There’s an old saying that if you’re not 10 minutes early, you’re late. Some people prefer to live by it, mostly I think because they don’t enjoy the anxious rush of arriving at work at the very last minute.

OP is one of those, and would arrive early for her shift so that she could wake up with some coffee and prepare her phlebotomist cart so everything was organized and ready to go.

So this happened back in 2015 through 2016. I (now 28F) was working as a phlebotomist in a local hospital and I worked first shift, which was about 3 am to 3 pm.

I loved to come in about 10 to 15 minutes early and just set up my cart. Nothing fancy, just metal wired shelving types and we had our own personal phlebotomist trays that we put in the top section of the cart.

I didn’t always restock my tray before leaving my shift, so I’d typically come in early to organize it and get my metal cart ready. (It usually took me maybe 5 minutes to put my tray on a cart and put the handful of tubes I needed back in place, then I’d spend the rest of my time waking up in the break room with coffee)

She had an unpleasant coworker who was assigned to the previous shift; OP had moved shifts just to get away from her.

Well, one woman (can’t remember her age) who came in to work a few months after I started and I had issues. I found her lazy and rude.

Examples: she would come in and snap at people when they tried to help her. She would take a book with her during morning rush (which was 3a – 6/7a) and sit on the floor to read and not come back to the lab to help after collecting her labs.

She would hang out during the nurses celebrations and not come back for hours at a time.

She wouldn’t clock in until the last second and then she’d clock out the earliest minute she could. When it was time to start the morning rush, she’d get mad if someone took the stack of labs she wanted and she’d go demanding them.

She and I worked the same overnight shift, but I got tired of her attitude and switched shifts.

Well, the unpleasant coworker tried to take advantage of OP getting there early so she could sneak out early, too.

Well, like I said, I liked to come early and set up my cart before I clocked in. And she figured this out quickly, so she would try to hand me the stroke or trauma pager (something that needed to be handed to the next phlebotomist who was scheduled to take it that shift, but she’d try to give me hers even if I wasn’t scheduled for that one), but I refused, saying “I’m not clocked in yet”.

So, she just left it on my cart a few times without telling me, which lead to it going off for a call to the ER and I had to clock in early.

When their boss took the coworkers side OP decided to take up for herself, and began arriving right on time so the other woman couldn’t shove her work off before OP’s shift even began.

When I saw her in the lab again, I told her to never do that again, and the conversation got heated, which lead to a meeting with me, the coworker, and our supervisor. Our supervisor took her side and said “Just take it and if it goes off, you clock in and then I will adjust the clock in on the computer”, saying she’d shorten my time on the clock.

So I said fine. I set my alarm for later in the mornings and I started coming in the last minute I could to clock in at 2:59 am.

Yes, it made me start my rush a little later, but the look on my coworkers face when she saw me later (right before she was to clock out) as she was trying to hand me a pager I wasn’t scheduled to have and I already had the one I was supposed to, was priceless.

They both tried to say something to her about it, but OP knew she had the high ground, and kept it.

She complained to the supervisor, who tried to talk to me, but I said “Well I’m not supposed to be here until 3, so that’s when I get here and clock in now. I don’t want my hours messed up”.

She didn’t even try to argue.

The coworker was very upset. She even screamed through the lab, demanding someone take her pager so she could go home.

It was still 20 minutes until her shift was done.

Does Reddit appreciate her thoughtful approach? Let’s hear what they say!

This person thinks management needs to step up.

But sometimes their hands are tied, too.

It’s really a sad state of affairs.

The patients are hardly ever the problem.

Someone always gets greedy.

I feel that something needs to change in health care.

But what do I know?