Dear Nurses - Respect Goes Both Ways
If the expectation is that excluded employees support essential services without complaint, that’s reasonable. But respect should go both ways.
The amount of hostility, condescension, and rudeness many excluded employees are experiencing is unacceptable. We didn’t create this situation. We didn’t choose to be deployed. We’re showing up because we’ve been directed to help.
Many of us are being called in with less than 12 hours’ notice, working unfamiliar shifts, cancelling vacation plans, and putting our own work on hold. Then we arrive only to spend hours with little or nothing to do while our regular responsibilities continue to pile up. If so many excluded employees are sitting idle, it raises an obvious question: why were so many of us deployed in the first place?
What’s especially frustrating is being treated as though our work doesn’t matter, or hearing comments that dismiss excluded staff, while we’re the ones being asked to keep services running in whatever capacity we’re assigned. You can joke about our jobs as much as you want, but at the end of the day all of us supported you and wanted the best. I’m not the only one being treated badly and surely not the last.
No one is asking for praise. Basic professionalism and respect would be enough. The frustration should be directed at the planning and staffing decisions, the union and how they negotiate - not at the excluded employees who were sent to help.
It’s a slap in the face to be sent to help only to be met with rudeness and aggression. I hope you look inward and stop. My colleagues have been verbally abused by nurses these last days and it’s sad to see.
This news is going to spread how you treat these excluded employees. This is not going to get more sympathy. After how ive been treated, I have lost all empathy to the cause.