So imagine you graduate from vet school, wait around town a year while halfhearted job hunting, but really trying to decide if you want to continue in academia. You get approached about a job in a remote place, but with lots of old friends local, and they are searching specifically for you because of your specialty, your management experience and your mixed animal skill set, including some techniques that only a handful of people in the country know how to do.
You interview. It is a small animal clinic currently, with a plan already drafted for expansion. They show you exactly how integral to the expansion you would be and how the local market is demanding a mixed animal practicioner and how within 1-2 years they would be bringing in many of the specialty equipment pieces you need for advanced techniques (just imagine laproscopic surgery only I'm actually talking about embryos: cloning, trophectoderm biopsy, genome analysis, reverse semen sorting yada yada yada). They talk about having you head an internship program connected to your alma mater. The current vet is a skilled small animal general practioner and could show you ways to improve your general techniques while you advance her specialty knowledge. She is pregnant, so there is a timeline set in place for you to take over the hospital by yourself. You work out a verbal hiring package and head home with 2 months before your start date.
Then, you never receive a written copy of your hiring agreement. Things that were agreed to fall to the wayside. The boss is an animal sciences grad who has a very successful vet for a father and that is why he was placed in this position. Like an idiot, you let the little things slide like: he promised to pay for your move and then only offered about 1/4 of the cost of moving when it came time. Nobody talks at this hospital so it takes longer to do everything than it should. Your co vet sets up a tech to show you around and get you used to the procedures around this hospital. At first, you think great, she's more social and easier to talk with. Then you realize that the rest of the staff is treating you as a tech. You approach the hiring manager asking what is up and get told "I made the other vet mad about something a few months ago. She would rather work by herself and doesn't want anything to change. I promised her that she could evaluate your skills and decide when you are ready to book appointments. At that point you will have all the privelages associated with your position."
So you play nice. You do all the prep work and cleaning and grunt work because, for the most part, it is showing you the hospital flow. You have to follow the other vet around like a shadow whenever a patient is there and pass her instruments. As her belly gets bigger, you see how much more difficult it is for her to do things (and you did that while in school so you can totally relate). Yet you still are not being given any extra reaponsibilities and when you take jobs upon yourself, you are berated for not asking. 2 months in, you are allowed to walk boarding and hospitalized patients and clean their kennels. You are allowed to perform dentals and surgery only on staff animals and only while the other vet stares over your shoulder and critiques your hand position, suture choices, stich in techniques... every nuance of your technique, only it isn't critical so much as a tactic to slow you down. Especially when you are breaking her time and skill standards, she works to slow you down. She stomps her feet and pouts if you distract her by talking about her pregnancy so you can just get your work done. If you succeed, you are punished by having what few patients you are allowed to see removed from the schedule. If you suck up, you are rewarded with token jobs. To stress this, the other vet starts allowing her tech to do dentals and nutrition consults and anal glands and then sits back and smiles at your frustration when you are told now to shadow the tech in appointments. This tech and the receptionist up front start making comments about how you have no training in comparison to the head doctor and how you need to learn your place. Every time there is a problem you are met with: you learned useless **** in an ivory tower. This is the real world. The head vet knows what is right and you need to shut your face.
You meet with the office manager asking where things are headed. He tells you just to hold on. You explain the treatment you've been getting and ask if anybody knows your actual position. Not yet. So they think you are a tech who has been stepping out of position and trying to offer medical advice. Great.
Then, the receptionist and "head vet" get into an email fight with a field vet loosely associated with the hospital over who is the boss of procedure on field calls. During the meeting with the office manager/practice owner, the head vet mentions that her plan is to keep you on kennel duty for the next year or so. Probably never let you do any real work with clients as she has decided you are now one of her techs. The building expansion is still going to happen, but no intern program and they will likely hire someone else to run all that fancy equipment if they ever get any at all.
The "head vet," who was supposed to be your equal, got what she wanted all along. She gets to keep working by herself. No questions to her authority and power. She will continue to smile every time you meekly go along with this, after all, what are your choices? You spent everything to move out here. There are few if any job opportunities elsewhere in the area. What do you do?
Your title is still Senior Veterinarian/ Hospital Manager, but you are only allowed the duties of a veterinary assistant. What do you put on your resume when you job hunt? Do you stick this out for 6 months so it is a time worth putting on a resume? You have a family relying on your salary (which fits your title, so I guess at least you are paid well for standing in a corner and taking abuse), so you can't just walk away. You could sell all your farm animals and give up on your home dreams to afford a move, but you will be trading one version of crying for another...
What would you do?
Boo horse!!! 
