I work at a surgery facility. But I'm not the subject of this story.
Rather, it's the patients that are scheduled for surgery here, more specifically the ones who can't make it.
As part of my duties I go over the schedule for the upcoming days. Sometimes patients reschedule or cancel for some reason or another: they've recovered enough that the surgery is no longer needed, there's a delay in getting lab work processed, they can't afford their share of the surgery cost (which is pretty bullshit of the healthcare industry, but that's a story for another day and another subreddit).
The one that especially grinds my gears is when I see that a surgery has been cancelled because the patient is unable to get time off of work. And it's the one category of cancellation reason I empathize with most because I used to work in an industry that was obsessed with lean staffing to cut costs at the expense of making it harder for employees to get time off.
Like sometimes, the patient simply reschedules and they're able to make it to the new date. Other patients, I've yet to see them pop back up on the schedule. So I just imagine the patient filing a time-off request to have their gallbladder removed or a torn ligament taken care of, and the manager saying no and then going to sleep peacefully later that night.
If you are in charge of the people you work with and you refuse to let an employee take time off to have surgery that can treat a debilitating condition, or one that can save their life, you should be forced to have a face-to-face meeting with their doctor to explain why you think your employee working yet another day for you is more important than their surgery, and you should be forced to listen to the potential consequences of that employee not getting surgery.