No Stupid Questions

One place I worked at was my 3rd or 4th print shop. Years ago, to save money on production costs, we would have to "gum the plates". This involved cleaning and then "gumming" sets of used plates so they could be reused later. Once while at the plated gumming station I was gumming a set of six plates we had used to print a 6-color job. I was a helper on the six-color, but two color presses only had one man crews. One guy pipes up and tells me: "Hey, new guys have to gum all our plates."

"Yeah? Bite me!"

"No, really!" this dickhead said.

"No, really!" I answered while grabbing my crotch in the universal gesture of disrespect.

Having heard enough tales from my sister, Nurses are particularly bad in this regard. I think it's partly because seniority is so heavily related to how long they've been putting up with this shit. It's not the best leaders that become senior. It's the people with the most battle scars.

Yes, when there's a new new guy.

Common practice in most workplaces is to continue the cycle of dumping the shit work on the new guy. But, if you want to build influence, you don't do that. When the next new guy comes along, you adopt them, you show them how to get things done, and when other people dump shit on them you help clean it up. You don't do their work for them, but you also don't leave them to do the work alone.

And you teach them to do the same thing with the next new guy. When they're up to speed you start load balancing with each other intentionally. They need to leave early for personal reasons one day so you handle some of the extra workload for them. They do the same for you.

(side note - this works when you offer first - you don't open this by trying to get them to do you a favor first; you will run into people who will take advantage of this and not grasp the concept of returning the favor - when this happens you don't whine about it, you don't confront them about it, you don't even mention it, you just note that this is an indication of that person's character and you don't ever offer to help them out like that again - there will be others who understand cooperation and join in automatically, those are the people you make part of your group; so you worked extra one day and didn't get reciprocation, that's OK, it's a cheap low-risk way to learn about who that person is - scratch it off and don't catch feelings over it, be professional, you still have to work with this person you just don't have to trust them)

(second note - this does not work for anything that you might be legally liable for - if the other person has to sign their name for the work or is in some other way accountable on record you cannot cover for them and even helping may be problematic, especially in the medical field)

Maybe you're still shoveling shit, but you're not doing it alone. If you don't have a tribe, build one.

And then break the cycle.

There's a saying that if you encounter an asshole during your day, congratulations, you met an asshole. If EVERYONE you encounter is an asshole, then it may be that YOU are the asshole.

You've been complaining about every ward you've worked in over the past few years. And it's always about people not treating you fairly. I don't know anything, so I don't know if this applies or not, but sometimes it may seem like you're doing all the work when you don't fully realize what everyone else has to do, and there may be a chance that your "completely professional tone" isn't hiding your contempt for other's as much as you might think.

Just maybe something to think about.

they get to enjoy a one hour pause while I do a 30 minute one.

Is that all?

The whole post about that problem, and as soon as the pause problem is solved, then your life is good again?

Just trying to confirm.

There is a saying about nurses, they eat thier young.

Build your own circle in your ward, trust me there will be enough folks on the “outside of the power click that things will work.

I would guess there's others at work who feel like you do about the alphas and the power structure. Perhaps gathering allies would be a helpful first step. Since the alphas keep things running and management obviously values them you should tread carefully.l though. If you can get viewed by management as someone who gets things done and knows what's up they might be more open to changes you suggest, especially if you have a bunch of unhappy coworkers supporting those changes.