Ever burned a bridge?

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Just wondering if any of you will admit to ever burning a bridge with an employer? Did you feel bad, but really believe you were doing the right thing?

Thanks for your honesty!!

Specializes in trauma, ortho, burns, plastic surgery.

American nursing style tells you to give a notice, is professional....some time, yes sometime.....you need just to do it because anything else didn't works.

To quit is a hard decision for a nurse who loves her job.... but is the last solution that she has to stay true with her self.

From where I come is something like that....we tell them "pelicano" they clean others waters, and eat all the mess around, and eat and eat, with the head down.......until one day...when is too much... and they don't have any help..... ...so then them fly away... right then right now...

Is a safety instinct to sudenly breakup, they could not take anymore....

Is not adviced to do it, are people who need to deal in a constructive way before to happend it....

We don't live in perfect world...but in a money world for sure...lol

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Specializes in Stroke Seizure/LTC/SNF/LTAC.

I burned a bridge at my last non-nursing job just before entering nursing school. I'd given a month's notice. I had some "sick days" that I earned for which I would not be paid unless I was sick. I seriously wasn't feeling well during my last week, but worked the first 3 days. I called off for my last 2 days. Someway, somehow, someone felt/thought I wasn't "that sick", caused a stink for me and ruined the professional reputation I'd spent 3 1/2 years building.:crying2:

That being said, I would intend to remain professional and give 2 week's notice. :twocents:

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Yes. Two. I had just come off of a F-1 student visa and was employed by these two women. I not only burned the bridge, I threw the ashes in the grand canyon and threw rocks and my shoes after them. These women were wicked. Wicked.

Employer #1:

- would bring files into my office and throw them on the floor and tell me to "pick that sh*t up off the floor else you wont get your papers"

- she would take me into her office and offer me jack daniels, bacardi, cokito (not sure of the spelling), and when I refused she would would yell at me to leave her office. "Get out, Get OOOOOOOUUUUUT!!!)

- tell me I have to work overtime at 4:59, when I get to the location, there is no one there or the event was not within our scope

Employer #2:

- her perv of a brother would make advances on me in the office, and when I spoke with her about it, she said that it was her business and he had a right to be there (this got me fired)

- I was hired as a grant writer and two months or so later I was assigned to clean the toilets, then she would do inspection and berated and threaten not to file my papers if i did not do it right

- she held on to my work permit after she fired me and refused to hand it over (the permit belongs to me and is proof of my status). She sees me within earshot and says, "Let me see her find a job after 9/11, she will have to beg me for hers back".

- I was called into a meeting and told to "dress down", because "an employee does not dress better that the person that feeds them."

and many, many, many more things. It was a rough time in my life and those people mady me physically sick.

Mind you, employer #2 is also an immigrant just like myself. I never looked back.

I still see her, but pass her like an exam.

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If you do make sure you go to another state and a totally different type of Job.

Sorry you are in a situation where there is a surplus of nurses now not a shortage as people keep saying. Nurses are a dime a dozen or just bodies to fill a position if you don't like it quit there will be twenty clamoring to fill your job. If you quit a job the chances of getting another job are not good especially as a new nurse. Don't worry in another decade the tables will turn again like it did in Canada and then you will be in the drivers seat again. There is usally a turn around every 7-10 years.

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I have not burned bridges so much as made a poor choice in who I have worked for in the past. Always turn in a two week notice.

Interesting perspective. And good advice.

Just about any field is a small world at the local level, and while "Cortezing" may seem like a good idea at the time, life has a way of turning the tables.

I come to nursing from another industry, and I admit finding the lack of professionalism in some nurses disheartening. It's one reason nurses don't get the respect we deserve.

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Weighing whether to burn a bridge not giving a two week notice, or having something affecting my future license as an RN (was working at a student nurse at the time), I elected to burn the bridge. Being assigned first day on the job to ICU with four patients, no orientation, no preceptor, interns in sight but no other nurse was the first and last day I worked for the facillity. I have never been sorry for my decision.

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Sometimes no matter how you resign you will be perceived as burning a bridge. When you are working for people like this it's a no win situation anyway. They are incompetent and put your license at risk so you have to resign as soon as possible. I resigned my tenure year at a school district because the administrators were giving illegal health directives to students and parents and I was finding out about if after the fact. There was no talking to them no matter how kind or assertive my approach. Some administrators don't have the first clue how to recognize competency and the potential for their employees to actually make them look good. Nor do they have the capability to see that actually validating and supporting their employees can be very inspiring and motivating. This oversight keeps a revolving door going in their facility. They put my license at risk since I was the health officer so of course I had to resign. I gave sixty days notice, but did not finish to the end of the school year. This doesn't usually look good and resigning tenure year makes it look as if you were not asked to be rehired to every school who interviews you afterward so it's a little bit of temporary career suicide. Luckily, I landed somewhere where none of this mattered and I have quickly gained recognition for my competency. I am very grateful for this, since I really felt burned from the other experience. So, sometimes you are in a no-win situation and it's just time to move on and start to recover. I won't even bother to put that experience on my resume in the future. None of the incompetence and discord was within my control and it's just not worth trying to explain or change impressions.

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After 11 yrs in a home care agency and feeling like my license was in jeopardy due to others in the agency, I found another job. I gave 2 weeks notice and was to start the new job within a week after that. I was told that the policy of the entire health care system was to give 3 weeks notice.........I had given 2. I had already told new employer a start date. I was so sick of old employer, that I stuck to the 2 weeks. Due to this, I can never be eligible for rehire within that system again (2 hospitals with a huge number of providers). When I started new job, new employer was friends with old employer (didn't know this), new employer decided that I wasn't qualified on the first day.......I was let go. I now finally after 1 month have a new job in the competing local hospital system. I'm sorry, but also not sorry that I burnt that bridge.........

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Specializes in M/S, MICU, CVICU, SICU, ER, Trauma, NICU.

What I am noticing is that these particular types of managers are the worse and should be studied.

I can't believe these ridiculous, unworthy types still exist.

Times are a'changin and if you operate like these managers, I seriously think jobs will no longer exist for them.

Our HR looks for these managers and once their gig is up, they don't last.

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Specializes in critical care, PACU.

in nursing school, I contested a discriminatory practice of assigning preceptorship in a manner that favored those who signed a contract to work with the school's sister hospital. I followed the chain of command and felt I was professional, but in the end, the director said I did myself "a huge disservice."

well, I definitely have no chances of ever working at that sister hospital

I do think a lot of hospitals are in bed with each other, but you have to do what's best for you.

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Specializes in M/S, MICU, CVICU, SICU, ER, Trauma, NICU.

oh and BTW, nursing is a very, very small world. Even across these United States....I have found someone who knows someone who knows another...so I tend

NOT TO BURN BRIDGES.

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Specializes in CCU,ICU,ER retired.

Yes and not only that I left at the beginning of the shift. I was a tech in ICU so it wasn't like I abandoned my patients. The charge nurse hated me, don't know why, but she hated me with a passion. We did team nursing at that time techs did patient care LPN did meds and RN was charge. one night she gave me 6 patients out of 10 and EKG's. When you were on EKGs you always got a lighter pt load because you had to do preop ekg's and ER ekg's out of the 6 I have 3 were on q 15 min vs. We did not have bp machines it was all manual bp. I told her even with out ekg's I couldn't handle that much. One of the other techs offered to take ekg's and the other even said she would take a couple of my patients since she only had 2. The Charge told them both no that was my assignment period and to mind their own business. I said no it is now her business cuz I was finished taking her abuse and left clocked out and went home. When I got home the phone was ringing off the wall it was the director wanting to know what happened. I was still so angry I just said Nothing and hung up.

The next day the director called again and told me if I would come in and write up what happened she would give me a good reference,(she already knew but wanted it on paper) So I came in wrote it up and she even told me she had a better cooler job at another hospital for me and all I had to do was go to the other hospital and interview with a friend of hers and the job was mine. So I did. That Charge nurse was fired a couple of months later for doing the same thing to another tech, come to find out she hated women and had a history of getting rid of all the women and keeping the men but they had to be young men and not nurses. Sick sick sick. That job I got after was an awesome job I kept it for 28 years even went to nursing school

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