#and I say this from my cushy apartment with a job and healthcare

[maxbegone]

it’s just heartbreaking to me that people don’t see what’s going on in Palestine as inhumane, as if it’s some sort of reparation, and not what it is, an ethnic cleansing, and feel zero remorse toward it. thousands of people have died, children have died, hospitals have been destroyed. nothing about this is a success or a victory — it’s murder and power on a grand scale.

[prorevenge]

Try to screw the elderly out of essential health care services? Have fun watching your company collapse.

Disclaimer: all names have been changed to protect the identities of the stupid.

So, back in October of 2017, when I was young and carefree and happy, I applied to a job working for a home healthcare company. This particular company would supply nurses and home care aids to assist the elderly with day to day activities like cooking and cleaning as well as more essential services such as wound care, catheter care, etc.

The building that I worked in was an apartment building that housed seniors who needed some care, but didn’t require many essential services. Think of it like a hotel that was just for seniors, with us being the “lobby” where the elderly could call down if they needed extra assistance with catheters, medication, whatever.

When the program first started, it was fantastic. We had an amazing in-office supervisor named Becca. She would do all of the paperwork for the day, and then come help us with our list of clients in the building that needed help. Some clients would need help getting in and out of the shower, making breakfast, taking medications, things that I have already mentioned. Becca did all of the paperwork and helped us with the clients, she was great.

It started to go downhill about two weeks into November. The position that I had applied for was a full time position, and when I interviewed, they told me that I would be able to get full time no problem because they are always looking for staff... hmm... that’s peculiar. Remember this point for later.

It’s about two weeks into November and I’m about to get my first schedule, and I notice that I am only listed for 52 hours in a two week period. I call the off-site office/head office and ask them why I was only getting 52 hours when I was supposed to be getting full time. They told me that even though I have a full time contract, hours are not “guaranteed” and I would have to work outside of my availability to make up the extra hours.

I was pissed, but I didn’t say much beyond “okay, thanks for letting me know, bye.” Word got around the program/hotel that Becca was getting ready to leave for another job. My coworkers and I were all stunned, because Becca was the supervisor that we loved. She was gentle with the clients, and helped us immensely. She confirmed that she was, in fact, leaving in two weeks.

Flash forward to just after Christmas and we get a new supervisor from another province. This lady has zero clue how to do her job. We are constantly having to explain to her that certain clients can’t be seen at certain times because it would conflict with schedules and we can’t guarantee a time in case of an emergency situation like a senior having a heart attack, fall, or what have you. Instead of taking this constructively, she tells us that she knows what she’s doing and begins to run us into the ground. We keep our mouths shut and work, even though we know that the schedule will fall apart. Sure enough, after about a week this new supervisor is up to her eyeballs in unfinished paperwork and phone calls.

About a month after that, we lose a full time employee because this new supervisor, who we will call Donna, told her that because she was 5 minutes late to work that it was her fault that the clients wouldn’t be able to be seen on time and she might as well not even give report because the clients are already going to be seen late anyway.

Then comes the temporary workers to fill in for the full time employee. Our old full time employee worked Mon-Fri from 7-3. These new employees would stroll in anywhere between 8:30-10am and leave by around noon. They didn’t chart. They didn’t tell us what they had done. They didn’t even wear their name badge most of the time. We were picking up the slack hard, all while Donna sat on her ass in her nice cushy office chair doing nothing except complain about how much work she had to catch up on. It was “so stressful” that she needed to go out for smoke breaks. If you’re a non-smoker you’ll feel me on this one. She would be gone anywhere between 20-45 minutes at a time to “have a smoke” while the rest of us were rushing around.

Then came the discrepancies in pay checks. Some people weren’t getting paid overtime or for holidays. We had multiple incidences where a coworker was short about $200 on their pay. This was because Donna didn’t file the necessary paperwork and talk to HR. Long story short, we sign in for work on a Samsung Galaxy through a medical program. At the end of the day, Donna is supposed to take all of our information from sign in (goes straight to her Samsung) and email it all at once to payroll. She wasn’t doing this.

Coworkers started dropping like flies. Over the Christmas break, one woman worked a 16 hour shift (3pm-7am the next day) because they couldn’t find anyone to fill in. The seniors in the building were noticing all of the new faces. They were asking why their visits were being cut from the usual 1 hour to roughly 15 minutes. We simply told them it was because we were short staffed.

We were frustrated, the seniors we worked with were frustrated, and management (Donna and head office) just kept sitting on their asses and laughing while we rushed around because they weren’t the ones making direct patient calls. They could ignore the phone calls and paperwork. We couldn’t ignore angry remarks from the patients.

All of the coworkers got together and talked about what to do and it was decided: any time that a patient complained, we would tell them that we were incredibly sorry but we couldn’t offer any extra time as we were short staffed and if they had an issue, they could call the off site supervisor at 555-5555.

Calls began pouring in, meetings were happening, and still nothing was changed. We were told by head office to “just wait it out” and that Donna wasn’t a bad supervisor because it was “just her personality.” At this point we were all PISSED beyond belief. People for night shift started to not show up, leaving the people who had just worked 3-11pm stranded until the head office managed to find somebody to come in. Usually someone would come in around 12:30-1am if we were lucky.

About a month ago, they put up a schedule of “open shifts.” I noticed that I was working alone every other Friday from 3-11, when we should have had two staff at the MINIMUM. I started calling the office and they told me the same thing they’ve told everyone else: “just hang in there, we are in the process of hiring new staff.”

I worked last week, and night shift didn’t come in. I was stuck at work from 3pm-7am and when I called at 11pm (when shift change was supposed to happen) they told me that I had to stay. When I told them that it was illegal for me to work a 16 hour shift without time off between/proper breaks, I was met with a statement I’ll never forget:

“Why don’t you see if day shift will come in at 4am so that you only have to work 13 hours?”

I was absolutely fuming at this point and was ready to tell them exactly where to go. But if I quit on the spot and let them win, I’d be leaving my coworkers short, and the patients living in the building without any proper medical attention.

I started getting more complaints from patients and angry families. I gave them all the head office number and told them to ask for Chris, who is the operations manager. To make a long story short, about 70 out of the 85 clients who live in the apartment have switched their medical services to a competitor’s company, Chris walked out Donna tonight (aka fired), and I called the head office tonight and told them not to worry about me anymore because I was done working every two weeks short staffed. I quit on the spot, which means they will be scrambling to fill two 3-11 shifts tomorrow, and the remaining 15 clients will have to be seen by the staff at head office, who will finally be getting off their asses and seeing what our world has been like for the past half a year.

TL;DR - head office fucks us around, fucks the elderly around, and eventually it all backfires in their face when staff quit and leave them to do the work that they had been dumping on us.

(source) (story by DyingFirstClass)