To ignore work when they tried to call me in

[Ihavehadenoughalready]

Just worked the weekend, both days, first shift. Relaxing now, relaxing on my day off tomorrow, then work Tuesday through Friday.

Call comes I ignore it as I do when I don't know the number, listen to voice mail; they want to know if I can come tonight on third shift because X has called in again, leaving one person to cover our hospital department.

Company has told us last week that there will henceforth be no more call-in pay, no more incentive pay (we were getting that for being soooo short-staffed), and the only incentive left is if the extra day happens to make the week over forty hours, thus time-and-a-half. Which this would be for me.

But X keeeeeps calling in on third. X is not ill. X is burnt out because of working full time plus attending school. X has overbooked himself. Too bad for X.

OTOH, I feel sorry for the person left to fend for themself.

OTOH (I think I'm up to three hands now), I'm tired of the fact that we are so thinly staffed that one call-in makes for a catastrophic situation.

But I seem to have lost all incentive.....because our incentive and call-in pay was taken away.

So I thought about going in, such is my feeling of guilt, but dag nab it, I deserve days off. I ignored the voice mail and if anyone asks, my phone was on silent (it wasn't) and I didn't see that they called (I did).

When will our Overlords understand if they want hospitals to function, they must increase staffing or increase pay?

Why? They know people need time off between shifts, they also know she is already on that time off. She has no obligation to talk to them and explain why she needs the time off she is legally entitled to and is already taking!

It's not just about needing the time off though, it's the removal of the incentive pay. If enough people say, "no, fuck you, if you want me to work myself to the bone without adequate breaks between shifts it will cost you" then they might reinstate the pay.

This is the best advice. Many of us in the public sector do our best to stop the dam bursting by overstretching ourselves which comes at a serious detriment to our health and wellbeing and leaves the seniors feeling like things are manageable when they aren't. If asked I would just tell the truth and say I was just too tired to respond, I don't want to end up burnt out and then be the one calling in all the time. Plus if there's no incentive pay then it's not even like you could use the extra money to treat yourself and help recover from the tiredness. Let the dam burst, it's the only way things will change.

Have a work number and turn it off between shifts. Then you won’t even know they are calling.

That's not going to be affected by whoever is calling OP to cover. That's not how it works

There will be a chain of command and if everyone who refuses is stating the same reasons then eventually the message will filter up where it needs to go.

I'm an NHS nurse and have always, until recently, felt morally obliged to pick up extra shifts to cover other nurses who have called in sick - then I realised I was jeopardising my own health and wellbeing by doing so, working 60 hours and more a week.

Now I answer the phone and say 'no, I can't' with no other explanation.

it won't. Plus they already know, they just don't care.

We used to recruit for hospitals, the budget only allowed for say one or two, sometimes three positions to be filled. They literally ran the hospital staffing to a knife's edge, it was so stressfull for the doctors. If just one doctor couldn't go in it was panic mode. One time, one department was excrutiatingly short staffed, they were desperate so asked us to put an ad out for a doctor to cover maternity leave. We had just enough money to cover it. Very few people interviewed, we offered the role to the best candidate of a poor bunch, she accepted and then there and then in the interview room said "just to let you know I am pregnant and will be taking maternity leave in 6 weeks". The consultants interviewing obviously legally couldn't say a word, but....they were dumbfounded. They were also screwed. No cover then for a position for months, and no more money in the budget to employ more doctors. That was an awful time for that department. The NHS needs such an overhaul with finances.

Your "hubby" has shit conditions so everyone should?
Why can't we do better?
Why is it a race to the bottom - for us all to be more and more shat on by employers?

Yes, are people expected to let their employers know in advance that they want them to comply with the law now? Ridiculous.

I had an employer that would ring me at odd times. Sometimes it was a manager wanting me to work earlier/extra and sometimes it was a recorded call "this is a test of our business continuity plan....."

Most of the calls I ignored but the business continuity ones had to be responded to in some way. This was really annoying when the automated calling system went badly wrong and my phone was ringing every 10 minutes from 7 pm until about 1 am.

Fortunately after that I had access to the system and I was able to delete my landline and put in my work mobile number instead. And then set my phone up to ignore calls from 6 pm to 8 am and anytime on the weekends. My manager commented once after that that they hadn't been able to get through to me and I explained I had the phone set for work hours only - they were surprised that a) the phone could be set like that & that b) I thought that acceptable.

TBH its a problem of people's own making. management will use workers for cheap labour as long as workers allow themselves to be used.
You think you are being a hero by turning up on your days off to help colleagues or ensure service provision and in actual fact you make the problems worse. As long as managers cover the shifts for cheap, they don't give a shiny shit about your well-being, they have done their job, and the shift is covered.
If people stopped plugging the gaps in the service then and only then does is reflect badly on the managers for not fulfilling their job remit of providing that service, then they miss targets and it impacts them. This is the kick in the pants they need to improve staffing or offer better pay.
People think they are indispensable though and martyr themselves at the feet of businesses. Graveyards are full of 'indispensable' people and yet the businesses carried on regardless after they were gone.

Yes.

Thanks for your kind words. Bless your heart.

You should have mentioned that you were in the US when you first posted. People have given their advice assuming that you are an NHS nurse with a permanent contract. If you are working in an at will state you could find that you have no job to go back to, depending on how your refusal to work is seen by your manager. Hopefully you would be aware of that, but you don't seem to know that saying 'bless your heart' to a UK resident is not a cutting remark, just something nice that we say to our pets and children.

They're not going to sack her if they've got no staff. She's entitled to her time off.

"Bless your heart" was the perfect response to that poster. It's always used sarcastically in my circles.

It was completely obvious if you actually read the OP. Weird of you to assume NHS.

If OP wants time and half for working up to full time hours then everyone will say they can only do 1 hour a week at time and will only be working if 'called in on time and a half'

No it isnt - what gave it away to you?

To be fair - I spotted it immediately! 🇺🇸 It's clear from the OP.

Points taken.

I am in health care, but never said I was a nurse, which I'm not. My "at-will" status does not require me to pick up extra shifts as I am not on call. There will be no consequences other than my own personal guilt for not picking up an extra shift, knowing that someone else more easily guilted probably caved in and took the shift.

Thanks for clarifying "bless your heart" for the other readers. I apologize for using regional phrasing. 😏

All the good advice and thoughts that people have shared here absolutely applies to me, even in the states.

As for the NHS, I've gained whatever knowledge I have through news reports, what I've read here, and various documentaries I've watched. To me it sounds like the NHS and all of the different health care systems in the United States are equally being run into the ground from lack of staff. Ours from greed at the top and insurance companies, plus the unwillingness to embrace universal healthcare as a country; and yours in the UK the unwillingness or inability of your government to fully fund it.

I should have clarified that the voice mail was not management but a co-worker from the shift after mine trying to find someone to cover the third shift. If I had called back (those of you who think I should have answered or called back) I felt sure if I talked to them I would cave and tell them OK I'll come in. So the way to avoid taking on the shift was to not call back.

When my supervisor, acting on behalf of management, announced the end of call in pay and incentives for extra shifts and existing shifts (we were getting incentives just to work our normal hours in an attempt to keep people from quitting) we all told him this would have the effect of people not willing any more to pick up shifts. So direct supervisor already knows there will be consequences for this decrease in pay back to base.

The problem though is there is almost always somebody who will pick up the shift and they think it's the right thing to do because they think it's unfair for staff to work so short (which it is) but as numerous people here have said, it's only if everyone bands together and refuses that anything will actually improve.

There is no union where I work. I live in a state where unions have mostly been stripped of power due to previous Republican governor, current Republican legislature (in your country this would essentially be the Tories) and their war on teachers "having it too good".....which has also left our state with, you guessed it, a huge teacher shortage because it turns out when you devalue teaching by taking away benefits and nice pensions and collective bargaining to ensure excellent pay and nice benefits, people don't want to go into teaching. But that's a whole other subject.

all of it. It couldn't be much clearer just from the wording.
I'm not British though so I don't do that thing on here where everyone assumes all posters are in the UK and seem confused by the existence of other countries.

literally the only thing there thats not 'british' is "plus attending school." we would say college/uni