More Drama

On Sunday, Office J called me to ask if her daughter could come to camp for the week. The bus had already left the city and was headed to camp, but her husband could drive her. I said no because it’s our second biggest week of the summer and while the cabins aren’t completely filled, it’s going to be a stretch in activities this week with the amount of kids vs. staff.

As always, Office J will not take no for an answer and will argue until she gets her way. If another parent had tried to add their child on a Sunday, Office J would have had a heart attack because she is a stickler for policy.

As she argued, she said that at the beginning of the summer, Nurse J had told her daughter she could come up and “hang out” in the health center. I told Office J that unfortunately, Nurse J didn’t have the ability to make that promise and that wasn’t a possibility. Earlier, Nurse J had told me a story of how Office J had come up with the plan for her daughter to stay in the health center as a guest.

Office J drives me insane because she is so argumentative and doesn’t seem to respect me as her supervisor, but that being said, she is always straightforward and I have never questioned her honesty. More and more this summer, the drama and the stories with two versions all seem to be coming back to Nurse J. In addition to the pushy-ness of Office J and overall annoyingness of this situation, once again, I was questioning Nurse J’s honesty.

Between Office ‘s arguing and my annoyed surprise that Nurse J had once again told me a different version of the truth, the staff that were coming in and out, the list of a million things to do and the impending busload of kids who were set to arrive in just a few hours, I didn’t have time to argue. Eventually I gave in; annoying, but not the end of the world and I needed to get off the phone. I added it to the list of things I will be discussing with her in the fall at her review and tried to shake it off.

When Office J began at camp, she was offered free camp for her three kids. There is not a policy about employees and free camp, but there should be. Office J has led the charge on getting policies written but so far, hasn’t touched that topic. I don’t think anyone should come to camp for free, but I haven’t made an issue out of it either because she only has three kids (one of who is now too old for camp) and it’s not a big deal.

Office J offered to pay for her daughter to come for the second week of camp. Again, without a policy in place, decisions are based on what I think is best, which is not a great way to run a business (hence, my shared love of policies), but I agreed she should pay for the second week.

So when she emailed to say she’d paid 50%, I emailed back to ask where that number had come from. She asked if I thought it should be the full amount. I told her that was what she had initially agreed to and that while we didn’t have a policy, it seems fair.

She wasn’t happy about my answer and overall, I’m so annoyed with her that every time I think about her, I feel frustrated. For four years, we’ve worked so well together. I don’t know what is going on this summer, but it is going to be awkward and stressful when I return and have to tell her that some things need to change. Ugh!