update: I overheard my girlfriend on a work call and am worried she’s a mean boss

by Alison Green on December 30, 2018

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

Remember the letter-writer who overheard her girlfriend on a work call and was worried she was a mean boss? Here’s the update.

I did end up sitting down with Beverly and very awkwardly explaining what I heard and how I’d perceived it. I did contextualize it within the dysfunction of my own career. She was mortified that she sounded that way on the phone. She asked Deanna about the tone and was reassured that wasn’t the way it was taken. Deanna didn’t feel beaten down and ended up continuing to improve.

This situation ended going in an unexpected direction. Their company (The Borg) ended up winning a multi-million dollar contract based largely on Tasha’s expertise and charisma. It was pretty clear their client didn’t hire “the Borg”. They hired Tasha. Everyone else, including my Beverly, was merely extra weight.

You can see where this is heading.

The client was demanding and somewhat insane (their PM would regularly get plastered on white wine and drunk dial Beverly, weeping all the while), the project got off track, and the Borg began playing fast and loose with their consultants’ contracts, i.e., lawyers are now involved. When Tasha learned her retention bonus would not be honored, Tasha quit mid-project and went to form her own group, leaving Beverly holding the bag in a very hostile environment. The client’s PM looked like a moron for spending $15M on a single person’s skills and she took that out on Beverly, who went from having an awesome guidance on site to being the lone scapegoat for all the project’s ills. The Borg eventually lost the client and Beverly quit the Borg soon after, squeaking out with her reputation intact. She also started up a consulting firm and reached out to Tasha to share the amazing news.

Now, when Tasha first started working with Beverly about five years ago, Beverly remarked that Tasha had a really nasty streak and Beverly was glad to be on her good side. Well, that streak came out. Instead of being thrilled by Beverly’s new opportunity, Tasha took it as a personal affront. She was furious Beverly had the nerve to strike out on her own without asking Tasha’s permission and for leaving that nightmare of a client! Tasha wrote a biting screed about how Beverly betrayed her and cut Beverly out of her life completely. Beverly lost a dear friend and treasured mentor. Not only that: Tasha is apparently going out of her way to compete with and screw over Beverly’s new firm.

I wonder if how Beverly acted with Deanna was an unconscious reflection of her boss’ attitude and the overall insanity of this client. She is much happier now even though being her own boss is stressful.

(Meanwhile, I’m a fresh surgical intern working 70-90 hours a week – our max is 80, so we all lie on our timesheets – and I’m pretty damn miserable overall, which is straining Beverly and I. Luckily my attendings and senior residents have treated me as well as they can given the circumstances. Sure, two of my seniors are awful human beings who I hope get trapped in a holodeck malfunction, but no one calls me at 2AM blitzed out on Chardonnay and crying. Other than my patients and the nursing staff. *love to my nurses*)

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  1. Four lights*

    Thanks for the update and good luck to you both. Lol, it took me to the very end of both letters to realize you were using ST:TNG names, even after reading the part about the Borg.

    Is the last paragraph supposed to say Beverly instead of Deanna?

    1. FaintlyMacabre*

      I hope so. If there’s a love triangle involved…. that’s a warp core breach waiting to happen!

    3. Short Time Lurker Komo*

      It amuses me your admittance how long you took (when he said ‘The Borg’, that’s when I got it), since your user name always makes me think of ST:TNG. XD

      Picard: THERE… ARE… FOUR… LIGHTS!

    4. Michaela Westen*

      Yes, I thought it was a Picard reference also. Great scene, and reason number 1,871,263 TNG is an awesome show!

    5. Four lights*

      That is what my username is! My only explanation is it was first thing in the morning. And I’m pregnant.

      1. Southern Ladybug*

        It took me until your comment to fully get it, and I’m a huge fan as well. I plead xmas travels across the southeast to differing sets of parents with my kids/hours in the car/finally home and drinking a LARGE glass of wine.

      2. Short Time Lurker Komo*

        Early in the morning and pregnancy are both good reasons independently! Together, it is a perfect storm!

        Congratulations on your pregnancy!

    6. TooTiredToThink*

      I got it as soon as I read “The Borg” but I had to go back to the original letter to see if I had totally missed it there. Thankfully, I don’t think I did. Maybe I should have, but there can be a Beverly, Deana, and Tasha in an office. Right?

  2. Curious Lurker*

    Oh my god, I just want to give love to the Star Trek references. LOVE.

    And I really feel for you and Beverly. I hope your hours become sane soon, OP! And that Tasha fails in her attempts to crush Beverly’s new efforts.

    2. Fluff*

      Nah, because a Klingon Tasha would have just killed the client for showing such dishonor. Then Beverly could have killed her and risen up the command chain. Sadly, Tasha was not a Klingon.
      :-)

    3. Slartibartfast*

      She went Romulan in the alternate time line/bring back a dead character story. The boozy client must be Loxana (not sure how you spell it)

    1. CoveredInBees*

      Every medical resident I’ve spoken to has had to lie on their timecards and keep a separate set of accurate ones. A number of years ago, regulations were put in place to limit the number of hours a resident could work per week as well as per shift and how close together those shifts could be. There is almost no enforcement and hospitals simply produce the fake timecards to claim compliance.

      I used to work for a government agency enforcing labor laws and got some senior attorneys on board to bring an investigation. All we needed was at least one complaint and we couldn’t get that, even with an anonymous reporting option. Everyone was terrified that their hospital would find out it was them and tank their careers. It never went anywhere.

      1. Sigh.*

        Having seen people’s careers demolished before they could even start because they tried to even kind of ‘push’ the system to change towards the disastrous program structure, this doesn’t shock me even a little. There’s too much to lose with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt looming over you.

      2. Perpal*

        I used to do my notes at home and only clock my “in hospital” hrs; so I wasn’t lying per se, but I was spending more time “working” than technically allowed. But I think the duty hour limits are helpful overall in limiting some of the more insane hours, and not completely overwhelming interns (who usually have more limits on duties than 2nd years and on)

      3. Perpal*

        But yeah, it’s “just a few more years” after, usually, 8+ years of working towards it and by that point, a good deal of debt. And the culture is that this is good for you, this is your training, soon you will be doing it on your own and the more experience you have, the better. Everyone there already did it and are working as a team.
        TL;DR: Not many people are going to want to sue their facility even if they don’t love the hours. Probably the worst part is none of us want to violate ethics, though, or to short-change our work – so the above was the solution I found.

        1. TardyTardis*

          There’s a scary story called “The July Ward” by S.N. Dyer, I believe, about a hospital with a hidden ward where the ghosts of interns’ and nurses’ mistakes still somehow live. It wasn’t a very happy story.

      4. No name for this one*

        One of the problems is that the enforcement that can be levied (or could be, when I was in this setting) were limited. If violations were found, the program could be assessed a monetary fine. Which a) was considered part of the cost of having a residency program – the fines were still less expensive than reducing workload (which would have required more people), and b) turned into a handy excuse for why the residents were horrifically underpaid and gee-we-can’t-afford-raises-because-/somebody/-ratted-us-out-and-got-us-fined.

        The other alternative (that I knew of), for more severe or repetitive problems, was to pull the accreditation of the program. Which meant that there was the risk of working yourself to death for years, and ending up with nothing to show for it, because you have to complete an accredited residency. If a residency closed down (e.g. based at a hospital that ended up closing), there was a lot of effort made to transfer those residents into other accredited residencies. But if a residency closed down for duty hours violations, I’m not sure the same effort would be made, so you’d not only screw yourself, but all of your fellow residents.

        In other words, if residents were stranded through no fault of their own, other programs would extend themselves and take them in. But if residents were stranded because one member of the cohort “tattled” to the authorities, I suspect that programs would be less generous in extending themselves – after all, they’re all in violation of work hour restrictions too, and what if they took in the person who reported the previous program, and they did it again? And yes, I consider the likelihood that the accepting program(s) are also in violation of work hour restrictions to be as near 100% as makes no difference.

        However, my experience was before the current generation of duty-hours limitations came into existence, so there may be other/more useful consequences now that I’m not aware of.

        1. MK*

          I am completely ignorant about how hospitals work, but wouldn’t it be simpler to mandate the number of staff in proportion to the number of patients? As in, you treated X number of patients in the last year? You need Y number of doctors and Z number of nurses to keep your license.

          1. The Man, Becky Lynch*

            No, it’s easier for them to ignore regulations and keep feeding residents to the wolves. Welcome to medicine!

            Also they have plenty of doctors on staff…that’s not the problem. The doctor to nurse ratio isn’t the problem, it’s the use of resident’s labor to get all the paperwork and grunt work done.

            If they require more residents, less hospitals would have residency programs because they are run on a joke of a budget.

      5. zaracat*

        Yeah. Here in Oz if you so much as think about trying to claim overtime as a junior doc you can kiss goodbye any chance of getting onto a speciality training program.

        1. WS*

          Exactly. And every now and then a junior doc dies from something other than suicide (the most recent in my area had worked a 120 hour week, including the last 40 hours without a break, fell asleep driving home and died) and the system improves slightly for five minutes, then it goes right back to where it was.

      6. Mary*

        Surgical trainees (equivalent of residents, not interns, I think) in the UK pushed back hard against stricter working time limits because they didn’t believe they’d get enough experience to qualify in a shorter week. Surgeons are off the wall.

        (Not all surgical trainees, ofc, but it was a strong and widely-shared response.)

        1. No name for this one*

          Oh god, that sounds like the old “We had q2 call in my program, and the only problem is that you missed half of the good cases that came in overnight!”

          (“q2 call” means that you were on call every other night. So you would come to work at 4:30 AM Monday, work a full day, be on call overnight Monday into Tuesday [which might or might not entail getting any actual sleep], work a full day Tuesday until about 6:30 PM, be back at the hospital at 4:30 AM on Wednesday, work until 6:30 PM Thursday, and so on and so forth.)

          The “new” duty hour restrictions (in the US) ostensibly limit consecutive hours on duty (so no more 38-hour shifts), as well as number of hours worked in a week (usually averaged over a two-week period). I /think/ they also include limits on number of consecutive days on duty without a day off, but I’m not sure of that. (Nor whether things like teaching conferences count as “days on duty” – if not, you could have literal weeks and months without a single day free of work responsibilities, because if you were lucky enough to not be on duty in the hospital, you might still have been required to come in for a conference or seminar.)

    2. Michaela Westen*

      The hospital I work at (owned by a corporation) sends surveys to measure employee satisfaction that are supposed to be anonymous, but anything electronic can be tracked.
      I heard through the grapevine that some staffers let loose about problems that bothered them and were let go. So much for anonymity!
      I usually take the survey and don’t say anything about the way corporate is always trying to mess with physician pay, tries to squeeze expenses almost to the point of affecting patient care, got rid of union tradesmen, tries to steer employees into using their own health care (so the money stays in the system), that corp. finance is the most incompetent thing I’ve ever seen, they change their minds every year about how they manage operating expenses… except yes, they continue to try to squeeze physician pay.
      Oh, and the revolving door of corp. managers seems to have stopped with the most threatening, least competent one, who keeps trying to take away my work and block my access to data…
      But I am paid market value, benefits are decent and I have a supportive boss and colleagues, so I mention that.

      2. Kathlynn*

        And this is why for profit hospitals are a bad thing, at least without sufficient enforceable regulations. (why, yes I support well funded universal healthcare. Nor am I from the USA)

      3. Reliant*

        I wonder if Glassdoor could be used as an anonymous reporting tool. Or a tip to an investigative reporter. As a patient this disturbs me deeply.

      4. Michaela Westen*

        As far as I can tell, it has not affected patient care. My boss and I thought physicians would quit after the latest round with Clueless Manager, but they haven’t. We are having trouble filling vacancies though.
        My boss and our physicians would never compromise patient care for any reason, so that’s something.
        I’ve been told there are review sites where physicians review employers – maybe if you could find those that would reassure you.
        Keep in mind I’m a cautious anxious person who might be seeing it as worse than it is. Maybe the new VP of Finance will make it better…

      5. Michaela Westen*

        P.S. – Our hospital is non-profit, and the corporation it is owned by is non-profit. Apparently corporate management is the same everywhere.

      6. TardyTardis*

        Ah, my old ExCompany had surveys like that, which we took at our own computers. Of *course* they reassured us that our surveys were anonymous. I think we had 3 people in the whole building who believed that, or said they believed it.

    5. skunklet*

      I was an Air Traffic Controller in the US Navy – and even we were time limited by FAA rules – no more than 8 hours in a row, then 8 off, blah, blah, blah (now extended to 9 hrs off) – and this was in the 90s. It has always been unfathomable to me how the medical field continues to believe that working w sleep depravation is a good thing. If it’s a 24 hr surgery, then have multiple surgeons!! I know how my husband is (truck driver) on little sleep – I cannot imagine how many errors are made due to sleep depravation, this is nuts and needs to stop…

  7. MK*

    Sounds to me, OP, that your girlfriend, under the influence of her friend and mentor, really was a mean boss to Deanna and might have settled on being a mean boss, period. I have to wonder if Deanna said she wasn’t feeling beaten down either out of fear or because her perception of what was acceptable had become distorted by working for Tasha and your partner, who probably had picked up some of her managing style, possibly even in part the “mean streak” behaviours, without realising it.

    1. Dr. Crusher was a great boss*

      I was thinking this as well. A boss asking a low performer, “Were you upset when we told you this?” is not likely to get an honest answer.

    3. fposte*

      Maybe, but the actual description of what happened didn’t sound particularly mean, and Deanna really had unambiguously screwed up.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        This. It can be disconcerting to think things are going normally (which they are) and have someone say “Oh no were you CRUSHED by awful thing?” and uh…. no, that was kinda routine?

      2. MK*

        True. But the OP who actually heard the conversation was so put off that she started questioning her partner’s character. And apparently Tasha really is a pretty bad manager in many of the ways we hear of every day in this blog: unreasonable, unprofessional and vindictive. And the OP’s partner was Tasha’s protege.

    4. Lily*

      Yes. I’d never answer a mean person of authority over me truthfully if they asked “did that upset you?” or whatever. I mean, what good thing could come out of it? If they are mean, it’s better to not give them vulnerability.

  8. Annony*

    Wow. I hope things get better for both of you. – On a side note, that sucks that they make you work so much. I thought I read years ago that the climate has changed re: crazy hours. It’s kind of scary that surgery interns have so little sleep (I just had a surgery so it’s on my mind).

    1. The Rat Catcher*

      That was the primary reason the regs went into place – because mistakes were getting made and sleep deprivation was coming out as a major factor. Unfortunately, as someone mentioned above, the culture of working more = learning more has held strong.

    2. Dr. Anonymous*

      The degree of cultural change is a bit dependent on residency and specialty, as well, but surgery is certainly widely seen as of the holdouts. One reason is that the residents worry about getting enough cases so they’re ready for practice when they graduate and I’m not convinced programs are relieving residents of ALL OTHER work that doesn’t advance their knowledge so they can focus on learning. You do also have to round, and spend time in clinic, and write patient notes, because that’s an important part of practice, too, so I just don’t know how you find the balance.

      My specialty in the state where I trained was much more scrupulous about adhering to hours requirements. I was lucky I didn’t want to be a surgeon!

    3. soon tob former fed*

      I speculate that a disproportionate share of the 250,000 deaths (third leading cause of death in the US) caused by medical error are due to sleep deprived doctors operating on people. This is horrible.

    2. DarlaMushrooms*

      I didn’t, either. I had a hard time following the story and had to re-read it; it was as convoluted as a soap opera plot!

    1. The Shawnster*

      One can also think of words that are used to describe radicalized people that are meant to be deroggatory such as *igge*, *hin*, or *acke*.

      By your logic these are ok to also use if our we intend to use in a derogatory way.

      Interested if your logic applies here as well?

  11. Former Employee*

    My 6th grade teacher spoke to me more harshly than Beverly spoke to Deanna and her issue with me had to do with a poster each of us was supposed to do in connection with Fire Prevention Week! Granted, no teacher should speak to a child that way, especially when it isn’t even about the actual subjects being studied, but I just wanted to provide an additional perspective/frame of reference.

    To me, the bottom line was that Deanna, a grown woman in a job with certain responsibilities, did not even follow the most basic requirement of her assignment, i.e., do not do the presentation in PowerPoint. I would have been more understanding if she had simply not produced something that her managers said was what they wanted because that gets into “eye of the beholder” territory.

    1. CoveredInBees*

      You’re making this statement because you heard the interaction or you’re basing it off the OP’s general description in the original letter? A lot can get lost in reading an overview of a conversation without the benefit of hearing tone, tempo, etc. so I’d take OP at their word.

      What OP described sounded to me like “conversations” with a former boss. She would yell a criticism at us in the form of a question. If we answered too slowly, she’d yell at us for not having a good enough answer. If we answered immediately, she’d yell at us for being defensive. We couldn’t win and she had a reputation in our industry as being a terrible person to work with, so it wasn’t just people being oversensitive. If I’d never dealt with her, maybe I would have read the letter differently but, again, a lot can get lost in a short, written description so I’d defer to someone who actually heard it.

    2. MK*

      “My 6th grade teacher spoke to me more harshly than Beverly spoke to Deanna”

      I wouldn’t be sure of how harsh the conversation was based on the OP’s general description in the original post. But, no, the bottom line is not how badly Deanna messed up. If you have an underperforming employee, you discipline or fire them, you don’t get a pass to harangue and humiliate them.

      1. fposte*

        Right, I don’t think we’re going to be sure exactly how fair this conversation was; the OP heard it and she still didn’t know. People who screwed up should be spoken to seriously by their managers but shouldn’t be harangued by them; we’re never going to know what category this interaction fell into.

      2. triplehiccup*

        Agreed. The sarcasm described in the original letter is never called for at work, especially from a manager giving criticism to a direct report. A simple “this is not what we asked for,” in a serious but still reasonably polite tone, gets the point across without making people afraid to be forthcoming about mistakes.

    4. TNG fan*

      I would have been more understanding if she had simply not produced something that her managers said was what they wanted because that gets into “eye of the beholder” territory.

      Ha. Not sure if you’re a TNG fan, but that’s a great double entendre. (“Eye of the Beholder” is an episode where an alien tries to trick Deanna Troi into committing suicide by making her slowly go insane.)

      1. Former Employee*

        I don’t often come back to see if anyone has responded/reacted to my comments, but I had feeling that this time I would see at least one.

        I am not much of a TNG fan, so my double entendre was inadvertent.

        However, I am a fan of the original series and got a kick out of seeing William Shatner in a couple of Twilight Zone episodes over New Year’s as the Syfy channel played most (if not all) of the episodes.

        If you are a fan of TBBT, you may recall that when the SciFi channel became the Syfy channel, Leonard pointed out that the new spelling turned it into the “siffy” channel.

    1. Melonhead*

      And I mean “THEY meant straining Beverly and me,” since I made an unfair ASSumption about genders! Sorry, OP.

      Thanks for thanking your nursing staff, BTW.

    2. RUKiddingMe*

      Yep. I try really hard to just do those corrections only inside my own head. I *had to* correct someone the other day though. Totally incorrect word…completely different meanings. So…you know… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      1. Flash Bristow*

        I’m with you. I cannot help myself, when I hear someone saying “less” inappropriately, saying “fewer…” out loud. It’s almost a reflex.

        And more often than not, then I’ll catch myself, look up, and offer mortified and profuse apologies to the stranger / shop worker / older relative / whoever I corrected.

        Argh! I am trying to train myself out of this…

        (I / me is a bugbear, but it hasn’t reached reflex level, thank goodness!)

        1. Flash Bristow*

          I’ve just seen the reference to nitpicking words (other than when it’s an error, like Beverly / Deanna of course).

          I apologise for my comment above.

  13. Iain C*

    My thought reading that was “Tasha may suck as a boss, but we’ll done her for leaving when she was being betrayed, leaving the Borg high and dry. I hope her new group does well, and she has someone else handling personnel”.

    1. MK*

      That was your thought after reading that she apparently expected the OP’s partner to kowtow to her and ask permission to move on in her career? And that she is actively trying to sabotage her former protégé’s career? Ok.

      I mean, sure, she did the right thing for her career. But she sounds like an unreasonable, vindictive person; my lasting impression wasn’t “Go her”!

  14. Carbovore*

    Sounds like Tasha isn’t great at personal boundaries…! Beverly would probably do well to avoid her as much as possible and if forced to see her/correspond with her, keep it totally cordial and work-related.

    (I say this as someone with experience in the realm of “boss has completely blurred personal and work boundaries”… I’ve gotten lots of calls that really were not in my job description, if you know what I mean!)

    The messed up part, I’ve come to realize, is that the “nasty streaks” come out BECAUSE they feel like they’re so personally invested with you that it allows them to behave this way. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was letting this fly. My silence let her know she could get away with it and/or gave her the perception it “didn’t bother me.”

  15. Veger*

    Loving all the Star Trek references involved in this story.
    Though the update is very far from what one would expect in a utopian post scarcity society!
    Star Fleet Medical clearly needs to treat its cadets better.

    1. MK*

      I would assume she expected Beverly to finish off the project , which would salvage her credit with the client: “I left because the Borg made it impossible for me to stay, but I left you in good hands! You should totally hire my new company in the future, I am not unreliable!”. If the project tanked, the client might have blacklisted everyone associated with it, especially Tasha who was such a key reason they even chose the Borg.

  17. LadyCop*

    I too enjoyed the pseudonyms…but this is hard for me to really accept at face value…given the story is told by proxy from a naturally biased source.

    3. zaracat*

      Meh, in the context of the rest of the paragraph, I don’t see the comment as being any more proprietorial than saying “my friends”, or for that matter an RN saying “my surgeons”.

      1. Autumnheart*

        Or “my coworkers”.

        But hey, it could be a touchy phrase if it’s common for doctors to act like nurses really ARE “theirs”, so I could see someone being vigilant about that phrasing.

        1. AnonyNurse*

          Yea, it’s all about context and power dynamics. “My collegaue” vs “my assistant.” And “love my nurses” sounds a lot like “love the lesser people who work FOR me.” Especially from a surgical intern who entered the hospital in July. But, they could have a collegial environment that’s nurses and interns aligned together like every medial tv show ever. Then maybe it isn’t a bad statement.

  19. Tiara Wearing Princess*

    “Beverly lost a dear friend and treasured mentor.”

    Ummm, no she didn’t. She luckily got away from a toxic influence before she could do her real harm by normalizing her (Tasha’s) behavior. Good for Beverly that she was shocked to think she came across as nasty. Think of it as a wake up call. It’s crappy that’s Tasha is trying to interfere with Beverly’s business, but better to find out sooner than later. Tasha sounds like a bag of scorpions.

    1. Autumnheart*

      No kidding. People always think that mean jerks are decent people as long as the meanness isn’t directed at them personally. Then they’re flabbergasted when the mean person decides to turn on *them*. And even worse when it’s a person who is *selectively* mean, and only mistreats people they know can’t strike back at them.

      1. Snork Maiden*

        One thing I am learning (slowly) as I get older is that if people are cruel to other people, but not you, it’s only a matter of time until it will be your turn.

        1. Tinybutfierce*

          Thiiiis. I cut out an incredibly toxic “friend” last year, and in hindsight, I realized she always gossiped about or badmouthed EVERYONE we knew, including sharing personal details/stories they probably wouldn’t have wanted repeated (but she always played nice to me). Took me way too long to realize if she was talking about everyone else to me, then she was talking about me to everyone else, too.

    2. Kanye West*

      I agree. I feel a disconnect between how people are labeled in the story and how they behave. Also “Tasha’s expertise and charisma” sounds odd when you finish the story and learn that Tasha is irrational and vindictive and doesn’t even try to hide it. Which again throws a new light on the possibility that Tasha (and Beverly) were unnecessarily mean to Deanna.

      “I wonder if how Beverly acted with Deanna was an unconscious reflection of her boss’ attitude and the overall insanity of this client.”

      The letter started with “Beverly wasn’t out of line” and ended with “Beverly’s behavior wasn’t her fault, it was the boss’ and the client’s”.

      1. MK*

        “Also “Tasha’s expertise and charisma” sounds odd when you finish the story and learn that Tasha is irrational and vindictive and doesn’t even try to hide it.”

        Eh, not really that odd. The world is full of brilliant, charming jerks who dazzle people into overlooking the problematic aspects of their behaviour.

  20. Anoncorporate*

    …what.

    There were not one, but TWO twists in here! First, we thought Tasha was the victim, and then she turned into Madam Satan herself!

    It sounds to me like Beverley was very forgiving of Tasha’s “mean streak” and probably imitating it until it negatively affected her. And she’s deluded to think that Deanna wasn’t just being polite when she said everything was okay.

  21. Flash Bristow*

    Bluh. Dee. Hell.

    What did I just read?!!

    OP, I’ll just send you and your Significant Other congratulations on coming out the other side – and wish you a happy, productive (but less overworked) New Year.

    (I’m still boggling at Tasha.)

  22. Emily S.*

    LW/OP. Just, wow. Good for you for doing well with your program, though. That is such an incredibly difficult and demanding job (from what I’ve gathered, from MD friends). It’s an admirable vocation, and I have deep respect for that.

    And thanks so much for the detailed update. It’s nice to hear how everything played out, even if it was rather messy — it’s good that “Beverly” made it out and moved onward to better things.

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