Nursing/Law question: is it abandonment to leave mid-shift after getting fired?

[joy_of_cooking]

Pick the US state whose law you know and I'll set my story there.
I need to get a guy fired and I want him to show a little spine on the way out. I'm thinking of having him be a nurse, get fired mid-shift, get asked to work the rest of his shift, and tell them to go pound sand.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I don't know of any official rule but I would be shocked if one was not escorted from the building the moment that they were terminated. Executives who are let go are forced to hand over their keys and are walked out of the building, corporate espionage/sabotage all that. You get twenty minutes to clean out your desk of personal belongings while a security guard watches you and then buh-bye! I've seen it happen. No telling what kind of damage someone upset over getting fired could do with the safe codes, employee records, client accounts, etc. Now just imagine what kind of damage a disgruntled (ex-)employee could do in a hospital! I really don't see it happening, but what do I know?

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I don't know of any official rule but I would be shocked if one was not escorted from the building the moment that they were terminated. Executives who are let go are forced to hand over their keys and are walked out of the building, corporate espionage/sabotage all that. You get twenty minutes to clean out your desk of personal belongings while a security guard watches you and then buh-bye! I've seen it happen. No telling what kind of damage someone upset over getting fired could do with the safe codes, employee records, client accounts, etc. Now just imagine what kind of damage a disgruntled (ex-)employee could do in a hospital! I really don't see it happening, but what do I know?

It would depend on why the nurse was fired. Some jobs give two weeks or more notice for layoffs (non-disciplinary firings).

I can't imagine why they'd fire him mid-shift, though, if they want him to finish it off. Wait until the end of the shift, then fire. Is the boss character a fool, or prone to counterproductive anger?

-Rocco

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I can't imagine why they'd fire him mid-shift, though, if they want him to finish it off. Wait until the end of the shift, then fire. Is the boss character a fool, or prone to counterproductive anger?

Nurses work seven to seven, HR calls it quits at five.

 

[Euphony]

Pick the US state whose law you know and I'll set my story there.
I need to get a guy fired and I want him to show a little spine on the way out. I'm thinking of having him be a nurse, get fired mid-shift, get asked to work the rest of his shift, and tell them to go pound sand.

Yeah, I'm with glove. Even low level wage jobs you are either escorted out, called and told on a day off/Fri night,most of office, etc. (possessions/desk don't matter "we'll mail you your stuff) or, if hourly, death by not being on the schedule anymore.

Withnall the worries of workplace violence, telling someone they're out but have them hang around for any time after sets off my plausibility radar.

 

[Euphony]

Nurses work seven to seven, HR calls it quits at five.

I worked in a bad contract work situation and, while we got off at 8pm HR was making calls (and agency follow up).way past their 5pm clock out.

Maybe in the past work being over at clock out was a thing but we've never forced more off time work than these days.

 

[DreamingOfMyEx]

Nurses work different hours in different places.

Anyway, a lot of it would depend on circumstances. A history of being late, not doing the paperwork properly, etc, would be handled one way - a heated exchange with a physician over what's best for a patient would be another situation altogether. The nurse's supervisor (charge nurse, for instance) might side with the doctor - calling security to have the fired nurse escorted out (for safety's sake - then initiate the paperwork afterward) OR might "intervene" and give the nurse something else to do - keep them separated to allow the doctor to calm down. (The nurses belong to the head nurse - but the doctors are gods and must be appeased.) No need to increase the workload on everyone else, right?

If they want him to keep working they wouldn't tell the nurse he's getting fired - they need him to keep working efficiently till the end of the shift.

So to answer the original question - I don't think they would say "you're getting fired, but please finish out your shift". There could be an incident where he knows he's going to get fired, but they don't tell him that. That's when he needs to start worrying about his response, and how that will affect his license and his future job prospects.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

It would depend on why the nurse was fired. Some jobs give two weeks or more notice for layoffs (non-disciplinary firings).

I can't imagine why they'd fire him mid-shift, though, if they want him to finish it off. Wait until the end of the shift, then fire. Is the boss character a fool, or prone to counterproductive anger?

-Rocco

It's not really the reasons for dismissal, it's the liabilities of keeping you around. All it takes is for an angry employee have an irrational moment and switch someone's charts or starts unplugging things for spite. Someone ends up dead and it's not worth risking a multi-million dollar lawsuit. If a hospital was going to lay off a dozen (even totally trustworthy) employees, they would call them into a meeting, hand them all severance cheques compliant to the CBA (nursing would be union) and walk them out.

 

[ronde]

It's not really the reasons for dismissal, it's the liabilities of keeping you around. All it takes is for an angry employee have an irrational moment and switch someone's charts or starts unplugging things for spite. Someone ends up dead and it's not worth risking a multi-million dollar lawsuit. If a hospital was going to lay off a dozen (even totally trustworthy) employees, they would call them into a meeting, hand them all severance cheques compliant to the CBA (nursing would be union) and walk them out.

Layoff are a little different in that some layoffs are temporary and if the employee understands that, they won't get too upset. If it's a permanent layoff or a termination, only a fool would allow the terminated employee to stay on the property. I've had the displeasure of firing a few employees and they were all mad at me and at the company. Angry people don't think straight and are liable to cause all sorts of trouble. That's why they're typically told to clean out their personal belongings, hand over their access badge, and leave the property.

 

[remypare]

Generally, if a nurse is fired, they'll do it on a day when the nurse is not taking care of patients. They might call them in on their day off or meet them before or after shift, but firing someone midday would be disruptive to care and poses a ton of risks. In my 15 years of clinical work (respiratory therapist) I never saw someone get fired in the middle of a shift. I have seen nurses and RTs have their assignment switched mid-shift in the event of conflict, like say an explosive argument with a doctor or another staff member, but firings are usually done either on a separate day or at the beginning of a shift.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Sigh. Into the trash it goes.

Was a great scene too. You're just gonna have to take my word for it. Absolute genius.

Thanks, everyone.

 

[Erozetta]

Sigh. Into the trash it goes.

Was a great scene too. You're just gonna have to take my word for it. Absolute genius.

Thanks, everyone.

There is a way around this.

A lot of nursing homes are absolutely desperate for staff and have been since covid (they are less likely to be escorted out after being fired because it's a bad look to other employees who are already pretty miserable for the most part. Basically sets 'being fired' as a hush hush sort of thing that doesn't get attention drawn to it.) Your guy doesn't have to be fired before his shift ends, just get wind of the fact that they are planning to fire him right after he clocks out (In MA they have to pay you for the entire day if they fire you after you report for your shift and you have to have your final check in hand on your way out the door. There would be credible evidence of the impending firing, particularly if it's not on a normal pay day.) He ups and walks out instead. This would lead to it being considered abandonment, which would make him ineligible to collect unemployment.

 

[Fatdog25]

Your scene could work if the character being fired worked for a physician in private practice.

A hospital would probably wait until either the beginning or end of a shift to terminate a nurse. Deliberate patient endangerment would be the only situation where they would pull a nurse off the floor.

 

[HordHolm]

Deliberate patient endangerment would be the only situation where they would pull a nurse off the floor.

I would imagine at that point the police might well be called, too. Esp. given stuff that's happened over recent years.

 

[RejectReality]

Instead of having an official notice of termination from the supervisor, have someone else overhear/be told that the person is going to be fired at the end of shift, and have them inform the pink slip recipient. This assumes you have someone in the cast whom could be reasonably assumed by the reader to be a person the future terminee trusts.

May be able to pull off your grand gesture that way.

They go a step beyond where I work sometimes. When it's someone they remotely think might get up to shenanigans ( of which there have been many dastardly and hilarious examples over the years ) they'll often pay them 40 hours and release them at the beginning of the second week of their two weeks notice. One guy who already had a history of pulling stuff got paid 80 hours and sent out the door the moment he turned in his notice. LOL

I flat out tell anyone who's planning to give notice to start twirling their mustache as soon as they turn in their notice if they want a free week's paid vacation before they start their new gig, then start reminding the supervisor of the past evil deeds of short-timers until they get paranoid.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Leaving aside the original question about law: I know some nurses. None of them would disappear mid-shift short of a heart attack, because they're all about caring for the patients. If the protagonist is a good nurse, he would stick out the shift (in my head, at least) for the sake of the people he's caring for, no matter his feelings.

-Rocco

 

[Carnevil9]

Sigh. Into the trash it goes.

Was a great scene too. You're just gonna have to take my word for it. Absolute genius.

Thanks, everyone.

Don't be so hasty. Even though rational people acting rationally wouldn't fire him in the middle of a shift, there is still the chance that some superior is so pissed off at something that he lashes out and fires the nurse on the spot. Not realizing that it would leave the staff short-handed.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Don't be so hasty. Even though rational people acting rationally wouldn't fire him in the middle of a shift, there is still the chance that some superior is so pissed off at something that he lashes out and fires the nurse on the spot. Not realizing that it would leave the staff short-handed.

Certainly. I've had some really bad bosses that either broke their own rules, didn't know their own rules or didn't have any rules.

I had a boss give me shit for doing something wrong that I hadn't done yet. he came to me and said that I had fucked up a work order. I said, "I haven't typed up that work order yet, I just cam back from break and was about to do it." He said, "Well ... you were GOING to type it wrong!" He was completely unreasonable.

Same boss, instructed me to make a work order which the engineering dept didn't have time to prepare. He wanted to fast-track it to the fab floor. He told me to just copy the same work order that the client had from the year before (when I wasn't working there) and attach a photo of the client's store front. It was a chain of hair generic hair salons opening a new branch. The text was "GREAT CLIPS FOR HAIR" so I copied the previous work order and made the new one just like he said. The fab shop made the letters for the sign and then I get absolutely shit on in front of everyone in the office because I had wasted materials since the sign was only supposed to say "GREAT CLIPS". The extra letters made were now garbage. It was probably a hundred dollar mistake since the painter had painted them up and everything. The reason for the shortened text copy was that this new store front was very narrow so they decided to shorten the sign. I wasn't told this, but apparently because there was a sketchy photo from the salesman's phone of the storefront as the only attachment (usually there are a bunch of art drawings and measurements from the engineers and the art dept) I was supposed to realize that all those letters wouldn't fit and should have decided to shorten the text myself. I'm a fucking clerk. I have no authority to alter a work order whatsoever. That's between sales, art and engineering. He knows this. He owns the company and it's his OWN rule.

I had a retail job where the only real problems I had running my department was my boss the store manager. She was neurotic, had to be crazy busy all the time and was always perfect, so perfect that when she fucked up it was someone else's fault, someone who she never trained and never supervised. the only things that slowed me down or fucked me up was her, usually making me cover other departments that she had (badly) underscheduled. Then she'd get on my case for not having my work done. During my time there we had three different district managers regularly visit and all three would pass my department with flying colors, but my manager would nitpick stupid things like not checking off every box on the daily checklist even though it was all done. It was just that often I would be the only keyholder at close and I have to run around and supervise the staff and get the customers out and lock the doors and walk out the employees and cut off the online orders and add up the registers balance the floats and close the store and oops, I didn't check off the last two boxes on my checklist. I can initial them tomorrow. No big whoop. But no, this put me in my place as inferior to her.

We had an employee stealing from the store, thousands of dollars of credit card fraud. She said that she caught him, but she didn't. LP in head office tapped her and told her that our registers weren't adding up and we were put under fraud watch because we weren't watching the reports. She didn't like that because fraud watch means that she's not perfect, see. So she gave all the keyholders heck for not watching the register reports. WE'RE NOT TRAINED TO READ THEM! We don't know what the codes mean. We're not department managers, just leads (because she doesn't like having other managers to challenge or threaten her authority). Watching the registers is a manager's duty, not ours. If she wouldn't drive her assistant managers insane and force them to rage quit someone could have caught the fraud before LP noticed, saved us thousands of dollars and avoided a fraud flagging.

Biggest asshole and moron that I ever worked with was a warehouse floor supervisor. I was a clerk. He was not our boss as the office had a head clerk supervising. So my co-worker generated some pick tickets as per usual. next thing that I know, this idiot walks into the office and starts berating my co-worker (whom he has no authority over) "Come on, man! Do your job! Don't make me pick from the B-level, there's stuff on the ground level!" Now my co-worker was very good at his job and a really nice guy. He's very patiently trying to explain to him, but this idiot supervisor just shouts over him for like three or four minutes straight and won't let him get in a word. "Come on, man! Do your job!" What idiot didn't understand was that we CAN'T choose the locations of the picks. The software won't let us, because the picks must be first-in-first-out so we have no choice but to pick the oldest stock regardless of locations. If he wants easy picks from ground level all he has to do is tell one of his guys to get on the forklift and move that pallet from B down to ground and report the movement to the office. The clerk will move the pallet in the system and the picks will be ground level. But he's too fucking lazy to get on a machine or a ladder, too stupid to know how the system works and too arrogant to listen and learn. Furthermore, if we pick newer stock before older, we're in violation of the client contract, which he SHOULD know since he's the supervisor AND IN CHARGE OF BILLING REPORTING! How do you bill the client if you don't know the contract? Thank God the manager would do his billing for him. It must have been a nightmare.

He would also brag about how fast he was, which was bullshit because I did most of the productivity reports. The pickers would write their start and finish times on the tickets and we would keep track of that to cost out. The target was four minutes per line. His were usually ten minutes per line, like not even CLOSE! One time he had a three-line order that took him 45 minutes (!!) and on top of that one of the other pickers added in big bold ink a note "add 15 mins to rework his unshippable pallet!" The guys ion the floor hated him too.

One day he almost gave away a dishwasher. One of our clients was an appliance wholesaler and some restaurant ordered a dishwasher. My co-worker wrote up the shipping bill. Some guy from the restauarnt with a little pickup truck came to take it and he helps him load it up. Just as I walk out to the floor he says, "There's no paper for it so I guess that's it, bye," shrug. I was like "WHAT??????" There is NEVER no paper. Just to be clear there is NEVER EVER no paper. NOTHING ever leaves the dock without a signature. If the client turns around and claims that they never received the goods and you have no signed document to say that it was picked up, you just gave them a free dishwasher! I said, "I don't THINK so! Is this it?" and I picked up one of the bills on the outbound board. His face lights up and he says "Oh, is that it?" And I said "I dunno, which one did you give him?" You have to have the right bill for the right shipment after all. He says, "That must be it, thanks," then snatches it from my hand and without reading it at all, chases the guy into the parking lot to get him to sign. Total ... fucking ... RE-TARD!

The lesson here, below the branch manager he's the highest paid person in the building with years upon years of experience, so it is no stretch to say that a head nurse supervisor in a hospital could be a self-serving, lazy, incompetent, narcissistic, asshole moron who botches a firing and then tries to cover his own ass.

 

[DreamingOfMyEx]

Sigh. Into the trash it goes.

Was a great scene too. You're just gonna have to take my word for it. Absolute genius.

Thanks, everyone.

For what it's worth, I gave it 5-stars.

 

[Britva415]

I'm thinking of having him be a nurse, get fired mid-shift, get asked to work the rest of his shift

That’s not realistic. Fired means “go home now.”

 

[Britva415]

Nurses work seven to seven, HR calls it quits at five.

That’s not realistic. HR wouldn’t do it that way, or, if they did, they wouldn’t ask or expect or permit the person to not stop working just as soon as they’ve been informed.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Is the "people get escorted from the premises immediately after being given notice" thing really that universal in the USA?

The one time I've been fired, which was not particularly amicable, they gave me a month's notice and I spent the time wrapping up my projects and documenting them. I could have done a lot of damage if I'd been childish about it (hit the emergency stop button that costs half a million dollars, grab the unsecured master password list, take your pick...) but even Idiot Asshole Boss treated me like a grown-up who was aware that I'd likely need a reference from them.

 

[Euphony]

Is the "people get escorted from the premises immediately after being given notice" thing really that universal in the USA?

The one time I've been fired, which was not particularly amicable, they gave me a month's notice and I spent the time wrapping up my projects and documenting them. I could have done a lot of damage if I'd been childish about it (hit the emergency stop button that costs half a million dollars, grab the unsecured master password list, take your pick...) but even Idiot Asshole Boss treated me like a grown-up who was aware that I'd likely need a reference from them.

I'd say more common than uncommon, especially when the shadow of conflict lingers over the situation, like here.

We've got loose gun laws and the media has moved to play up any workplace shooting for ratings even when it's often domestic violence spilling over into one of the partners workplaces.

Every non-union job I've been in, people were walked out, even when their roles didn't involved customer data.

As contract work became the norm, you didn't even get the decency of anyone you worked with for years letting you know. Always a call from some random HR person at the agency you went through (and visited once, twice tops) and they loved to cap people Friday nights, usually 8-10pm (even people who worked early shifts/off-site/remote, etc.)

And they love leveraging the distance from the situation to give zero answers/explanations.

Worked for a financial services company that multi terminated from my training class every 2-3 months.

I survived a bunch of rounds and those chopped would text me looking for answers or any changes that might explain things but there was nothing.

People get agitated when left to feel completely fungible even with all the late nights and sacrifices.

I get the possibility of trouble justified the escorted outs or off hours canning but it's also chicken shit when you are aggravating the issue.

 

[Britva415]

Is the "people get escorted from the premises immediately after being given notice" thing really that universal in the USA?

It’s got to be universal that nobody is expected to keep working after being given notice, though.

Unless we’re talking about a “layoff,” which isn’t what “firing” is.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It’s got to be universal that nobody is expected to keep working after being given notice, though.

Unless we’re talking about a “layoff,” which isn’t what “firing” is.

Mine was a firing dressed up as a layoff; the boss and I had a significant difference of opinions, and by the strangest of coincidences a couple of weeks later I was informed that my services were no longer required. (And then a few months down the line they were hiring again for the same role, hmmmmm.)

I was given the option to finish up immediately, but they also gave the option to work through the notice period, which I took since I didn't have anything lined up.