The Realities of Working Life

At the present moment, the total staff at my work place are my supervisor, my colleague, our assistant nurse (AN), our cleaner & myself. Only SRN are allowed to do night shifts. My supervisor works office hours. So either me or my colleague will do the night shift. Usually, there'll be 4 person on the morning shift. So the remaining SRN will do the night shift. But we do get agency nurses to come in for 2 days each week as we work 5 days week but the clinic is open 24/7.

My supervisor joined just slightly over a year ago. At that time, our AN & cleaner has already been working in the clinic for many years. Our AN is actually past retirement age. So she's on a year to year contract. I joined in Feb & my colleague in April. Before me, the clinic runs solely on agency nurses. Perhaps that should have been my warning. A job that pays so well, you can sleep during your night shift, hardly any physical exertion.

I can tell you, I started to see why nobody wanted this job 1 month after joining. I began experiencing my supervisor's tyranny. Both the AN & cleaner told me that my supervisor frequently takes MC & takes money from the clinic's petty cash without returning. I didn't see it at 1st. But it really started when I started to be more familiar with the routines. She'll sms or call at 6 am & just said she's not well & hence not going to work. If I'm on morning shift, I'll have to run the clinic by myself as our AN can only attend to sprains & simple cuts/grazes that require dressings. If I'm on night shift, I have to stay back to help the morning nurse in the Dr's clinic.

The Dr comes in for 1 hour each morning during weekdays to see staff & students. It can get pretty hectic coz you're dispensing medicine & at the same time attending to children who keep coming in for headaches, nausea, dizziness (all bullshit I say). We don't get to claim the extra time we put in, mind you.

The unfair thing is, my supervisor doesn't have MC at all. But neither does she take leave for the days she's absent. Or another thing she likes to do is, come for work, see the Dr & get an MC from him & goes home. Now I did a bad thing becoz it's supposed to be confidential. Every single staff has a card alike GP clinic whereby the diagnosis & treatment are written. I went through hers & indeed, I counted almost 20 days of MC issued to her within the 1 year she's here. All of them were for URTI & I thought to myself, she must be dying from it man. Yah, I know. I'm really bad.

There was obviously some strain between my supervisor & our AN. She doesn't like our cleaner too. She went up to HR & asked them not to renew our AN's contract saying that she's already so old & it's affecting her work. At the same time, she asked them to transfer our cleaner out to sweep the school compound (classroom, roads etc). This is the extend she'll go to. There're so many more things. It just goes on & on. This is depressing enough. So I'm gonna stop here & go watch TV. :P