I work at a hospital that doubles as a research institution. Since I’m on the research side, I have to involve lots of other departments, and most people with whom I work are very chill and understand that I have to beseech them for things to do my job. I’m one of those “she can go a hundred hectares on a single tank of kerosene” type of people, and I’m very on top of things, for which my coworkers value me. However, the one place where that camaraderie breaks down is with (some of) the nurses who work in my specific clinic (focusing on one particular disease).
Honestly, I’ve done a good job of making most of the nurses like me. I bring them homemade treats sometimes, and I’m always extra friendly and approbative with them. Some of them have their days regardless, and I put up with them.
Right after I first started working in that specific clinic, unfortunately, one nurse in particular decided that I was on her blacklist. [Nurse #1] hates doing work. She’s like a kid playing Xbox when their parent asks them for help with groceries. She’ll moan and groan, and if she helps at all, it’s with an angsty indignation.
I needed a series of blood tubes drawn in the clinic for a patient one morning (instead of down in phlebotomy — protocol rules — more complicated and stupid than it’s worth getting into here), and [Nurse #1] was the only nurse available. She was extremely put off by my asking her to draw this protocol kit, despite my giving advance notice to the clinic that this needed to be done. She clearly did not want to leave her computer (which was not open to anything work-related), but she begrudgingly went and drew the tubes. I unnecessarily profusely thanked her… just for doing her d*** job.
I came back down later to get a prescription signed for another patient, and I talked to [Nurse #2].
Nurse #2: “What did you do to upset [Nurse #1]? She’s been going off about you to anyone who will listen.”
I explained what had happened.
Nurse #2: “Well, [Nurse #1] is pissed at you. She also feels that your outfit is too provocative.”
I was wearing a white medical coat, a modest blouse, work pants, and high heel boots. What? I just decided to let it go and try to avoid [Nurse #1] as much as possible.
This did not work. I kept running into situations where the other nurses were busy seeing patients. I was forced to walk back into the nurse triage room — which is off-limits to patients — and ask [Nurse #1] to draw two more of these blood kits in the next month. She was never happy to see me, and she was always wasting time on her work computer when I entered the room.
Maybe two or three days after that last kit draw, my supervisor called me into her office to discuss my “presentation”. Very nicely, and with pity in her voice, she told me she’d received a report about my dress habits in patient-facing spaces. She said she personally hadn’t noticed anything — no s*** — but was obligated to discuss this with me anyhow. I assured her that I had no idea what she was talking about.
I thought about confronting [Nurse #1] but decided not to because, you know, loose cannon and whatnot. After a brief reminder of the dress code, I figured that at least it was over.
It was not over.
Two weeks later — and I hadn’t even asked anyone to draw any kits in the interim — a formal report was filed against me for my conduct in the clinic. This went to the hospital and then to my supervisor who, even after reading the report, seemed totally clueless about what it could mean. I explained what had been happening with [Nurse #1].
Supervisor: “Actually, a second person has reported this, as well, on the same day as the first report from a coworker. This time, it was a patient, who reported that you were dressed improperly for a patient-facing environment.”
Woah, woah, woah, woah! I asserted that I wasn’t, but I was nonetheless put on probation, which meant that my supervisor, against her will, now had to come with me when I saw patients in the clinic for the foreseeable future, and a nurse manager would have to accompany both of us when she was free since I was “dressing provocatively” in patient-facing spaces and that was her domain.
But as you can likely guess from her browsing habits, [Nurse #1] was not the sort of person who needed MORE supervisors in her area.
Cue malicious compliance. Fine, you want to punish me and force me to work in the eyesight of the supervisors? All right, let’s get some supervisors down here as quickly as possible.
My next in-clinic patient came in two days, and it was one of those stupid timed-in-clinic protocol kit visits, which meant I was forced to ask one of the nurses to draw the patient’s blood. I informed my supervisor, and we set off for the clinic. The nurse manager was in that day, so she accompanied the two of us.
We all went back into the triage room so that I could ask for help with the blood draw. [Nurse #1] and one other nurse were there. What we saw upon entering was the other nurse entering vital signs for a patient into our health database, and [Nurse #1]… sitting at her desk with an online clothing retailer open on one monitor and Facebook on the other.
I asked for [Nurse #1]’s help drawing the kit, and she sighed heavily and spun around… to see two higher-ups looking on with disdain at her work computer. In embarrassment, she swiveled back and closed those two tabs, which revealed — you can’t make this stuff up — a website for MARITAL AIDS that had been open in another tab, about which [Nurse #1] had clearly forgotten until now. I just smiled and handed her the bag like nothing had happened.
In the hall, my supervisor and the nurse manager were talking about [Nurse #1]’s display just now. Apparently, she had been previously been warned about goofing off at work. The nurse manager told the supervisor that she was going to check all of [Nurse #1]’s work computer activity, which I actually didn’t know any supervisor could readily access.
What followed was so incredibly beautiful that I hope it made the ending of this long, long story worth waiting for.
According to [Nurse #2], [Nurse #1]’s activity was searched. She was revealed to have been spending hours upon hours every day browsing the web, shopping, and using social media. Since she had been previously warned about this behavior, she was given a formal write-up.
But this was just the beginning. The day after the three of us went down to the clinic, my supervisor called me into her office again. She told me that [Nurse #1] had FABRICATED the patient’s complaint about me and posted it from her work computer. (How did they learn this? Oh, that’d be because she saved a draft of the message that reported me to the hospital, and she’d accessed the patient complaint/comment webpage the same day.) My supervisor sincerely apologized for the hassle and told me I was no longer on probation.
As for [Nurse #1]: apparently fearing the worst, she put her two weeks’ notice on the same day after getting wind that she was in some far more serious trouble. For reasons I will never understand as long as I live, the hospital chose to let her quit after two weeks instead of firing her on the spot. Maybe they knew what a nightmare she was and were comfortable letting her quit on her own accord. It’s not as though she was due to glean any glowing references from this experience. Maybe they just wanted some extra work; our clinic was VERY short-staffed for nurses at the time. In any case, they chose not to fire her and let her quit on her own.
