as posted, my job is to push beds in a hospital, but there is a funny clause on my contract:
‘In addition to these duties (pushing beds), other duties may be assigned.’
Meaning they can dump everything they want on me.
During the interview, before starting my job, I asked the manager about this clause and he said, “just helping the nurses to move patients on the bed”. Fine I thought, I can live with that.
The manager lied to me. I’ve been doing much more than that, things nobody told me would be my responsibility, like looking for medicines on other units, looking for patients out of the unit because nobody finds them, and more I don’t want to list.
On a later conversation per email, manager told me he wants someone who offers ‘mutual support’. I told him nobody is supporting me when I have to correct how other nurses placed the electrodes on patients, or how infusions are usually not disconnected after infusion, meaning I’m the one who has to discard them and clean the line before pushing the patient, how patients complain to me they’ve been asking for a nurse for hours because they wanted to go to the toilet, but nobody ever comes, meaning I have to toilet them…, how oxygen bottles are never ready, the long distances I have to cover sometimes (big hospital), that I have to help the radiologist to place the patient on the working surface, because he is either too fat or too senile, patient files nurses don’t find and tell me I have to find them (wtf?)
I don’t mind doing everything related to my job, I don’t mind the long distances I have to cover, I don’t mind explaining anatomy to a scared granny or the results to a man scared of losing a leg, I don’t mind helping the technician or calling him to ask if this is a good moment to bring the patient, but they’re shamelessly using this clause to dump everything they can on me.
I do mind being used like this.
I sent an email to this manager explaining all this, just using better English, asking him if he expects me to work as a nurse when there are no patients to move and becoming the guy who pushes beds when needed to, stating that if so he has unrealistic expectations and I’m still waiting for an answer.
I also wrote I work to live, not live to work, so I may have signed my death sentence already?
An idea would be to tell them I can do that, work as a nurse and push beds when needed for more money, but I don’t believe it will work.
Another option: shamelessly half ass it till I get fired, look for something else in the meantime, like the main guy in office space.
Why is it so hard to find a job where nobody dumps more and more stuff for you to do for the same pay?
I no longer have any expectations of this employer. Want to fire me? fire me.
Keep an accurate work diary, something high enough detail that you can look back on in several months and know what you were doing at what time on what day. Something you can then use to answer the question “Exactly, how many time this month were you asked to do X”, and the answer be precise.
Sounds like you might be being asked to do things you haven’t had training for, and don’t have the certificates for. In which case this becomes a legal liability issue, and something they can’t ignore, and can’t fire you for.
Also, be careful of the difference between “I have been asked by a manager to do this” and “noone else was doing it so I felt I had to”. If you’re speaking to patients about their medical issues without training or being specifically asked to, you could be getting yourself into trouble too.
The diary thing is useful for everyone in every job really. In your annual review (or quarterly, whatever) it’s incredibly useful to provide facts and figures for what you’ve been spending time doing. Particularly if you’ve got a manager who wants to downplay your efforts, or if you’re asking for pay rises/ bumps up to higher grades.