I wrote about my first crazy job that had a coverage on 60 minutes and lead to indictments HERE.

I believe I indicated I had worked at another place that had some news coverage.

The Hospice of Saint John

Before I really dig into this place, I will say this is a place I was actually proud to work at. The vast majority of the people that worked there really cared about helping people and you could see the help that was provided.

It also had an amazing story and pedigree. It was literally the second ever Hospice created in the United States of America and was founded by Father Paul von Lobkowitz in 1977.

I had worked at a medical center when I was 18 or so, but I'd never been to a Hospice before.

I was asked to come in and be the Director of IT. I had been recommended by a friend, and tested in an interview for my knowledge and ability to solve problems.

This would prove to be an interesting place from the IT perspective. It had multiple aging Windows Servers, and multiple Linux servers of various distros (Slackware, CentoOS, Fedora, etc) and most of them were running on Virtual Box. It had some Perl scripts for bar code scanning, and such that had no error checking of any kind. It had old wiring, and old no longer used phone blocks at various places around the facility. It had non-outdoor rated Cat 5 serving the main office building running along the outside of the wall. It had a Toshiba PBX which fed into an Asterisk box that was primarily there simply to provide an IVR for nurses that were making home hospice visits (house calls for patients).

That is my job environment and it actually is NOT that exciting.

The hospice though was a place for people at the end of life to be offered some comfort. Volunteers would come in with music, art, different types of therapy, and even animals like dogs an Llamas.

It was multi-denominational. I am an atheist/deist yet some of the people I enjoyed my time with the most there were a Lutheran and a Presbyterian priests/ministers that I would have lunch with. The Lutheran was Latino from Chile, jolly, musician, and intelligent. The Presbyterian looked a lot like Benjamin Franklin and they were close friends with each other. Both of them would no longer be there by the time I too would decide to leave. Both of them victims of the cycle I talk about later.

I can't write a book and expect you to read it, so I am going to speed through the rest.

The CEO was the former President of the Board of Directors. He was also a high ranking member of the Order of Saint John. The structure was such that the CEO reported to the Board of Directors, who in turn reported to the Order of Saint John. He was a diabetic and he did not take care of his diabetes so he would often have dramatic mood swings. His answer to any solution seemed to be "Fire them." This could make my job really difficult because in some areas you can only FIRE so many entities before there are no options remaining. If you'd bring that up it would be FIRE YOU but phrased in the "well, if you can't do it then I'll find someone that can."

I actually didn't get any of that type of feedback until the last 6 months I was there. Prior to that it was all praise and speaking on how wonderful I was and how great a job I did. I would learn that this was kind of the known cycle. There was a NEW period where the CEO would like people, and then he would one day NOT like them, very likely because they told him the truth about something and he didn't want to hear it. I actually held out longer than many people I saw before this cycle seemed to be reaching for me. So I had seen the writing on the wall and I got another job (which I still have) and left on my own. Within a year the Hospice was closing it's doors which is kind of sad.

9News in the Denver area did quite a few news stories on it. In it they are always with that CEO and he is blaming many things that indeed were factors that made things difficult, but ultimately they were bearable with proper management. I became friends with one of the guys that was doing most of the billing and accounting for the Hospice while I was there and he knew ways to help, but those were things they didn't want to hear. My friend quit in a bit more dramatic way than most.

So the Hospice of Saint John was a wonderful place... it was mismanaged. Here are a few of the ways. Keep in mind it was Non-Profit and actively sought donations and grants.

• CEO made 120K+ salary and listed himself as a contractor not an employee
• CEO's wife made probably 30K/year as part of what we'd know as the cabin staff. It was rare that she was there 8 hours out of the week, yet she did do networking, and made promotional videos (which also cost a lot)
• The place known as the Cabin was the nicest looking office in the place and was where the people working on grants, fundraisers, etc would work. It was the CEOs pet project. By the time I left including his wife it had 3 other people there that were full time, and all making close to what I was making as the Director of IT, and potentially more. The job they did I could have done by myself if that were my duties. A lot of money was dumped into this pet project, while other places like my department, nursing, and many other places struggled to get the funds they needed and approval to replace things that needed to be replaced.
• CEO would show up usually close to lunch time almost every day, and gather the CFO or later the COO, or sometimes both of them and go out to lunch and bill it as expense to the Hospice. This was NOT a small expense.
• Before I ever worked there I guess some well known staff members tried to do something about him and they all lost their job.
• I saw him go from zero to purple faced rage on more than one occasion. So bad that I would not have been surprised if he'd had a stroke or heart attack at the time.

I worked there for almost three years. I do think it was a great place, and the people that worked there truly wanted to help. I think it was just very poorly managed and the structure for dealing with the mismanagement was too rife with conflicts of interest and cronyism.

I will continue to remember some great people there that I know really cared about helping people.

Oh and their website was hacked... and is still up with some very unhospice like data. I didn't have anything to do with that. My hands were tied on most of that. The ladies in the cabin called the shots on all marketing.

The Nurse in that last video Helen Parton was an absolutely wonderful and caring person. She would take an annual trip to India to help people there as well. She and I would often talk about the direction things were heading. I really respect her, and she truly cared about her job.