Well it looks like my husband is going to lose more hours at work soon. Yes, on top of the four weeks of temporary lay offs that he has scattered throughout the year (the next one coming up in a week!) he’s going to lose a day each week.
He’s losing hours because his boss believed one of his co-workers when he said that he’d work weekends because he was going to go back to school so she hired another part time recovery room attendant, but the guy who said that he was going to go back to school suddenly decided at the last minute that he wasn’t prepared to go back to school so now the manager has too many employees. So who looses in this … my husband and this other older gentleman who really needs the shifts!
So my husband volunteered to work the weekend shifts in the O.R. as well as his new “three” shift work week in the recovery room. In the end he’ll probably end up working at least five days a week or more, plus get paid some “On Call” time.
When he’s “On Call” he could get called in in the middle of the night to come in to the O.R. to transfer a patient from a stretcher to a bed and or move them to a floor after surgery. If he’s really lucky he might end up going in to work for as little as 20 minutes and getting paid for 4 hours as he has to get paid for a minimum of four hours if he’s called in. Oh and the best part is we live five minutes from the hospital – that’s walking distance – so if he gets called in in the middle of the night he could be there in just a few minutes and home again fairly quickly – perhaps back in bed within half an hour of receiving the call.
So on Monday he starts getting trained as an O.R. attendant. I’m not sure exactly what the job entails but I guess he’ll need to make sure the supplies are stocked up, and that the point of care carts are in place – just like he does in the recovery room. He’ll also be helping during surgeries at times – holding patients and moving them before and after surgeries from bed to stretcher and so on. I’m sure his years of working in the Recovery Room will come in handy and the job will be similar – not totally the same, but similar, plus he already knows most of the staff that he’ll be working with as they are the same that he works with in the Recovery Room.
So .. until we’re sure that he’s actually getting the same or more hours we’re tightening up on our budget and hoping for the best. It certainly didn’t sound very good when Chris came home with the news a week ago, but if the O.R. shifts work out things might really be looking up! We’ll see – cautiously optimistic for now.
Afghan Music says
Well, this is an issue that lots of people are dealing with…however, not a fan of on call work, especially when you have to get up in the middle of the night.
Umpa Tan says
I am in management, and I love to hire more new workers and have workers share hours to cut benefits. If they do not work hard being a bitch about it, I just cut their hours more until they are either gone or get the hint and start working harder.
Tricia says
Umpa perhaps you misunderstood my post? He’s losing hours because the hospital is cutting part time workers hours each year by about four weeks – meaning they cut four weeks out of their year. On top of that his boss had messed up the schedule by not hiring someone she shouldn’t have that would take away hours from staff that had been there for years instead of looking at what was really happening. None of this is happening because my husband or anyone else in that department is a bad worker.