Malicious Compliance

Doing home health was kinda instructive for me in this regard.

The only time you go to the office is to turn stuff in, do inservices/continuing education, or similar. But originally I would answer calls at weird hours because a patient would need coverage, otherwise they wouldn't be calling.

And then the management spent way too much money buying into some Disney corporate policy thing (literally, they paid money to Disney for the program) that changed a ton of rules in bullshit ways that made no sense for home health.

So, the next time they called, I didn't answer. Or the time after that, or the time after that. And, when you're one of three men working for a company that's partially reliant physical strength to be able to do the work needed for some patients, this alarmed my supervisor. She requested a meeting, and I went in. Mandatory meetings were paid though!

At the meeting, it was expressed that answering calls was part of my job. So I asked id I was being paid to sit at home and wait for calls. No, I wasn't "on call". So, you want me on call? No, just to answer when we call you. That's being on call, and we're supposed to get paid for that. No, this is different, we just want you to be available when someone calls out for a difficult patient. Soooo, you want me on call.

This went in circles for a while before I switched gears and directly said that answering calls when not on duty was not in place when I was hired, and that the employee handbook specified that being on call was considered a shift, and would be paid as such, and that maybe I should have been on call any of the dozens of times I did wake my ass up from sleep after workout two or three jobs in the first place, and that I never got paid a dime for doing so, so that was the end of it for me.

The response was that they couldn't stay operating if they paid everyone for being on call instead of us "supporting the company". My response was that maybe they could have if they hadn't shelled out for the Disney crap, or if the previous administrator hadn't been screwing around and embezzling, and that maybe it was time the company supported us.

Not surprisingly, I was one of several employees "let go to streamline services" a few weeks later, right before the company folded entirely.

So, you don't even have to have an office job to get treated like shit! Isn't that a relief? Isn't it?