I’m not happy with the phrasing I chose for the title but I couldn’t come with anything better.
It’s me again, the guy hired to move beds in a hospital, a unit where nurses keep giving me duties out of my job description, nurses who consider me their servant.
Moving people and beds is a chill job I like and I have no problem doing it, doing it according to the job description they presented me during the interview. I want my pauses, I want to go home on time, I want my overtime paid.
From day one the nurses there started treating me like I’m their servant, ordering me to do their job like finding charts, calming patients, toileting them, pausing infusions…
I informed management who basically ignored me, because I’m expected to be a team player. During the interview they never said I’d be doing so much stuff out of my job description daily, it’s like they consciously lied to me because they’re desperate for anyone with a pulse and hoped I wouldn’t stir the pot because they know I need the money. They expect me to work as a nursing assistant when there are no patients to move and to do my job when a patient needs to be moved.
I’m not doing 2 jobs being paid just for 1.
There’s more: Turns out to them, if I’m eating something while waiting for my next assignment I’m automatically on my pause, but I’m expected to jump each time they have a patient to move. Management actually confirmed this and apparently, nurses there work like that.
Call it malicious compliance, work to rule, half ass it, but starting tomorrow I’m using every trick you can give me to work as slow as I can, to hide as much as I can, because these fuckers don’t deserve anything better.
Half assing has to be covert, because as long as I don’t have another job lined up they have the upper hand.
If I wanted to overwork for no extra money, don’t have a full 30 minute pause, having to constantly shuffle people, to have 3 conversations simultaneously, to have people lie to my face, be a hero and a team player I’d have applied as a nurse.
That is outside of my skill set, or I am not authorised to handle charts.
But maybe you should read the 20 other posts you have made about this and comment back on them. For an account with 20+ posts and only 6 comments you clearly have a problem listening to help you have asked for.
But maybe you should read the 20 other posts you have made about this and comment back on them.
why do you equate commenting with reading? Most posts on this issue have been helpful, and a few one very helpful. Most of the times an answer to say that seems superfluous.
Other times I’m so tired I just read the answers and I think about them.
why do you equate commenting with reading?
Because if it worked the least decent thing you could do is thank them for the suggestion but seeing as you keep making the same post over and over it looks like you don’t.
You may want to find a different job. This one does not suit you or your idea of what it should be.
If you were an independent contractor you could sit all day till your contracted duty comes up. But with the job you took with the employer had notes that they will ask you to do other duties; this is what this job is. Here we call it a porter, and it can be pushing a patient to treatment, delivering med to another floor, bringing a binder to the lab…whatever needs doing basically.
Many people prefer to be busy so they day goes by fast, and so normally taking on a duty when it’s not your specific job is well received. In your case it sounds like you don’t enjoy that part. So dude find a new job.
You are on here a lot complaining about work, its time to take action rather than look for validation for the friction your stance is creating between you and staff at work.
I’m not saying one way or the other is the correct way to work, just that this job doesn’t suit you.
And I’m not hating on your for your choice because I see both sides. My wife was a union rep at her work and she’s very by the book / work duty and everything else is someone else’s role. Where as my job is very fluid. I was hired specifically for expertise on a software to help get customers solutions and training on that software. But it can also be sales, or traveling to do presentations, or doing a customer process audit, or video editing and sound production, or documentation, or CAD modeling for clients, or automating their workflow, sometimes a customer is around the globe so instead of 9am I join a meeting at 5am (means I end work at 1pm instead of 5pm), And I’ve even been contacted out of my company to work directly at another company to do whatever they needed. Point is I don’t care what the paper says I was hired for, they are all opportunity to make my day go by fast and learn something different.
Find a job that encourages you to expand your horizons, or one that suits your “I only get up to do the exact task” role.
Ok real talk here.
Work to rule and malicious compliance only works when you have the backing of a strong union, or workers rights. In the US, for most jobs, they can fire you whenever they feel like it, and for no reason at all.
If anyone senior decides you’re fucking with them, even if there’s no proof, and they’re completely running on vibes, they might just fire you anyway.
My advice is copy the other porters. They know how much they can get away with, and find a decent hiding place for when you’re on a break.
I see you’ve chosen to go with Option 3, at least for now. (Previous comment for reference.)
To be perfectly frank, it sounds like you’re already half-assing your job and maliciously complying. Think about it: you do only the exact amount and type of work as specified in your job description, you actively resist being given additional work even when you aren’t currently doing anything, you don’t offer help to coworkers when you have the ability and they have a need, and you openly flaunt these facts by using your downtime (even when not officially on a pause) to write poetry or otherwise not do work in locations where your coworkers and manager can see you doing it.
If malicious compliance and the bare minimum are your goal, then congratulations! You’ve accomplished your objective.
this is a boundaries issue
I only work because I need the money. If I was rich I wouldn’t work. I don’t overwork for anyone unless I’m paid more, something my manager is not doing.
you actively resist being given additional work even when you aren’t currently doing anything
because what I do is what later becomes an expectation: you mean he can toilet patients? he is toileting patients from now on.
you don’t offer help to coworkers when you have the ability and they have a need
I’m copypasting from a previous post: I search for patients (because my job is to transport them, not to find them), move empty beds to be cleaned, calm patients, bring them blankets, take them to the toilet… I do this because sometimes it gets so boring because the charge doesn’t give me any assignment, so I’m open to lend a hand, but then the charge gets a call and I get 5 assignments at the same time (and they don’t lend a hand).
They don’t help preparing the patient for transportation, most of the cases I have to look for the patient’s files because nobody knows who has them, they don’t help moving the patient to the examination table (the fat, demented ones you need 3 people to move), moving him to a unit 1400 yards away (which is my job, something I have no problem doing), pausing infusions or bringing oxygen to the patient’s bed before transporting him…
I don’t mind helping a bit, but things that should happen occasionally happen every day.
they also don’t help when other units are understaffed and I have to wait for a nurse to come or hear how they decide who should help me transfer the patient because me being a man means I should do it alone.
and you openly flaunt these facts by using your downtime (even when not officially on a pause) to write poetry or otherwise not do work in locations where your coworkers and manager can see you doing it.
that’s the place my manager told me I may wait for my next assignment. It can get boring very fast.
This seems to be an expectations issue: I think the rns on the unit expect me to be their servant and go several extra miles for them with no extra pay whatsoever, but I only want to do my job according to the job description they presented me during the interview when they told me doing other chores would mean helping the rns reposition patients in bed.
Going extra miles don’t mean more money for me, so what’s my motivation?
I like your post and at the same time I don’t believe many people will read this wall of text.
do you go above and beyond for your job?
What you consider to be “above and beyond” is what others consider to be a standard part of any role. Other comments on other posts you’ve made have said the same thing: a general “additional duties as assigned” clause is very normal, and nothing you’ve said has given the impression that what you’re being asked to do is atypical.
Your manager considers helping out your coworkers to be part of your base responsibilities. This is a normal expectation. If it’s one that you have no desire to meet, then your best bet is to find a new job. The problem there - as both I and others have pointed out - is that any other job you find will likely have this same expectation.
I was in your shoes about five years ago. I felt it was completely unfair, I tried other roles in an attempt to find a job where it wasn’t expected, I asked coworkers how it was possible that such a thing was normal… I get it. It’s not fun. But living at this time and in this place under these conditions - it’s normal. I personally chose to suck it up and deal with it, and ultimately I came around to understanding that it wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be. It’s not perfect - I’m not saying that - but part of having a job is working with other people, and that includes the give-and-take of what you’re experiencing right now.
If you honestly, truly can’t bring yourself to work under these circumstances, you might want to change careers. Contract and gig work could potentially give you the strict adherence to tasks that you’re looking for, but it may come at the cost of pay, benefits, or difficulty in finding work. Starting your own business will at least mean all the work you do directly benefits you, but that again comes with its own set of risks.
Final thought:
Going extra miles don’t mean more money for me, so what’s my motivation?
Being employed so you don’t end up homeless. Nothing grander or more meaningful than that. You need a job, so you’re doing what it takes to keep your job. Same as the rest of us.
I am not sure what a pause is, so maybe I don’t understand the standards in your industry, so, grain of salt here.
If you hired a contractor to work on your house, and one guy just stood around waiting to do his part, and declined to help his peers to make the process more efficient, but you had to pay his regular rate, I bet you would be annoyed.
The ‘other duties as assigned’ expectation has been consistent during my entire career, at every job I have ever had. I have never held a job where, if I was not busy, and someone else was, and I possessed the ability to help, where I was not supposed to pitch in. That is just what you do to support the peers you work with, which should be the goal. Your organization is there to provide a thing (no matter what the org is) and everyone hired is meant to support achieving the goal.
I can empathize with the desire to malicious compliance, but… I would make sure ‘other duties as assigned’ are genuinely not a part of the expectations, because if they are, this is a pretty lickity split route to not having this job anymore. No manager wants to have to either chase someone down and argue about being generally helpful, or place additional work on your peers because you want to do less.
Pause means Break
If you hired a contractor to work on your house, and one guy just stood around waiting to do his part, and declined to help his peers to make the process more efficient, but you had to pay his regular rate, I bet you would be annoyed.
You mean a contractor with a crew and one crew member sits around, right?
if I hired a contractor I wouldn’t sing the contract with the crew, but with the chief contractor, whatever that position is called. It is not my job to police my contractor’ employees. Any issues I’d have regarding construction I’d solve with said chief contractor, not with any guy who stood around.
I know nothing about construction but I know everyone needs a pause or to rethink and coordinate how to do something, which means workers are not constantly toiling so me jumping to conclusions and being annoyed because all I see is an employee standing around would be very stupid.
This is a false analogy.
You are right. I mean a crew. You are also right, sometimes every job needs the people responsible for the work to stop and think.
This is not what the op was describing. They were describing a desire to actively avoid work that contributed to the whole, not because they had to have that time they would lose to do their job right, but because it was “extra” work. The point was “extra” isn’t always “extra”; you are being paid to be at work for x hours, you should be working. Sometimes working = thinking, but that wasn’t the story.
If I hired a crew, and Joe was sitting around with his thumb up his butt, and ducked out of the extra work his leads gave him, I suspect I would never have to say anything, because Joe probably wouldn’t have his job long enough for me to talk to the foreman.
The point was to encourage op to look at what they were doing from a different perspective that puts them in the position of having to see resources being wasted, and how it is impactful to the end result. It is good to consider things from multiple angles, so your choices are informed.