Me

My posts are delayed this morning because I am arguing with the payroll woman at my job.

The hospital where I work has a lot of training requirements. We are assigned mandatory training every month. Some of it is in the form of traditional, in-person classes, some of it is online training, and some of it is simulation training that must be done at the hospital. We are not given time to do this while we are on our regular shift, because that time is taken up providing patient care. For the month of May, that comes to about

If we clock in (using a time clock on site, or if we clock in virtually by signing in online) to do this training at a date and time that is outside of our scheduled shift, it has to be approved. I just got a call from work and was told that some of my training hours were not approved, and I would not be getting paid for them.

The Department of Labor says that an employer doesn’t have to pay you for training time if that training meets four criteria:

• it is outside normal hours
• it is voluntary
• it is not job related, and
• no other work is concurrently performed.

We have a problem. Actually, WE don’t have a problem, my employer does. When an employer tells you that completing training is mandatory, they don’t have the option of telling you that the hours need to be approved. They have to pay you, it’s the law. Here is a handy guide for employers that explains it:

As we mentioned earlier, the FLSA requires that employees be paid at least one and a half times the regular wage rate for all hours worked over 40 in one workweek. When calculating the number of hours an employee works, you’ll need to include all compensable time, which includes unauthorized work time if you know or have reason to know about it. Essentially, if the employee works over 40 hours a week in any way, you’re liable for compensating them for it.

So, even if you have a policy in your employee handbook that states overtime must be approved by a manager in advance, if an employee works it anyway – in violation of the policy – you still must pay them. That’s because the FLSA considers “work not requested but suffered or permitted” to be work time. The reason doesn’t matter; if you know or have reason to believe the employee is continuing to work, that time is working time.

In this case, they made the training mandatory, but leave it to the employee to schedule and complete the training on their own time. The employee has to clock in and out, then has to list the hours, date, and time on a spreadsheet in the company computer system so training can verify that it was legitimate. Then after the fact, the training department “validates” the hours so that payroll can approve it. In many cases, the training people will “deny” the hours, and the employee just doesn’t get paid for completing the training.

That isn’t what the law says. I don’t have to get overtime approved if my employer knows that I am working it. They have to pay me. Period. Now they are free to fire me if I am working unauthorized overtime, but it still has to be paid.

Now many of you will say “Well, just don’t do the training, then.” If you don’t complete the training for a given month, you get removed from the schedule and are not permitted to come to work until you complete that training. That is part of how they make it mandatory. Here is an example of a required training notice, directly from an email that I received this morning:

This is a notice to help remind you that your NIH Stroke Scale Certification is due to expire in approximately 90 days. It is your responsibility to renew and provide the appropriate documentation to Human Resources in order to continue to work after 08/17/2024. In accordance with your facility’s policy, if you do not renew prior to the expiration date you may be subject to suspension and possible termination.

While we are on that topic, some of the training that they make us attend is held at another location/hospital. This requires drives that are up to an hour long to get to the other location. The law says that they have to pay you for the time spend driving to the other location. This is what the DOL has to say about that:

An employee who regularly works at a fixed location in one city is given a special one day assignment in another city and returns home the same day. The time spent in traveling to and returning from the other city is work time, except that the employer may deduct/not count that time the employee would normally spend commuting to the regular work site.

Since I have been working there, I have been told to go to another hospital for training on 12 different occasions. The total travel time for those 12 occasions is about 35 hours, and I can prove it because I keep records. It normally takes me 40 minutes round trip to get to and from work at my normal hospital, so that means that they owe me 28 hours of pay for travel time for those 12 days. That means they owe me money that is roughly equivalent to a week’s pay. So far.

I am going to see the ED department head about this the next time I am there for work. If they aren’t willing to pay me for those hours, my next step will be filing a complaint with the Florida Department of Labor’s wage and hour division. As soon as I file the complaint, they can’t fire me for working the overtime, because it then becomes unlawful retaliation.

As long as I am filing the complaint for the declined hours, I may as well include all of the travel time to the other hospitals while we are at it. If my complaint is investigated by DOL and shown to be true, the penalties can be expensive:

If you don’t pay overtime when it’s due, you have to pay back wages for the time worked. If you neglect to pay overtime properly and a complaint is filed with the DOL, you’ll pay damages, penalties, and a fine. For employers who willfully or repeatedly violate the overtime requirements, you could face a civil monetary penalty of up to $1,000 for each violation.

Now consider that there are 250 nurses who work in just the emergency department in just the one hospital where I work, with each one of those nurses being tasked with the same training requirements that I have. How many violations do you think there are? Two thousand? More? Those fines get expensive.

I work for a hospital, and I think all of my readers know that. With that being the case, our employee insurance requires us to use the hospital’s mail in pharmacy to fill all prescriptions. That pharmacy is run by corporate, and they suck royal donkey balls.

I am a diabetic and have been taking Mounjaro for the past year. In order to get the drug, you need to get approval. To get that approval, you need to prove that you have tried other remedies for at least a year, and that those remedies failed. I met that requirement, as I have been a diabetic for over 15 years, have taken those other medications, and they no longer work. So it was approved, but it took weeks.

This pharmacy sends prescriptions 90 days at a time. When it is time to refill that prescription, it’s always a hassle. You would think that a pharmacy owned by a hospital would be decent, but it isn’t. I suspect that this is because they are trying to control costs at the expense of their employees. Let me explain:

Now, every time I go to refill, there is always an issue. They claim that they are out of Mounjaro, and try to convince me to switch to being an insulin dependent diabetic. I know how fragile diabetics are once they go on insulin, so I always have to fight them on it. The first time, they blamed it on a supply shortage caused by people using it as a weight loss drug. So this time, I ordered the refill a month ago.

It wasn’t filled because they had an issue with my credit card over the $25 copay. I corrected that, and now they are saying that the medication is out of stock. I just took my last dose, and my next one is due in six days. Since it must be shipped to me, it has to ship by Friday. Any bets on whether or not they make it? Assholes.

It’s complete bullshit. My last hospital required us to use the in hospital lab for all of our lab work, and I suspected that they were doing that so the bosses could see your medical history.

If you have a problem with modern healthcare, it shouldn’t be with the actual workers. The administrative bean counters are the problem.

We called the builder to complain that the sink in the upstairs bathroom had no hot water, only cold. The bathtub that is right next to the sink has hot water, though. So after a couple of weeks, a plumber shows up. He runs the water in the sink for a couple of minutes, then declares that the sink is piped incorrectly. He says that he will have to cut into the drywall to get at the pipes and will need the boss’ permission to do it. He says he will be back.

An hour later, he returned with a second plumber. They said that they would be cutting into the drywall to repipe the sink. I have a complete set of photos of what the house looks like without drywall in place. I show them where the pipes are, and they cut a 2′ square hole in the kitchen ceiling. In the wrong spot. They are mystified when they wind up under the upstairs air conditioning plenum.

I again point out to them that they are in the wrong spot. This time, they cut where I tell them the pipes are. There is the hot water pipe, and they tell me that the pipe was mislabeled during construction. They then cut a third hole so they can tap off of the bathtub’s hot water.

The sink upstairs still doesn’t have hot water at that point. They keep trying to figure it out. At this point, they have been at it for over 4 hours. There are three giant holes in my kitchen ceiling. There is insulation raining down all over the kitchen. My house is in a shambles. We can’t use the kitchen.

I asked them if they checked to see if the faucet is bad. They looked at me like I was a moron, so I continued: “What if there was some construction debris in the pipe, and it made its way to the faucet’s hot water valve, clogging the valve.” They asked how I would figure that out. I replied: turn off the cold water valve under the sink. If the faucet still works, it’s piped wrong. If the sink doesn’t work, it’s the faucet.

It was the faucet.

They plumbers apologized profusely and said that their boss would call me to figure out how to repair my ceiling. This is what it looks like.

I understand that mistakes happen, so I call the builder. He tells me that it’s a warranty issue, says he will put in a work order, and according to the warranty documents that I agreed to at closing, they have up to 15 business days to repair it. They will, he tells me, get to it “when they get to it.”

I tell him that he needs to do a better job of reading the warranty. A warranty item is described as a “defect in materials or workmanship that occurred during construction of the home.” This didn’t happen during construction. It happened because his subcontractors were incompetent morons. This means that it is a claim for their insurance, and they have exactly one week to get it fixed. If it isn’t, I am going to hire someone to fix it myself, then I will sue them to collect my costs.

I can’t use my kitchen. There is drywall dust everywhere. We are finding blown in insulation all over the house, because when the plumbers tried to clean the insulation that had fallen from the ceiling, the shop vac they used just blew it everywhere. That cardboard patch that is duct taped to the ceiling in the picture below? It fell off 15 minutes after they left.

Now every time we open a door or the air conditioner comes on, insulation falls from the holes. Bugs crawl in at night. So I got some pieces of cardboard and attached them to the ceiling using staples from my nail gun. These are essentially holes that open my house to the outside.

I am more than a bit pissed off about this. If it isn’t fixed by Monday, I will start calling my own drywall guys and an attorney. This is complete and utter bullshit. I’m not nearly as mad about the plumbers fucking up as I am about the attitude of the warranty supervisor. You handle things like this by saying “I am so sorry this happened. Let me tell you what we are going to do to fix this. It will be a priority item for us, and I will see how quickly I can get someone out to help you. In the meantime, one of us will be over right away to secure your home from the elements.”

What you don’t say is “I don’t control the drywall company’s schedule. I will put in a work order and they will get to it when they get to it.”

In the meantime, posting may or may not be sporadic as I deal with this and still have to go to work to pay the mortgage on my now trashed house.

My wife and I have been together for a decade. She decided to take us to dinner as a celebration. We went to a six course meal, which I had never done before. The meal was prix fixe, and consisted of six courses, each paired with a wine selection by a professional sommelier. Each course was small, which was a good thing, since there were six of them.

We arrived at the appointed time and were served a welcome cocktail while we waited for the other diners. The cocktail was simple syrup, mint leaves, and champagne. It was intended to be a light, refreshing palate cleanser.

We sat down at the appointed time and were served our first course. It was the appetizer course. Scallop Carpaccio paired with an Italian Pinot Grigio. The scallops were sliced thinner than a sheet of paper. It was fairly good. This is the plate:

The soup course was second, and it was a Smoked Tomato Soup that had been cooked for six hours. It was paired with a white wine from Napa Valley that was pretty good.

The third course was the salad course. It was made from butter poached lobster, hearts of palm, pineapples, and cilantro with a vanilla dressing. The wine pairing was a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

The fourth course was the fish course. It was a roasted branzino with zucchini, peppers, lemon, and a pesto. It was hands down the tastiest course of the night. If it had not been such a fancy restaurant, I would have been tempted to lick the plate. This course was paired with a Chardonnay from California.

The fifth course was the beef course. A grilled filet mignon with truffled potato puree, asparagus, and bordelaise sauce. It was delicious, but I have to admit that I was getting pretty full at this point. This course was paired with a Cabernet from Napa Valley.

The last (dessert) course was a chocolate sphere that they poured hot caramel over, revealing a peanut butter ganache, chocolate mousse, and a caramel gelato. It was good, but I was so full at this point, I only ate about a third of the dessert. It was paired with a Salted Caramel Espresso Martini. The martini was so good that I had two of them.

The meal was superb, but I have to admit that I ate so much that I didn’t eat at all the following day. I had two of the martinis, and that turned out to be a mistake. First, there was so much alcohol served with this meal, that I was pretty drunk after the three hour dinner experience. Second, I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, and my heart was racing at about 120 beats per minute. I am guessing the espresso had something to do with it.

We had a great night, and this meal was an appropriate celebration of ten years together.

It took 5 weeks to get my rental home repaired from the damage done by the previous tenants. The total repair bill came to over $9,000, and I still need to replace the flooring in the entire house because their dog ruined it in spots by peeing on it.

Anyhow, we listed it 28 days ago, and our new tenants signed the lease to move in soon. That’s one project off my plate.

Now I have to work on selling our old house. It’s always something, and I am always busy.