I work in EMS in the US, and the other night a coworker took his life. One of the people who had to respond was his best friend who grew up next to him and had known him her whole life. Naturally she’s been pretty shaken up since the call. So far she’s only had 1 shift covered (she’s literally scheduled to work 144 hours a week) and the rest our boss assumed she’d be fine to work (spoiler, she isn’t🥴).
Meanwhile, our boss, who barely had contact with the deceased, has not shown up to any of his scheduled shifts (he got someone else to work them), didn’t have a debriefing (emotional support meeting) about the call, and he’s been making Facebook posts like “I’m always available to talk, no matter what… I need 8 people to share this status and then comment ‘done,’” and other posts along this line.
I just spent the last hour calling other people and trying to find coverage for this poor girl for the rest of the week, which was made even harder since he is using the few previously available people to work his scheduled shifts.
Wild how the one paid salary can “always be available” for people on Facebook but not for his own employees.🤦️
Side note: I don’t mean to sound callous towards him if he is grieving. But he has a responsibility to take care of his employees first, and he 100% is not. He gets to basically ignore our texts and grieve while getting paid (salary, paid leave) and everyone else gets to struggle on their own (paid per hour/per call, no benefits, no provided counseling services).
I really just needed to vent about how shitty my job is to people who don’t work here and might understand.