I’m really mad about a situation with my job, and I’m not sure if it’s justified or if I’m letting my current stressed state cloud my judgement.
I have recently had an auxiliary abscess drained under general anaesthetic. It’s not a pleasant experience; particularly not when you get an inexperienced student nurse packing your wound 😣 but that’s not really relevant! I could have been signed off work for two weeks, but I have a huge project on and I couldn’t bring myself to disappear for that long, so I actually only took three days off.
However, whilst I’m back at work, the dressing needs changing daily, by a nurse. In the usual circumstances I’d be off, so could go any time, but obviously I can’t do that when going into the office. My GP’s surgery has been very understanding and has sorted it so I can be seen either very early or as late as possible. Because they've been good enough to sort this, I also need to be flexible, so it’s meant arriving late at work some days and leaving early others.
I cleared this with my boss (although given I’m doing him a huge favour by even being at work at the moment, he didn’t have a lot of choice). He just said to let the team know what was going on so they’d know why if I wasn’t available. I emailed everyone and had assumed they’d all seen it, given nobody asked anything and that they knew I’d been in hospital.
However, I found out this morning that one of my colleagues, Susan, had commented when I wasn’t there “So is Chomp just setting her own hours now? You never know when she’ll arrive, she leaves early - when’s she actually supposed to be here?” I should add at this point that Susan is always a bit over-involved in what others are doing: comments if someone is late, wants to know where they were if a call came in and they weren’t at their desk etc.. She’s got it into her head that she’s some kind of office manager, and has affixed a kind of seniority to her position that doesn’t really exist.
The colleague who told me what she’d said put her straight about my medical appointments, but I still re-forwarded my original email to everyone saying “Just in case anyone missed it first time that means you, Susan, you bitch”. I laid it on a bit thick, thanking everyone for their support.
I’m just really annoyed and wondering if I should take it further. Even if Susan hadn’t seen the email, she knows I’ve been in hospital; it surely couldn’t be that difficult to put two and two together. I don’t really have to tell her or anyone about my medical circumstances, but was happy to avoid any confusion (or at least that was the plan). I wasn’t forced back to work, but it would have caused major problems if I had taken a fortnight off. Now I feel like instead of people being grateful, I feel like I’m being punished for taking a poxy hour or so a day to get medical treatment - by someone who doesn’t even have to authority to dictate my hours.
Do I say something, or is it just because I’m still feeling a bit crappy and fed up and I should let it pass?