I started working for my local hospital 2 months ago, and whenever the ceo was mentioned everyone just said they hated him. I completely understand hating CEO’s in general so didn’t bother digging deeper.
The other day while I was in the cafeteria for lunch this random older man started chatting with me while we were in the checkout line. He didn’t have a hospital badge on so I assumed he was just a family member of a patient. So we made small talk and when I asked him what he does for a living he said that he worked for me. I completely did not understand this at first cause there is nobody beneath me at the hospital, I’m not a supervisor in anyway, and I have no authority over anybody, and I only started working there 2 months ago.
I asked for clarification and he asked me if I knew who he was (at this point I assumed he was just some random business/salesman or a lawyer with a bit of an ego). I sad no. He then clarified that he was [CEO’s name] and I was internally freaking out a little bit. He then paid for my lunch(which was only like $7) and asked me to join him. I agreed cause I can’t say no to people with authority. He asked me about my job, how I was liking it, the department in the hospital and if I had and thoughts on how to improve it.
Now a big piece of advice I got for working there is that don’t bring up a problem if you don’t already have a solution.
So I brought up how we could always use more nurses and that hiring/retention bonuses would help encourage more staff to come and stay. It would also save money because we wouldn’t have to hire so many travelers and contracts. They had a problem with staffing before the pandemic so you could imagine how bad it was now.
He said there were more than enough nurses on staff already and bragged about how the last two hospitals he was in charge of managed to run on a 1:6 NURSE TO PATIENT RATIO. (Which is not only irresponsible but dangerous).
Luckily a couple of my coworkers grabbed me before I could say anything that would get me fired on the spot.
But the fact that this man was actively bragging about he had been sacrificing the physical and mental well being of the staff just to endanger the physical and mental well being of the patients is psychopathic, and all for the sake of saving a bit of money.
I should also mention that we are a private-not for profit hospital.
Like I understand that the staff’s feelings toward him are active hatred instead of simply disliking him.