Help and advice with rumour mill please

Post Reply New Topic

I haven't been here in a while, but I am dealing with an... Interesting situation and I could use some more objective perspectives, and if you are willing, some advice on how to handle this.

My husband is the Supervisor of a department in a hospital. He has only three employees under him. This is a very small town (about 2000 people).

My husband had been working part time at this hospital in addition to his supervisory duties at a much larger facility in a nearby city. When the manager here left, he was offered the job. Now both of the employees that he now supervises were present when he was part-timing, and have been here longer than he has.

Because it is a small hospital with limited resources my husband is also their backup I.T person. The other I.T. is a woman I will call Cora, and we'll get back to her in a bit.

My husband has been supervisor now for about four years at this hospital. One of his employees expressed concern when he took the helm. This employee we shall call Mary. Mary had been rather close friends with the previous female supervisor. Mary is also a very dominant queen-bee sort of personality and had alot of influence on the previous supervisor.

Now, I'm not going to speculate on her motivation but I will give you the time line of "incidents" with Miss Mary. In the beginning she was cordial enough. However, she called the house once when my husband was off and she was on, just to complain about another employee in another department that my husband could do nothing about, among other things. She prattled on for 20 minutes about things that weren't even work related. In short she called my husband at home socially just to vent and chat. I felt that was inappropriate and said that would not happen again.

Mary continued to try to manipulate and exert control over my husband. This didn't work very well. She did get one of her friends hired on (my husband did ask my advice I told him to hire the woman, they needed the help), unfortunately this friend (I'll call her Bonnie) is rather dominated by Mary.

Over time Mary has became sullen, resentful, and hostile and this has only grown. Eventually, Mary began to manipulate the other coworker who is a rather kind and reasonable woman (let's call her Tara) and spread the hostility to all three.

Now, at this time the CEO had asked my husband to cut back hours. The employees (understandably) were upset about losing time, and so my husband began to cut back his own hours so that they could get more of theirs. This was perceived as shirking his duties so to speak, and somehow in the blow up over all of this they tried to issue mandates that would effect me, and I became the focus of their animosity.

We have horses. I have asthma. I am also allergic to horses (yes I know). What will trigger my asthma worse than anything however is cold. So, part of our agreement for staying here when we had a chance to move somewhere warmer was that my husband would feed horses in the winter. This usually translates to his lunch break on his workdays. Now at the time this blew up my husband had become rather addicted to an online game so he would take hour and a half to two hour lunches for a while, so he could feed animals and play his game. (Yes, I would tell him he needs to go back to work, but I'm not going to scream and nag.) His employees decided that the reason why he was taking so long was because he was helping me feed animals, and so attempted to mandate that he could come home for lunch but he couldn't help me feed animals. When my husband brought up my health they simply told him I shouldn't have horses anyway, and made some rather disparaging inferences about my character in general.

Now (Tara) the reasonable one went home to her husband with this, and he said some things that caused her to question her motivations, and she actually apologized to my husband and began speaking to me again without clenched teeth, and frankly Mary lost her grip on her.

Now the latest incident. This Mon. the husband of Cora (remember her... the I.T. lady), got a phone call. A man being coached by a woman in the background told him that his Cora and my husband were having an affair. The man would not say who he was, or present any proof. Now, Cora's husband is a well-known hot head. Cora and her husband also have better than 30 years on my husband and nearly 40 on me. The woman is in her sixties. Even her temperamental husband wasn't buying this one. Frankly I don't either. I must recognize the possibility, but I think it's pretty darn unlikely.

Now, in terms of who is behind this, it is most likely to be someone at the hospital, and the only one (and I do mean the only one) who has any problem with my husband is Mary and those in her cabal. So lets just say that she is suspect number one.

Now, Cora is working herself up about this the more she thinks on it, because the whole stunt was just well... Crazy. She is afraid that my husband and I are the targets (kay, we probably are), and that these people may do something violent when this doesn't work. She has gone so far to give my husband the cell phone of her husband who offered ah... "Backup" should we need it. My husband wants to get his concealed-carry and wants me to as well. I think they're being a little reactionary and silly. Although for the last few weeks I have been getting the breathing-into-the-phone-and-hang-up calls.

At any rate thanks for reading this far, feel free to tell my what you think. Try to keep it polite of course.

If they think it is so bad that people will hurt either of you because you don't believe the lie, why haven't you gone to the police? Even if to put it on record that this thing they said is untrue (in case something were to happen).

A good rule about guns is "Don't have one unless you're willing to shoot somebody", what I mean by this is to be sure you would be able to shoot in self defence because guns, like bladed weapons, can be used against you if you hesitate. You don't want to provide an attacker with a weapon.

Self defence classes may help a bit and something that you could spray in their eye (pepper spray or similar) to get away may be helpful.

Ah...small towns!
LostAlien might be right in that you can have it on record of your fears and of the activity if you go to the police.
And, if you have a lawyer, maybe talk to him or her too? That's a good way to have something on record and protected as well, so there'll be a history to refer to if something else happens. And the lawyer may say something about slander and might be willing to write and send a cease-n-desist letter. Sounds like you got a good head on your shoulders.
And maybe get Caller ID, if it's available in your area.
I have a little digital voice recorder, with an option for voice-activation, it was about $60 when I bought it, but they're probably around $40 now.
I live in a small town too, the rumor mill here grinds out 24/7 and it is ug.lee.

I knew a guy who loved cats but was allergic, so he takes pills and vacuums a lot!

Your husbands co-workers are out of their minds. Must be a small town thing.

A) No need for guns. This sounds like a minor grudge at best.

B) You husband should gradually wean himself off of speaking about home life with them. They only know certain things because he told them. They clearly don't understand boundaries and so he shouldnt feed them information. He's feeding the beast.

C) Ive known of two cases, involving people I know, where there was an anonymous tip about an affair. One was a letter, the other a phone call. Both were right. Just something to think about.

/two cents worth.