so this happened right around the beginning of covid. i worked as a home care nurse for this hellhole company for two and a half years, it was a salaried position when i was hired. most of our patient base at the time was from elective surgeries, which were stopped when the pandemic first hit, so for a few weeks we weren't busy. then on a monday out of nowhere, everybody gets a call from our department director telling us that they can't “afford” to pay our salaries anymore and we would be getting paid on a patient-by-patient basis (there were hardly ANY patients so we would basically be getting paid dog shit). then we were told that MAYBE we could apply for unemployment.
also fun fact, the new contract also required us to see even more patients than we were before and that if we were low on our “productivity” numbers, they could and would (very often) dump a bunch of extra patients to see on a friday and told us to work on the charting “over the weekend” when we were supposed to be off.
they needed us to sign our new contracts agreeing to the terms by the following monday or it was considered a voluntary resignation. naturally we all panicked and tried to contact employment lawyers, but since we weren't unionized and in an at-will state, we couldn't do anything except either sign the new contract or quit.
then for the next few weeks we were sitting and waiting to find out if our unemployment claims would be approved. then more waiting for the deposits. and the entire time we kept hearing from the management in the office (who all got to keep THEIR salaries, by the way) about how we were such HEROES and they “appreciated” everything we were doing. your empty “you're a hero” emails aren't paying my god damn mortgage.
i stayed there for another year and a half for god knows what reason until i reached my breaking point last september. i quit and decided to be jobless for a few months and live off withdrawals from my retirement account. if i had continued at that job like that, i would've died at a young age of stress-related illnesses and would've never seen that money anyway. i work in a doctor's office now and feel like i have my damn personal life back and am way happier.
bonus: here is the “gift” we got for nurses week last year. i honestly would've preferred if they'd just slapped us in the face with the paper instead.
