Regular pay is nowhere near what it should be for the amount of responsibility for patient care and welfare, especially difficult ones in advanced stages of dementia or other medical conditions requiring care for which the facility is not properly equipped and staff are not adequately trained, or the evening and night shifts when we do housekeeping and maintenance, too
Then they offer bonuses and overtime to try to get required staffing, but the supervisor and department director blame each other for forgetting to enter the bonus in the payroll system. A lot of people don't do their whole shift, anyway, and there is no verification whether they do, nor any consequences when they leave early
Some work 64 to 80 hours a week, at least on the clock, and then start to take out their fatigue on everyone else. The supervisor and department director clearly have favorites who seem to get first chance at all the bonuses and overtime
Everyone acts all happy when a man comes to work here, but then they mistreat him and he quits in a few months
They hire petite young girls who don't have the physical strength to do the necessary work, and the training that they provide is totally inadequate, or they are not smart enough to properly do the job. People use bedsheets and blankets or towels instead of waterproof underpads, and then they don't understand why urine or a spilled drink soaks the whole bed. A patient had one of those purewick systems for women, and they would forget to hook the hose to the pump, or to even turn it on. Others don't properly close catheter bag drains after they empty them. There are also patients whose families don't provide wipes or diapers or other supplies, and management tells us to take them from someone else whose family did provide for them
They promised an extra $1 per hour for second (PM) and third (NOC for Nocturnal) shifts, but the payroll system didn't calculate and pay correctly. Even though it was posted that PM was 2:00 to 10:30, and NOC was 10:30 to 7:00, when people complained about not getting the correct shift differential, corporate said that PM shift was from 3:00 to 11:00 and NOC was from 10:00 to 6:00 which cheated people out of at least $1 per shift, and the amount they paid was still not right even using those hours
Then they announced $2 per hour weekend pay from midnight Saturday morning to midnight Sunday night, but never paid that correctly either
Don’t bother trying to tell the supervisor or department director about your personal problems and family issues or vehicle troubles or anything else because they don’t care. They’ll try to make you feel sorry for them when they one-up you because on top of all their personal problems and family issues and vehicle troubles they have supervisory and managerial responsibilities, too. Absolutely don’t remind them that’s why they get paid more than you, or that they asked for their added responsibilities
Some of the best workers have been overworked and exploited by the supervisor and department director until they quit, and others were bullied by the ones who spend more time trying to avoid working than it would take to just do what needed to be done
