I work for a smaller hospital in the US and have done so for over 10 years now. While I enjoyed what I did/do, I and a lot of my coworkers were severely underpaid (were told the pay was correct despite hospitals within an hour of us paying 5+dollars more per hour for similar jobs) and treated like hot garbage. That was before covid happened. Pre and during covid I worked in patient care and had a fairly tough job with no elbow support, running short, bad management, and taking call at all hours. But jobs weren't plentiful so I sucked it up and for what it's worth carved out a nice life for myself and my family. Then I got a great opportunity to transfer to a different department that had much better management, a better quality of life, and lower stress levels and it has been great.
About 7 months ago all of the people I had worked with in my prior department left within a months span, seriously good for all of them. Unfortunately, since I do live in the area I was concerned with the care of patients and offered to help them by working weekends only for them. So for 6 months, I worked my regular M-F job and then worked both weekend days in the patient care area. I had a literal 3 days off in that span. Also, since my M-F job was salaried I didn't get overtime. Technically they gave me incentive pay, and it was good, but it was still not what I should have received if I had been getting overtime. But I agreed to it, so that was on me.
Now to the core of the story. The department got some new people, these people got all kinds of incentives. They got relocation fees, they don't have to come in for call studies, they can refuse to do patient care, they get 30 mins of pay for every phone call they take, and they make SIGNIFICANTLY more money than what we had made before. I can't hate on them for that, because this is what should have happened before. However, the new person in charge of the department is an absolute fraud, and I can hate on them for that. This person can not handle the job and is a genuine danger to patients. This person makes almost double what I used to make less than 2 years ago. Also, I had to interact with this person a few times while working the weekends, and each time they would talk down to me like I had no idea what I was doing. I can assure you that this is not the case. So why bring any of this up, just sounds like a story of sour grapes right? It is. So there are things that need to be done in the department for compliance purposes. This fraud leader has not done the minimum requirements. I have been reached out to by the Manager of that department to help and I have declined. While I do genuinely want to help, fuck them. Where were they when I needed help? Or when I was getting severely underpaid? Or when I got 2 hours of sleep and had to clock in on time or I got points for being late? Ignoring the problem that's where, and so that is what I am doing.
TL;DR for you younger people out there, fuck these companies taking advantage of you, and get paid for what you deserve. I wish I had known this 20 some years ago, now I've wasted a lot of my work life being used and treated like shit.