What a truly sh***y day!
It's only lunchtime, and I could cry already! First thing, I managed to block up the toilet (got it unblocked eventually), so I should've known then that I was on to a loser. Just sat through a soul-destroying 'team lead' meeting, where I was shot down in flames for objecting to our department refusing to take on first year students for placements because we might have to reduce patient numbers slightly (for 2 weeks per year) in order to accommodate them. I'm also the one who had to break the news to the college that I've been building contacts with for the last 12 months, so that email was particularly unpleasant to write.
The rest of the meeting was equally joyous, with just about everything I said being criticised by the other 3 people in the room, and me being put on the spot on various occasions by my boss, presumably hoping I wouldn't have a satisfactory answer. Just when I thought I couldn't feel any more crap, one of my colleagues (trying, in fairness, to be helpful) chose that moment to tell me that the rheumatoid/chronic pain presentation I gave at the last team meeting was too long, and I was cramming too much in. The fact is, my boss promised me a whole morning to present it, and gave me about an hour. Which - she said today - was my fault, because I told her that was all I needed! Not true - she showed me the agenda, I said would I have enough time, she said it needed to be done then, I said it would take at least an hour to an hour-and-a-half, she said 'there's plenty of time'! ARGH!
And now, I have my annual appraisal, which I suspect will go along the same lines as every other year - I work my arse off to get all the evidence together to prove I'm doing my job, she finds one area where I've not found quite enough evidence and makes me feel like I'm a total failure (or is it me making me feel that way? That'd be the CBT answer, I suppose), and I walk out wondering how I dress myself in the morning. Undoubtedly, she'll check every word of my folder, despite (from what I've heard from other staff) her not even looking at some people's folders, and she'll find somewhere I've slipped up.
Later in the week, I have the joy of having a 'peer review' meeting with a colleague, as she's screwed up a few times and needs some support to get back to the level she should be working at, but I'm really hoping that she doesn't try to use it as a stick to beat me with later, and say I'm singling her out (she has tried this on another colleague in the past, and filed a complaint for bullying - when I investigated and said that unfortunately the evidence I'd found didn't support the complaint against the individual, she told my boss that I'd 'forced her to drop the complaint') - I'm trying to stop it getting to the point when a patient complains!
At least I've lost 4lbs, and it's Valentine's Day on Thursday, eh? Every cloud ...