- Blatant favoritism from management. One of the managers hired a friend from another department so that she could "help out" over the weekends and get paid overtime. The issue is that she didn't know how to do 90% of the processes. Whenever she came to work, she would do only 10% of her job function and leave the 90% to others because she didn't know how to do anything. She would also refuse to learn when others tried to teach her because she knew the manager would let it slide even if she didn't do 90% of the job.
- Managers are "above the law":
Example 1) One of many ED managers moved the ED check-in desk to a new space as an "improvement" that they could boast to upper management. The issue is that the new space does not comply with patient safety protocols. If a patient comes in by wheelchair, the check-in window is too high for them to reach. Upper management is aware of this issue but nothing was done about it.
Example 2) A manager harassed a pregnant employee for not working "enough" hours. The employee worked the minimum amount of hours required in her job offer. She did not have to work more than that. But apparently, it wasn't enough for the manager.
Example 3) A manager interviewed someone for a full-time position for the entire hiring process. But when the offer letter finally came, the manager made that person a per diem employee so she would get no benefits.
Example 4) In another instance, a manager hired someone acknowledging that they will get a vacation in a few months' time that the person already booked in advance. However, when the employee submitted the time off request, the manager declined it even though they already agreed to it upon hiring. The employee had to go to HR at the headquarters because the local HR is friends with the manager.
Example 5) A manager made everyone sign an HR paperwork that forbids any aggressive behavior while they were the most aggressive person in that hospital. Every time anyone does anything that they doesn't like, they would yell at the person, or the entire team during meetings. They once screamed at the entire team for an hour because the "anonymous" Press Ganey results were unsatisfactory. It is bewildering how they missed the point: if you mistreat your staff, they won't have anything nice to say about you. Screaming at your staff will only make it worse.
- Incompetent HR. The HR generalists here do not know how to do I-9 verifications. I'm a permanent resident, meaning I have legal work authorization from USCIS. The HR people here do not understand what that means and refuse to take my green card as proof of work authorization. The HR here also didn't know the difference between a visa and a passport. So when I presented my valid passport to them, they said it was expired. It wasn't. They were looking at my old visa stamp. They also refused to use my passport as an ID because it wasn't a US passport. For the entire time, they were also extremely condescending, stating "We'll have to terminate you if you cannot provide legal documentation within 3 days. I am helping YOU out." That could not be further from the truth. I provided all the documents and helped them do THEIR job because they cannot read or use Google.
- Inter-departmental conflict: There is constant strife between nurses and non-clinical staff. The nurses never seem to understand that we are not the same department as IT. Every time one of the software servers goes down, they blame it on us. No matter how many times we tell them we only USE one of the software, they still DEMAND us to fix everything for them. Of course, we couldn't. Not even the IT help desk can fix system-wide issues. These kinds of issues are resolved by software engineers on-call. Nonetheless, the nurses will file a complaint against us although it is completely beyond the scope of our capacity.
- Abusive clients and management will throw you under the bus: the patients and visitors will absolutely scream at you for nothing. One time a parent was throwing a screaming fit in the waiting room because his child waited for two hours. (2 hours is nothing for the ER, the wait time could easily be +10 hours on a busy day.) I called security because he was being disruptive to OTHER PATIENTS in the waiting room. He later filed a complaint to management. Guess how management handled it? "You need to take a de-escalation training because you overreacted!" And guess what they taught me at the de-escalation training? You should ask security for help!
- No respect for personal boundaries: Due to the poor conditions and treatment, the retention rate for this place is close to zero. So every time someone quits, management would message everyone at inappropriate hours to pick up extra work (e.g. 11 pm). And if nobody picks up extra work, they would consult HR to force us to work extra hours.
- Out-of-touch leaders: The new CEO writes embarrassing blogs every week, and posts them to the most conspicuous spot on the website. I said embarrassing because that man cannot write, nor use proper grammar. His articles all have the same theme: justifying why he needs to lay people off and cut hours after speaking to some BCG consultants. However, one of the reasons that they are losing money is because the inpatient units are so short-staffed. There aren't enough nurses to keep up with the demand so the patients wait forever to be moved inpatient. This will in turn affect the entire emergency department because if the patients don't get moved inpatient, they occupy the beds in the emergency department. So other patients cannot get treatment because all the beds in the emergency room are occupied by people who should've been moved inpatient hours ago. Many patients walk out without ever being seen due to the long wait time. Somehow the CEO's solution is to cut hours and lay more people off. He would also go to the Finance department and demand that they get their acts together and collect more copays. Any reasonable person would know that Baystate's multi-million dollar financial crisis is a result of years of mismanagement, not some clerk failing to collect the $20 bill in person. The patients get the bill in the mail anyway. Management will harp on the statistics that patients are less likely to pay the copays if they wait for the bill, without understanding that correlation does not equal causation. Anyone with a smidge of critical thinking would know that patients with better financial standing can pay upfront in full. Less fortunate patients cannot pay upfront because they simply cannot afford it, even if the bills later come in the mail. The time of collection does not cause the payments. Somehow nobody in management understands this and will give out corrective actions if someone doesn't collect enough money. Not to mention many plans (e.g. Medicaid) don't even have a copay, and the fact that employees cannot force people to pay.
