I manage the clinical staff at a chiropractic practice. I am a massage therapist and have three other massage therapists under me. The newest one, who has been working here for about two months now, is just not working out. I'm kind of at my wits' end about it.

She was hired just before I was promoted (like, maybe a week before), so I had no input in the hiring process. Which makes no sense to me, why the doctor would go and do this on his own when he knew he was going to put me in a manager position - and he did. Seriously, why not wait? Also, my impression from the beginning was that he offered her the job because there were no better choices presenting at the moment.

The four of us handle everything in the office to do with treating patients that the doctor doesn't do himself. We do range-of-motion testing and functional evaluations of faulty movement patterns, we give the electrostim and ultrasound and other modalities, we teach spinal rehabilitation exercises, and we do massage therapy. As I said, she's been here for two months and she's still having difficulty learning pretty much everything. She doesn't understand his abbreviations for electrode positioning and still gets them wrong regularly. She doesn't know how to explain the treatments to patients who have never had them before. She doesn't understand what parameters to look for in a functional evaluation. She doesn't know how to properly strap a patient on the decompression table. She can't explain even the most basic rehab exercises. And it's not that none of us has tried to help her - she's been taught and shown and coached and encouraged to read the literature, many times. We've come together for training sessions outside of office hours. We've stood by her and coached her as she's gone through the procedures. We've offered her resources to read and watch and use on her own time. She just doesn't seem to be motivated to take the initiative.

She's also not good at documenting. This is a medical office. We deal with insurance companies. We absolutely HAVE to document everything accurately. There are a handful of insurance billing codes that we have to know, and she's been using them for two months now but doesn't know them. I even showed her where to look them up. We've only just now gotten her into the habit of signing in and out on the time sheet every day without having to be reminded.

Not only that, but it seems that she has to constantly be micromanaged. If she doesn't have a patient in front of her to treat or a load of laundry to fold, she just stands there like a bump on a log until someone tells her to do go do something.

She's confident in massage, but only the most basic techniques with a very superficial pressure. The problem is that our office doesn't book appointments with specific therapists - the goal is for all of us to be somewhat interchangable and be able to serve everyone who comes in. There are a few exceptions to this, but it mostly works. It's not working with her. I know of two right off who absolutely refuse to have a massage with her ever again, one of whom threatened to leave and never come back if she had to have another massage with this girl. That said, there are also a handful who just love her, mostly old ladies who don't like deep pressure and just want to be "petted" as we refer to it. We trade massages with each other every so often and we've all tried to coach her to use more pressure, to practice deep tissue on us. She won't do it. Every time she gives me a massage I feel like I haven't had a massage at all. I don't even feel mentally relaxed afterwards.

She and I sat down on Thursday and had a talk about how things are going and what we can do to make it better. She mentioned that she found it confusing to try to learn from three different people and felt she would have better retention if she had just one person to learn from. So we agreed (all four of us; I ran this by the other staff as well) to arrange the schedule for the next two weeks so that she is paired with one of the other therapists (her choice, said she felt she understood best from this other girl) all the time. After two weeks we'll re-examine the situation and see what kind of progress has been made.

But then yesterday, she was just no damn good at all. She obviously didn't want to be at work, she had a bad attitude all day long, and hardly paid attention to what she was doing. She botched an ultrasound treatment on this poor little girl who came in in a lot of pain from a neck injury after the doctor showed her specifically where to target the treatment. Then she got mad when another massage appointment was added to the end of the day and she had to take it when wanted to go home. I've just about had it. I'm trying to help, and I feel like she's biting the hand that feeds her.

The bottom line is, this is a job. It's not a class. We're not teachers. We don't have time to hold her hand and spoonfeed her. We see roughly 200 patients in a week. Everyone has to pull their own weight. She has to be motivated to pick this stuff up on her own and comprehend it. Otherwise it's not going to work. We're nearing the end of her 90-day trial period, so we really need to come to some sort of agreement soon. I'm just really frustrated by this whole situation.

Dude, I'm so sorry! That sounds terribly stressful, especially because the nature of your work is to be face-to-face with your clients/customers. If she were in an accounting office, there could be a few checks and measures to ensure that mistakes never reached the client, but you can't exactly prevent that in your line of work.

It sucks, and I wish you could just fire her outright now and start looking for another person: after all, you could do everything more efficiently if you don't have to worry about her, teach her, etc.

I'm wishing you many hugs.

If she's not working out, then fire her and get an ad out ASAP and be apart of the hiring process. You've tried her, she doesn't fit. She's done. Sucks that you're the manager and have to do the firing, but the one moment of the being the bad guy will far underexceed (if that's even a word) the relief from not using to deal with her on a daily basis.

Yep, definetly let her go before her probation period runs out. It will be much easier to get rid of her if you do it before then. You have done your due diligence in this case by training her, meeting with her to discuss her inefficiencies, then trying a new plan of action. Nothing is working, and you don't need to waste more time and money on her when you could be searching for the perfect applicant.

Yeah, I want to, but the rest of the management (the doctor and the business manager) wants to exhaust every avenue first, so we're doing this two-week thing now. I've already given both of them my opinion on the applicant pool they'd been focusing on. They've been getting these girls fresh out of massage school and then they can't hang on to them and can't figure out why. This is totally not an appropriate job for someone with no experience in the field.

We've had an ad out, and no bites. Ideally, we would like to have five therapists on staff, so we've been looking anyway. But that's a whole other can of worms that I don't want to get into right here. We did manage with three for a while when someone quit abruptly, and we did that for a month or so before we hired this girl. We managed, like I said, but it was pretty exhausting, and I don't want to do that to my staff (and myself) again unless I absolutely have to.

It can be a great job straight out of school for the right type of person... but quite honestly it sounds more or less like she is meant more for the spa industry.

Has your boss had a treatment from her? Maybe that will change his mind. Cause I know if I went somewhere for a massage expecting a proper treatment, a fluff massage would not be in the books.

^ This particular office is not right for someone so green.

And yes, he had a massage from her right before he hired her. But, as he remarked to me when he did my interview massage, "They tell me I'm the wrong person to do these because I just fall asleep."

This is going nowhere but downhill. It's only been one week of the two I granted her, but I really see absolutely nothing that makes me want to give her any more chances. Enough things have happened since then that I really just want to let her go. We've helped her all we can help her; she has to want to help herself and she doesn't seem to want to. Now I just need to discuss my thoughts with the doctor and the business manager and make sure they agree with me.

On the upside, I did get a promising resumé today...

Hahaha, I'm just SO JEALOUS of your job. I'm stuck in the spa loop ("doing my time" so I can get enough experience to move on), and I've just about had it with the people I've been having to deal with... Is it just me, or is every receptionist in the world unable to properly do their job?

I just don't get it- a chiropractic office is a SWEET job right out of massage school- why on earth would this lady be messing it up? Doesn't she realize that she hit the jackpot there? Ugh.

See here a chiro office or a physio office isn't a hard job to get right out of school...

I did my time at a physio clinic and in the chiro world and now I'm happy living in spa land. I've done the opposite I guess.

It's probably because schooling when I went to massage school was only 300 hours- 250 classroom and 50 internship. We basically learned how to give a basic, bare-bones swedish massage and that was it. Now it's up to 500 (but most schools offer 600 hour courses), but that's still not enough in my opinion. Fresh out of school (and especially with no other certifications), the only thing we're pretty much legally allowed to do is basic spa stuff.

I did 2200 hours of schooling with goodness how many of those hours of internship... this followed by a certification exam.

And as far as I'm aware, that's the norm in most countries. A lot of US states don't even HAVE Massage Therapy regulations :-/

I had to take a cert exam too, which I actually had to study for a LOT because half of the stuff I was tested on was in my textbook but we never went over it in class. I think I can comfortably say that I have the knowledge (and now experience) of a student that's nationally certified (which usually takes 6-1200 hours here depending on the state), but fresh out of school I would have definitely been drowning if I have been put in a position like Arak's employee.

Just another example of how the American healthcare system believes that anyone aside from a physician isn't a real healthcare professional.

Is it just me, or is every receptionist in the world unable to properly do their job?

Not just you.



Anyways, I don't really have anything constructive to offer to your dilemma unfortunately. I too am a Massage Therapist that works out of a Chiro clinic but we do things way differently, so Im fascinated with how your workplace runs.

We have two chiros, two Registered Massage Therapists, two Acupuncturists, and midwives at our practice. There is a lot of crossover with patients between different types of therapies, but almost no crossover between practitioners of the same therapy (aside from the midwives) - unless we are seeing someone on an urgent basis. If someone is not pulling their weight it fortunately only effects them directly (though indirectly it of course does not look good on the entire clinic).

It does sound like she may do better in a spa-type environment, and can hopefully do some upgrading courses in the meantime.

I have not worked in the spa industry, but I must say that the idea has crossed my mind! Usually when I'm in the middle of a sticky motor vehicle accident case or a workplace injury claim. Ughhhhh. Some days I sit and cross my fingers hoping a "fluff" client will show up. Most days however, I live for obscure orthopedic injuries and in depth assessments.

The whole receptionist thing... I'm so ready to kill the one where I work. OMG seriously I ended up with a nasty burn on my arm from the hot stone heater because of her booking one first thing in the AM because no one plugged it in before I got to work. I had to crank it. I seriously am ready to strangle her.

LLD - You live in Canada. I live in the US. Things are different. Believe me when I say, this is a job for a therapist with more experience.

I was vetoed on letting her go. They want to give her another chance. *headdesk* So yesterday I kept her with me and made it clear that she would be the one handling all treatments and I would be supervising. We also had a little discussion beforehand about needing to see a little more enthusiasm and a better attitude from her. And it was better. If she can continue in this direction without any more "little talks" to motivate her, we might be able to work with it. But the skeptic in me wonders how long it will be before she has to be threatened again.

I still feel very strongly that this position is not a good fit for her, and that we are doing her a disservice by stringing her along.

Oh, just shoot me now. It'll be faster. Not only are we headed back down the same path as before, now she's really done it. I'm so through here. If they're not with me this time, it might just come down to she goes or I go.

The two of us were in massage for the afternoon and near the end of the day she was starting to run late. Not through any major fault of her own; she had a client who took their sweet time getting off the table and it put her behind. So she ended up taking the next one ten minutes late. Our policy is, if the client is late, the massage ends on time, but if the therapist is late, the client gets their full allotted time even if it means running late. She knows this. She ended this massage (which began late) on time. I questioned it, and she told me that this lady had hurt her hip and they had ended the massage early because she was no longer able to be comfortable on the table. So I asked if she tried this and that (because there are other ways of positioning if flat on the back or stomach is uncomfortable) and she said yes she had and nothing worked.

I saw this lady a few minutes later and stopped to chat with her. I asked how she was doing, oh sorry about your hip, did the massage aggravate it at all? Oh no, the massage helped a lot; it was wonderful. She wasn't uncomfortable on the table at all, only turning over was a little difficult. Yeah, she flat-out LIED to me. This is so NOT ok.

So I confronted her about it and she gave me the worst attitude ever. Cut me off, interrupted me, accused me of treating her like a 5-year-old, etc. Told me that if I didn't want her here I should just say so. Damn, I wish I could! Because now on top of lying to me, you're now treating your manager with the worst disrespect ever. Oh, but she says she'll respect me when I respect her. Gee.

So the business manager and I have discussed it and we will be meeting with the doctor about it in the morning. I am so done here.

Ok, I guess I'm not done. The ultimate decision was not to let her go, and although it was not ostensibly said, I know it's because there's no one to take her place and they felt bad for putting her out of work. Bad reason to keep someone, but whatever. I don't sign paychecks.

However, things do seem to be a little better now. It seems that all we needed was to get in each other's faces and yell a bit and then move on. We just might be able to work with this.

Gah. Seriously now, I am tired of this game. She has had several doctor's appointments lately. Most of them have been scheduled during non-office hours, but we use non-office hours as training time and most of this training lately has been for her benefit. Last week we had a staff training session scheduled and she told one of the other therapists the night before that she wouldn't be there because she had a doctor's appointment, and the other therapist passed this on to me. I contacted her and she told me what time her appointment was (2 hours before the training was scheduled) and said she didn't think it would take long and she'd be at training. Then the next morning she sent me a text an hour before training and said she wouldn't make it.

I have repeatedly (and by that I mean I can recall four separate occasions, one of which is recorded in a formal sit-down meeting between us and two were in front of witnesses) asked her to inform me on paper of things like this and she doesn't do it. She doesn't have to fill out a formal request for time off if it's outside normal office hours, but I still need it in front of me so I don't schedule a training session and then not have my full staff there. And just telling me verbally isn't acceptable. I have too many other responsibilities to keep up with someone else's dates and times in my head. But she does have to fill one out if it's during office hours. And every time I ask her to, she says ok and then I don't get anything from her.

Tuesday evening I was setting the schedule for Wednesday morning and she said "I have a doctor's appointment, don't you remember?" Uh, no. No, I don't. This is during office hours, did you fill out a time off request like you were supposed to? No, she did not. So I had to scramble to cover the morning shift sufficiently. And write her up for it.

But finally I feel like the rest of management is on my side about this, which, speaking of, I really don't get them anymore. At first whenever I brought up things that were happening I'd get shot down immediately. I was told I wasn't giving her a fair chance, or that I was deliberately looking for things to call her out over, and just generally painted as the villain in this little drama. The term "witch hunt" was thrown out there at one point. And now all of a sudden it's "Here's the form, she needs to be written up for that. This can't continue if she wants to remain employed here, so start making a paper trail." Uh, my paper trail would have begun a lot sooner if you'd just trusted me in the first place!

Ugh! That's annoying! Hiring people is a really expensive process so I can see why they want to exhaust all the possibilities first, but if someone has to hold her hand ALL day then they are paying essentially paying 2 people to do one job.

This is some pretty extreme coaching though...This would NEVER fly in any other industry or probably at many (if any) other jobs. Is it her first real job? Either way, I feel bad for you, this is probably most manager's LEAST favorite part of their job. At least at this point you KNOW it's on her and there is nothing else you could have done. She sounds like she should be the massager on a cruise ship or something, not in a medical setting. :/

It's her first job in this field, but she claims she's managed retail stores before. I personally have a hard time believing this.

But in other news, we did just hire an additional therapist (the interview I mentioned earlier), and the difference between the two of them is like night and day. The new girl's been with us for three days and already knows almost as much as the one in question. By next week she'll likely be handling most anything on her own. I'm hoping this will be as obvious to the management as it is to me and to the rest of my staff.

So...any updates?

Well there was one thing I didn't mention before: She is not certified. They literally hired her right out of school with the understanding that she would be taking her boards shortly, which she dragged her feet over for the longest time. She finally did it two weeks ago, and didn't pass. So now the doctors have had me remove her from the regular schedule and use her as a fill-in only as needed until she takes it again and passes. In the meantime we are actively looking for another therapist (andcI refuse to even consider anyone who is not already certified).

I still think we're being very unfair by stringing her along like this, but it's not my call. And so far she hasn't resigned of her own accord.

Here you wouldn't get hired unless you were certified. I didn't look for a job until I had my registration number in hand.