(I’m a tech at an ER vet hospital. The office and normal operations are closed on the weekends, but the emergency department isn’t, of course, so we get emergencies, and we get many on the weekends).
I work 6-6pm Saturdays and 6-12pm Sundays in the hospital. Someone is supposed to be there at 12pm to relieve me. She’s always late, leaving me to cover until she shows up (20-30mins later). Not too much of a deal—frustrating, yes, especially when I had plans or needed to be somewhere, or just the fact that I could’ve been home by the time she felt like actually showing up, but I dealt with it because, whatever, 20-30mins isn’t terrible, even if it was every Sunday.
Then, it progressed to: if she felt like it, she wouldn’t come in until 2pm or later. If we were busy, I’d stay because I’m not going to leave the interns to do things alone. That isn’t fair. A tech is there to aid the doctors and interns, so me up and leaving would just be plain ridiculous and cruel if we were stupidly busy. There is only one tech on-shift on the weekends.
Often did this person text me last second to ask if I could cover her 12-6pm. And I’m talking that morning, 10-11am, she’d ask me. Nearly 100% of the time, knowing she’d call out regardless of my answer, I’d say yes because there’d be no one else to cover, leaving the hospital unattended and forcing the interns to take over.
This started happening more often, nearly every Sunday, to the point where I always felt like I needed to be available Sunday afternoons to take the shift so as not to fuck over the hospital.
Well, there was one time where I had plans and couldn’t cover, and my supervisor got upset. The hospital was scrambling to find someone, and my supervisor insisted the interns ask me again “to make sure I’m sure I can’t cover.”
I felt like shit for it.
The next weekend this happened, I covered, and I was pissed, mostly because I was exhausted from working 15hrs the day before lmfao
I called my supervisor and raised my concern about the employee. I really missed having my Sunday afternoons to do chores or hang out with friends or just relax.
Supervisor agreed, but since the employee is part time, there are, apparently, no repercussions to her taking the time off, but she said she’d talk to management about a solution.
When I heard their solution, I was baffled and laughed.
“We know you always feel like you need to be available to cover [employee], and we talked to her about this. She said having the shift is hard, and she’d like to come off it. That being said, you’re the only one who can work it without going over time.”
So, their solution to me always feeling the need to cover another employee was to make me take the shift permanently and have me work 6-6pm Saturday and 6-6pm Sunday (12hrs easily turns into 15hrs in an ER vet setting).
I declined, so this kickstarted them finally looking to hire another part timer (something we all had been asking for for months because we’re understaffed).
My supervisor wasn’t pleased, and I’m pretty sure that was the starting point of her disliking me lmao
So, yeah. This is mostly just me wanting to share a funny, albeit mildly infuriating, situation.