A couple weeks ago, I thought that my long job search had finally come to an end. I had spent quite a bit of time at Clinic X (name shall remain anonymous) and it has costed quite a bit of my gas money. The first time I visited the clinic, I trudged through a congested highway due to a motor vehicle accident. The second time I visited the clinic, I trudged through a snow storm. Finally, the third time I visited the clinic, I had finally made it smoothly.
Initially, the practice owner & I had made some negotiations via e-mail. It was concluded on my third visit that what I had asked for (in terms of salary) was fair afterall, given the clinic location and my # of years of experience and the practice owner agreed on paying me via hour blocks on a full time basis. After this verbal agreement, I had felt a sense of relief (at least for 24 hours) and was happy (at least for 24 hours) until I got an e-mail saying, "...just to confirm that we discussed about 30 hours per week on average..." That had already changed from our initial verbal agreement..so I was like...oh great...
Then, as we e-mailed each other back and forth and forth and back, it was essentially concluded that the practice owner could only give me 16 hours a week with sporadic holiday coverage and the 16 hours would be lunch/afternoon coverage. For VERY obvious reasons, I didn't sign the contract and thank goodness I didn't sign it before I knew my schedule.
The moral of this story is to make sure, as a new grad (or not so new grad) that you have discussed everything with the practice owner and that they don't change it on the contract (or through e-mail in my case).
In this particular case, I had discussed this job with the practice owner from February - April - three whole months. While I very very BADLY want to believe that she genuinely had NO idea that she was only able to give me 16 hours and didn't know that from the get-go, I find that very EXTREMELY hard to believe. Had I had known this from the get-go...I would have not wasted 3 months of my life contacting this clinic and pursing this position.
It's been a couple weeks since this faulty negotiation and I've been thinking about it from time to time and slowly less and less. However, every time I think about it, I lose more trust in practice owners and every time I think about it, it makes my blood boil lots. And I've been trying to move on and forgive but this is just too hard to forgive because it was such a self-centred move on her part.
I'm so lost at this point. It's not that I'm jobless - I have a job and I'm happy where I am. But it's so hard to move on from this because it makes me sad that there are practice owners who once were these nice veterinarians. And now are out to twist and turn things and not lay things out straight with prospective veterinarians. I don't get it. And vets that don't mentor (we'll write another post about that another day).
Anyway, may back in the day, new vets were just super dumb and fell into every these traps and got suckered and screwed in and now these new vets (who aren't so new anymore and have become practice owners) are using these old traps that we're not falling for and they're getting frustrated with. Why can't we all just be nice and honest towards each other? We are all veterinarians...the community is small. I wish everyone would be respectful and that they would just tell the truth rather than use these stupid traps to try and trap a new grad in. That's just...not cool. You are molding a new generation of bitter people who will probably do that to future new grads. It's a vicious cycle and we are generating a bunch of monsters.
From vets to vets - the joys, laughters, & frustrations we face as DVMs
