Who would have thought that being understaffed could cost someone so much!

Find out how this medical facility broke into chaos over a small change in policy.

Medical facility(3x) widespread panic, leading to one of the worst days in our facilities, because I followed the new policy.

I used to work at a medical facility where I was the sole approver of morning staff who worked at 6:30am. As a staffer, I balanced the morning staff with the amount of ‘expected care’ needed for patients in the morning.

I worked in the ghetto so we always overstaffed and sent people home if they weren’t needed.

This is where it gets tricky…

The basic mindset was, it was better to have the staff and not need them and send them home than not have the staff and struggle to find people to come into work

Eventually our facilities were bought out, and all that changed. Exact staffed based on the exact need.

And another new rule we had a rule that said ‘no one would be approved without all documentation sent over prior’. We used to just get the docs while they were working and verified it.

The policy was absurd!

IT IS LOOSEY GOOSEY, but it worked [did eventually blow up in their faces though].

Contract wise, anyone that was not given proper notification of cancellation by 5am was to be paid at least 2 (or 4 I cant remembers) hours of pay so staffing needed to be FINALIZED by 5am.

I wasn’t against the rule. It honestly makes sense; but the issue is reality…….. NO ONE IS UP BETWEEN MIDNIGHT-5AM THATS GOING TO BE AT WORK AT 630AM.

Humans tend to sleep before a day of work.

He was so done with this!

Staffing needs to be finalized by 5am. Okay. Next morning, I’m calling people from midnight to 5am.

I got people cursing me out for waking them up if they answered, most didn’t. Next morning, staff was short 20+ people.

Keep in mind, my job is also to balance staff to account for those who call off or cant make it for any reason. It was facility wide panic.

I’m talking they called the new CEO, Every dept managers, all floor manager staff emergency meeting level of why/how this happened.

That’s INSANE!

(keep in mind, medical facility, this could legitimately result in people receiving less care, legitimately people could die as they were grossly understaffed, and as a new investment facility investors could pull out because of bad press; imaging finding out a hospital is understaffing to save money on the new).

They called to bring me in an angry meeting with the new CEO to place the blame on my incompetence.

I knew I was in the right; as I followed all documented policies and literally following all procedures to the best of their expected interpretation. I explained the policy.

I was unable to approve anyone to work unless they sent the paper work over before staffing was finalized. No one sent it over, so policy required them be canceled that day.

UH OH…

New Policy was no pre-approvals. None of them sent it over by 5am so I canceled them ALL.

And every time they attempted to make , “Do you understand the risk you put us in”, I would ask “So should I ignore the policy and just approve them anyway? I would just need that documented”.

After the meeting I went home like normal.

The thing is, the staff they were looking for isn’t just waiting for our facility to call them, they will find other employment if we don’t give them work for today.

Finally the cherry on top!

So it was a very long day for them.

Next day, I was brought into another meeting.

New policy, pre-approval is okay. Once they do come in and bring in their documentation, they can be approved.

This slows down the process, as they all would bring it with them. Fine by me, I usually go home by that time so its the morning staffs problem.

He did what he had to.

Keep in mind, I explained the potential outcome/disaster to my manager who basically had no idea how midnight staffing worked, but the last email they sent me said specifically I needed to get all documentation before anyone was approved for staffing.

K, works for me.

YIKES! That sounds exhausting!

Why did they even change the policy in the first place?

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

This user wants to know if someone got promoted!

This engineer shares some words of wisdom!

This user shares some insights about leadership.

This user wants to know if the staff got paid.

This user knows that employees are also human!

Someone’s being a little smart here!

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