Healthcare employee switches to doing the bare minimum after employer refuses to compensate overtime

Healthcare employees, the backbone of modern society, face two major problems today: inadequate pay and challenging working conditions. While these workers care for the sick, their own needs often go unnoticed and that causes frustration. Reddit user u/TweedlesCan shared their story on the platform of how they were thinking about leaving their job after noticing many things. The post, titled "Wants me to work overtime but won't pay for it," has gained 3.1k upvotes on the platform.

At the beginning of the post, the individual reveals that they work in healthcare and work with vulnerable people. Surprisingly, the employees and the employer indulge in questionable practices that pushed them to think of leaving.

An example of this is allowing clinicians to perform tasks that they were not taught and suggesting treatments that were "pseudoscience." In addition to these ethical issues, their employer also possesses no idea about a healthy work-life balance. As a result of this, the employee receives constant communication even on days that they are not working about work. Their clients also expressed frustration over work being delayed due to the employer's incompetence.

They write, "I have set very clear boundaries from the start that I don't work outside my hours, and have also raised concerns about the ethics/competency issues, which resulted in my employer becoming defensive and emotional and changing nothing." Having firmly decided to quit, they handed in their notice only for the employer to become more difficult to deal with.

The individual describes themselves to be a "compliant human" and ends up taking additional work as they need to finish off work before they leave. As a result of this additional workload, they managed to gain a nice bit of overtime. Unfortunately, the employer sent out a mail to them informing them that they were no longer allowed to work overtime and it would now be logged as "vacation time" instead.

They write, "I don't want that because if I am working overtime, I deserve to be paid for it." They then decided to take a stand and stop responding to work emails outside their working time. Instead, they adhere to fixed timings and work eight hours on scheduled days. Seeing this, the employer became even more frustrated and proceeded to send them "snarky and condescending emails." "The frustration and passive aggression coming from my employer since I did that is unmatched," the employee said.

They conclude by saying, "I only have a few days left and will be filing an ethics complaint for the many egregious things I have seen once I am out of there. It's what they deserve and I can't wait."

Other Reddit users on the platform gave the individual many useful suggestions in the comments section. u/whereami312 commented, "You need to file a report with your State Department of Labor. They can't just arbitrarily declare that your compensation will be altered from overtime pay to vacation comp time unless it is specified in your contract or state law. You say that you are in healthcare; how big is your company? Because most of the larger companies have a dedicated HR department. This arbitrary change seems to not be something most companies' HR would tolerate."

u/LessThanThreeHundred said, "On behalf of everyone affected, thank you." u/ChaplainParker joked, "No, how dare you want to not be at my beck and call 24/7! If I email you you should be grateful that I’m communicating with you. What do you mean overtime pay? No that’s not a thing... Commence shocked Pikachu face when having to pay OT and possibly fines!"