Sleeping on the Job
I’m in IT at a hospital and I put in long hours, weekend work, etc., regularly. I’ve been here for over 10 years and basically rebuilt their operation properly from the ground up. I once had a server incident and put in 12 hours on a Sunday night, which everyone knew about.
The following Monday, there was a staff meeting that ran three hours in a hot room, and I went to sleep during a particularly boring rant.
I got called into HR over this—for the first time in my 30+ years of employment. They lectured me about commitments to work and even had the nerve to warn me that they “fire people for sleeping on the job.”
Yes, they fire nurses who sleep on the night shift without monitoring their patients, not staffers who drift off in a status meeting after finishing a 90-hour week and operating on a couple of hours of sleep.
Apparently, the only reason they were up in arms, though, is that the ranting person complained about not having my attention “in a critical staff update” to her friend…the CEO.
That was two years ago and I’m still not over it. Every time a recruiter calls me and I’m tempted to dodge them, that incident comes to mind.