Talk to upper management about problems
that hurt clients / customers / the business
Remedy Revenge Strategy
Ending toxic words
Example #1: Talk To The Top Of A Company You Don’t Work For
For a number of years, I worked in home healthcare as a caregiver. My daughter and I worked for the same company. We did not share clients, but some of our clients shared the same county nurse. Those clients told each of us how much they hated their county nurse. We never asked our clients about their nurse. They just started talking about how much they hated her. Each client said they felt worse after every visit from this nurse.
At first, I reported this to our supervisor. After I again heard how much one of my clients hated that county nurse, I realized our supervisor had done nothing about the nurse.
My daughter and I worked for a company that provided caregivers to a county agency for their clients. Because our company was doing nothing, I went to the top of the county agency.
Fortunately, I knew the CEO of the county agency personally. I had contacted him to ask him for an interview for a book I was slowly writing. He was willing to do the interview because he had read my multiple letters to the editor in the local newspaper and agreed with what I wrote. * I told him about the nurse and gave him the names of the clients who had repeatedly said they hated her.
The CEO sent people out to talk to those clients. What those clients said about the nurse must have been horrible. The CEO ordered a survey to be written up and sent to every client in the county on a regular time schedule. Some of the survey questions asked how the clients felt about their interactions with any county employees who visited them, including nurses.
If you don’t have a personal connection to a top manager of a company you don’t work for, send a letter to the top executive describing the ugly gossip. In this case, I could have written that multiple clients complaining about the nurse were giving the agency a terrible reputation. The terrible reputation aspect should get the executive to pay attention without knowing you.
* This is an example of bystander support.
Example #2: Talk To The Top Of Your Company
The home healthcare company I worked for had offices in different cities in the state. The office I worked for had two supervisors. My company employed nurses to work with the supervisors. As part of regular procedures, one supervisor and a nurse came to interview my client and his wife during my shift.
The visit started out well until my supervisor insulted both my client’s wife and me repeatedly. When the insults stopped us from trying to express our perspectives, my supervisor spent the rest of the visit talking to the nurse. They made decisions about my client without including my client or his wife.
After they left, the wife and I discussed the horrors of the visit. I went home and emailed an upper level manager of my company. I said she could talk to my client’s wife about the visit. A number of top managers talked to the wife. They fired the supervisor within days. I seldom had contact with the nurse, so I don’t know if they fired her as well. I assume they did.
Having the wife as a witness helped convince the top manager to believe me. Without a witness, I would have documented that incident and any further incidents to provide proof.
The supervisor in this example was the supervisor who ignored all the clients who hated their county nurse in Example #1 above.
© Paula M. Kramer, 2021 to the present
All rights reserved.