I am a health inspector for my state government. Recently, we have become so short staffed that it's laughable. Many of our inspections are due by the end of June and another inspector quit today.
Our supervisors have asked us to ignore violations and spend less time at inspections so that we have more time to do more inspections before our deadline. I have heard a supervisor directly telling someone to just ignore a violation so that the report would be satisfactory and not require a follow up. Of course, no one wants to ask us this in writing…
I take major issue with this, the first being the hazard this could present to the public health. Since no one is standardizing what violations we're ignoring, different inspectors could be ignoring different things. One inspector may be ignoring the missing thermometers while another decides that it's not that important for staff to be food safety trained.
My second issue is how this could affect our budget. We're hilariously underpaid at $31k/year, requiring at least 30 science based credit hours. If we show we can get all of the inspections done at only 2/3rds the staff, I fear our budget would be cut to get rid of the vacant positions permanently.
I have no doubt in my mind that the low salary has created our understaffed situation. College graduates cannot afford to live in Florida for $31k. Rent in our major cities has increased as much as 30%, with average 1 bedroom rates at $1800/month. This year, current employees can expect a whopping 5% raise. This raise does not apply to future positions, we do not get annual raises, nor do we get monetary awards for working above and beyond. We get gas reimbursements of $0.44/mile ($0.10/mile less than federal reimbursement rate), but with being asked to travel further outside of our regular area of work and the increasing gas costs, it's laughable.
We have 800+ facilities that need to be inspected before the end of June. We're meant to spend an hour for each inspection. Between those that are left, we'll have to take on 60 extra inspections on top of our normal inspections. For context, our stretch goal for an excellent performance review is 15 extra a year. I have already done at least 40 extra inspections to cover for previously vacant positions (we have a high turnover rate with more than 50% of inspectors working here for less than a year).
I use to love my job. I had fun with it, enjoyed educating people about public health standards, and had a lot of respect for my supervisors and administrators. But now, I am so stressed and exhausted, I'm considering quitting. Of the 7 other inspectors that remain, 2 are lined up to retire, and at least 2 others have been applying elsewhere. Our job postings will go several days without applications or we'll have no show interviews. Our boss is so concerned as how our overall department quota would reflect on him that he hasn't advocated regarding the base issue.
Is there anything else I can do? I've called the governor, I've called my local representatives. Do I quit and let it be their problem? Do I leak something to the news? I can't just let people slack on public health and safety inspections, right?