This might be long but point me to the right subreddit if I’m in the wrong one.
A year ago, I started working at a hospital in the activities department for patients with dementia (playing games, music, shopping/movie trips). Literally the best job I could ask for. I love it still a year later but this is what’s getting in the way of me being truly happy at this job.
Administration requires our department to give the secretaries a break three times a day. This is annoying as hell itself and I guess wasn’t a requirement in the past until a new administrator was hired.
These are supposed to be two 15 minute breaks and one half hour break. They never follow these rules and always take over an hour and it interferes with our real jobs. We complained about it to our boss but nothing happens, she usually doesn’t back us
up since it’s administration allowing it.
The bigger issue is the secretaries on the weekend have quit so instead of showing up to a shift doing activities from 8-5, I am forced to come in 1-9 as a secretary. That’s also if someone during the week calls off we are forced to cover the desk until 8 pm instead of our regular shift.
This affects everything from the staff, patients and families. If they’re expecting an activity, they get very excited but when they’re told we can’t do it because we have to take over as secretary, they get really upset at us and the nurses. Then the families are upset because their mother/father is promised activities but then they end up not having it. This results in everyone being upset with our department. My boss stays in her office 24/7 and isn’t on the unit so she doesn’t receive any backlash like we do.
Plus, they make us do through these trainings for fire drills and active shooters that “it’s our responsibility if someone gets hurt”. Now every time I’m working the front desk I’m just super anxious about something like that happening and not knowing what to do.
It’s been this way for months and they keep promising us “it’s gonna change”. They bribe us with cookies and coffee and things like that to do it. It’s a huge hospital building but our staff of 5 has been pulling all the weight. And the staff that do it get favoritism and extra compensation from admin (gift cards, work points, but that won’t even tempt me).
The nursing staff has encouraged us to go further with this and go to the state since patients are required a certain amount of hours for activities and they aren’t getting those due to this issue. If this doesn’t change I’m going to end up quitting the job I love because I have no support, not even from my boss. I don’t know what to do from here.