a great deal of tension in the other clinics, because people can hear him yelling at me about things other people have done or not done. And it upsets me because he just won't stop and the more you try and tell him to stop, the more he rants and the louder he gets.

I remember one day the lab came to assist us with a procedure. The lab was busy and the girl just grabbed the basket of supplies and when she got upstairs and were were starting the procedure, she realized that something was missing from the basket. She quickly went back downstairs to get it and came back. It took her about 5 minutes. She apologized and said "I'm sorry. I should have checked the basket before I came up." His reply? "Yes! You should have!" And he said similar things throughout that entire procedure in front of the patient and their spouse, making the poor girl feel so bad and look so incompetent, that she looked like she was going to cry. I apologized to her after the procedure for his terrible behaviour.

Anyway, sorry to go on and on. This thread was about an unusual gift of one cup of coffee; not even a gift card, just a single cup of coffee. All year long, other doctors are buying their nurses coffee, muffins, lunch or even dinner ordered in if clinic runs late. All year long I get nothing, and at Christmas, I get a single cup of coffee?

I'm all for "it's the thought that counts", but please? A cup of coffee as a Christmas gift? Sheesh!

Oh, and he's pretty sharp. So I seriously doubt that he doesn't know that it was for a single beverage, and not an actual gift card.

So far as not bringing him anything when I do baking for our clinic. I'm not like that. I'll still bake and I'll still bring stuff for us to have at breakfast during our morning clinics.

That's exactly how I feel.

It's not like it's even a resuable thing like a whole gift card. It's just one single cup of coffee! He could buy me a cup of coffee any time of the year when he goes to get his own during a clinic, but he chooses Christmas to buy me a cup of coffee and considers that a Christmas gift.

Nope. He sings my praises to my boss. And he also gave a single cup of coffee to the communications clerk in our clinic too.

I would have preferred to have received either just a simple card saying "thank you for all of your efforts this year", or even just nothing, to being given a coffee shop card for a single cup of coffee.

And no, he didn't buy a bunch of them. He's a very "me me me" person and takes rather than gives.

So don't try to read anything more that him being cheap, into this "gift", because you have to work with him to truly understand.

I love the clinic that I do. And I like working with the girl who does the clerking in the clinic. And the work in my clinic is very interesting. I just wish it was a different doctor in that clinic.

I'm so jealous of some of the other nurses I work with when I see how nicely the doctors in their clinics treat them. Their doctors never yell at or verbally abuse them. If they are going for a coffee run, they ask if anyone in their clinic would like something. One doctor even brings in breakfast or lunch for his clinic staff, every single clinic; without fail. Every single clinic.

When my doctor isn't yelling or taking all of his frustrations out on me, I don't mind working with him. But more often than not, he explodes and instead of talking, he rants and rants and yells. I've told him more than once that he's yelling at the wrong person. That if he has a problem with the lab or any other department or policy, that he should be talking to the people in that area because yelling at me about it isn't going to make anything different. But it just continues. And like I said, he's never at fault. There is always a scapegoat for everything, even when he is the one in the wrong.

I seriously doubt that they will give me a different clinic because no one wants to work with him. The average length of time before a nurse either quits or applies for a position in an entirely different area of the company is about 1 year. February or March will be one year for me.

The girl I replaced was in his clinic for just over a year (14 months I think). She applied for a part time position in an entirely different area of the company, just to get out of his clinic for all of the same reasons I have mentioned.

I know he appreciates the work I do in his clinic because he's told me as much. He's told me that he likes the changes I've made to the clinic (when I took it over it was complete chaos, at least according to my standards of organization). He tells me that he hears nothing but good things about me from the patients. And he tells me that he likes how organized I am. And like I said, he tells my boss that he is happy that I'm in his clinic and doesn't want me to leave it.