I originally posted this awhile back in r/nursing, but somebody suggested I post it here too.
So my last job I was an RN at a high volume, level 1 trauma center in large city. It was trial by fire and brutal, but I was a loyal employee for almost 5 years. My family has always preached to be loyal to your employer, be a “lifer”, it will pay off, blah blah blah.
Anyway, like most nurses I was getting super burnt out during the pandemic and was really considering going travel but couldn’t make the leap. The job had never been great, but I was coasting along fine, it was close to my house, and I made ok money. Until I got pregnant.
I got pregnant and was pretty early on in the pregnancy when I started hemorrhaging at work. I had just clocked in and went to the bathroom when I realized my underwear was completely soaked with bright red blood and golf ball sized clots. So I ran up to my charge nurse and said I was going to OB triage and told her why. Now mind you, in 5 years I’d only called off sick 3 times. Nearly perfect attendance every year.
So I get upstairs to OB and after all the testing and ultrasounds it’s clear I’m miscarrying. At this point my husband is at the hospital with me and we are pretty upset about the whole thing. But I work nights and it’s now around 10pm, I’ve slept all day in preparation, and I didn’t want to go home and be awake all night by myself fixated on the lost pregnancy. So I decided I would go back downstairs and work the remaining 9 hrs of my shift to keep my mind busy. Called charge and told her what happened, we were super short so it was no problem, just jump back in where I left off.
Now I never expected to get paid for those 3 hours of course, but that nasty woman gave me an entire attendance point for this AND DIDN’T TELL ME. Charge just let me come back to work the rest of my shift without informing me I’d already been penalized as though I called off the entire shift. I could have worked 0 hrs and gotten the same results as I did for working from 10pm-7am.
I was pissed when I found out. Like you seriously couldn’t give me a break for this one time after nearly 5 years??? My ass should have left you short staffed for the remaining 9 hrs.
Wrote up my notice up and turned in my resignation next business day. Never even said a word to me asking if I was ok. Bastards.
UPDATE: I’m happy to say I’m now a traveler and ironically have never been treated better as an employee. As a clarification, I DID get paid for the 9 hrs, I was just docked an attendance point that went on record and factored into raises, promotions, etc. I’ve honestly never been happier because now as a traveler I feel like I have some power in the employer-employee relationship. The grass may not always be greener on the other side, but in my case it was. 2x salary to work 9 months out of the year? Hell ya!