A Letter I'll Never Send - Pardon the Rant

Wednesday marked the end of a chapter in my life. I have to say things did not turn out the way I intended, or in a way I foresaw. I put my two weeks' (okay, 10 day) notice in at my job last Wednesday, and my last day was to be Monday, the 28th. Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the clinic was open, but my bosses (the owners) were not in. A company-wide email went out Tuesday to have all paperwork completed and up-to-date by 7 p.m. Wednesday so that everything could be sent to Medicaid before the break. I did 7 evaluations the previous week and had done 3 already that week, so I spent time Wednesday doing therapy and catching up on paperwork so that all my evals would be written. Basically, tying up loose ends so I'd only have the day's work to do on my last day. I got home Wednesday night to an email from the owner of the company telling me they had Monday covered and I didn't need to come in. As I had already put in my notice to resign effective end of day the 28th, I emailed back to let them know I had already gotten most of my personal effects out of the office, was up-to-date on paperwork, and that they could mail me my final check or I could come pick it up. I expressed regret that I would not get to say goodbye to my patients as I hadn't intended on Wednesday being my last, and checked to make sure I'd still be paid through the 28th, as I expected to be. In return for that email, I got an email informing me I had been fired due to my "rapidly degrading behavior and attitude" effective immediately, and that they'd mail me my check and I was not to come into the office. I know that it isn't illegal to fire someone who has given notice, but it sure as hell isn't a nice thing to do. On the one hand, it confirmed my reason for leaving the company in the first place. That's actually why I'm writing this down today. That email firing me made me feel bad and sent me into a bit of a tailspin. That's the other hand. I haven't been able to completely remove it from my mind since Wednesday. My employers never asked why I was leaving. It isn't because I couldn't hack the clinical environment. It's because I could not abide the work environment under them. So I'll tell you why I decided to leave and go back to my old job. I need to get it out. At first, I was so happy to have found the clinic and taken the job. The approach to therapy and patients was different, but I was willing to try it and got used to it fairly quickly. After a while, though, the honeymoon period ended. I realized that I was not doing my best therapy when I had no real idea what patients I would have in a day until they showed up for their appointments. I took the first to show up, regardless of who it was, so long as they were not high-level Spanish-dominant. This means that I had very little to no time to prepare for my clients, and therapy was done on the fly. While it's kind of exciting at first, it leads to mediocre therapy, even from someone with several years of training and experience. Aside from me, there were two SLP assistants who had little to no training or experience, and the owner, who took the last kid to show up (when she was there). I realize that I may have a different style of therapy, but I cannot believe that everyone but me can do stellar therapy with no prep on a kid they don't see regularly. With a bilingual environment, I saw more than once an entire session happen for a kid in the wrong language because the therapist did not know them well enough to know where they were dominant. And aside from that, how well can you really target the point of breakdown with a kid you haven't seen in a month? I also felt increasingly like an underling who was not trusted. I did evaluations, plans of care, and therapy. I wrote up my own evaluations, which is something the other SLP did not do. My reports were criticized for things I felt were trivial, I was sent emails containing typos about the unacceptability of my typos. Some of it feels a little silly as I write about it, but I felt like a child in that environment. Like my boss believed I would not do my job unless she was right there looking over my shoulder. She was offended by the way I spoke to her, and assumed the worst in every misunderstanding and miscommunication we had. I did not regret even a little taking the job until the first time she called me in for a "conference" where she told me everything I was doing wrong. From then, I felt like I was walking on eggshells and everything I did "wrong" was being gathered as fuel to fire me. I am glad I left, I am sorry to have left with such a sour taste in my mouth. It was never my intention to leave on bad terms. I hope that I get to start my new (old) job on Tuesday as planned, and am not without income for a month instead. Hubs just switched jobs so we're a little money-tight at the moment, and me going an entire month without a paycheck fills me with more than a little sense of dread. I have faith that everything will work out in the end. I am looking into the possibility of opening a small part-time private practice next year after we've bought a house. We'll see how it goes.