Work is getting out of hand and don’t even know what to think at this point.. First off, I work in healthcare as a dietary cook and have been here for a little over 10 years and have never seen anything like what I’m dealing with here.
We have been short staffed ever since Covid hit at our facility and now that Covid has died down you would think that it would get better from here? No, it really hasn’t. Where our supervisor is hiring people to “fill the void” and making do, even though it hurts the workers that are striving to make this place better.
Recently, on Wednesday, we had two call ins and we desperately needed somebody to come in to cover for them. We had one of our head cooks that was off that day to do one position and then one of the kids on night shift came in to do the other shift that was going to be there already, but come in just a little earlier. We were struggling to get by through the day. I finally left at 6, but had warned the two kids that were working that night there was a fire drill at 7. They had no idea what to do, so I explained to them what they needed to do and follow the head cook that came in earlier to do a different shift. “I think we’ll get done at before 7” is what they told me and I looked at them and said, “you are here till 8, so you will stay till 8.”
I left after that and everything spiraled out of control. One of the kids came inside with his sunglasses on and just started to refuse to do anything. Refuse to make a bistro, refused to wear gloves while serving and just refusing to listen all around. The head cook that came in to help out, was trying to get him to listen and he wasn’t at all. So she threw her hands up and was done with it all. The other kid said afterwards that she put hands on the kid and he said so as well. She had a mental break down at work and just couldn’t anymore so she went home. I had no idea that all of this even happened since I was off Thursday and Friday. Only to hear about it from her on Saturday.
She told me everything that happened and that our supervisor advised the boys, her and anyone that witnessed it to write a statement about it. The boys took that as writing a statement to the police and now she got arrested and now have to find a lawyer for all of this. She is literally in tears while telling me all of this and that her job might be in jeopardy.
I’m emotionally and mentally drained from all of this and what has happened since Covid. I feel like there’s so much that can be done to make this place be so much better, but we are have dug such a deep hole we can’t get out of at this point. I’m sorry about the long post, but I felt like I needed to get this off my chest and see if maybe I could get some opinions. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this!