A friend and former coworker left my hospital to go work at a private Botox center as an aesthetic nurse.
The pay is about what I am making as an ICU nurse with none of the stress of the ICU. There’s an opening and I was considering it because I’m getting burnt out.
On Thursday a nurse calls out of work. We’ll call her Sally. Sally is supposed to be the on-call nurse this weekend. My manager informs me that she hasn’t heard from Sally and just in case she is sick can I be the on-call for this weekend? I said no, and then finally agreed after being guilted. Then I was informed that I wouldn’t officially be the on-call but rather the backup if Sally was not available. Meaning I would be on-call but not getting paid for it.
Well that was a hard no. I said don’t call me, I won’t be coming in.
Today I get asked to see HR and they said my manager complained to them about my poor attitude and I was refusing to come in for my on-call shift. We’re short-staffed, need to be flexible, team players…blah blah. You know how it goes.
I let them know exactly what happened and how it happened. Not my shift, was going to do it but refused when she tried to get me to ruin my weekend for free. Hard pass no. Turns out my manager lied to HR about the circumstances and they apologized to me. Ok I thought that was the end of it.
Two hours later my manager is in my face on the floor in front of everyone asking why I told HR the truth basically. There was a lot of back and forth but essentially I said, “Why would I lie for you?”
So the manager proceeded to send me home, said she was going to write me up for having a bad attitude and that attitude made me unsafe to work with patients. Keep in mind this whole time she was red faced and yelling and I was calm and smiling which I think made her madder.
So I just confirmed in front of the shift manager and another nurse that I was to go home right now. So I did. This was the only time I put my patients in danger because I know there was nobody to cover for me. So the last four hours of what was my shift the patient to nurse ratio would have been dangerous. I would normally care a lot about that but it was not my decision.
I take my time getting home, it’s a beautiful day. I took the bus in but decided to walk back and just enjoy it all. My phone is buzzing the entire time, I ignore it.
When I get home I see I have 20+ messages from coworkers, from HR and from the manager and start going through them.
The coworkers said it was chaos after I left because there wasn’t anyone to cover the rest of my shift and the nurse who covered my break refused to take on two more complex patients on top of her own. She told the manager to gown-up and do it herself. The manager could not do it and eventually got the charge nurse to do it and covered for the charge nurse so the patients were taken care of after a lot of yelling apparently. I also had several people volunteer to be witnesses to what happened.
Manager was telling me to come back and that I was irresponsible for walking-off during my shift. I just put her on block.
HR was asking what happened and could I come in to give a formal interview. Apparently I was going to be written up for walking-off my shift and suspended for two week pending a disciplinary hearing.
I let them know what happened, who witnessed it and to consider this my two week notice. No I won’t be coming in for a formal interview unless I’m on the clock. And as of right now I won’t be answering my phone or emails until Monday at the earliest. As my suspension and notice overlap I will not be coming in off the clock. They can email or fax whatever paperwork they need regarding health insurance or pension plan or whatever.
And that’s where we’re at as of Friday afternoon. I think I will wait until after all the termination paperwork is done before taking the other job.