A question for anyone in a leadership position: How would you deal with a nurse who is struggling to show up to work on time… when they’re stuck in some unfortunate situations that they cannot always control?
Lately, I have been showing up late to work. It’s completely unintentional. I am not sure what to do. If anyone has ideas or advice on how to talk to my leaders and what else I can try and/or things I can do so that I am not late for work - honestly, anything, would be much appreciated. Being late doesn't make my workplace happy with me and I am not happy feeling lost and uncertain about what to do in situations like this..
Being on time to work is such a basic professionalism thing. It was not an issue in the past for me to show up on work on time, EVER. I've been employed at some sort of job since I was 14 years old. In pre nursing school I took on a full load of classes, and even tho I then too had personal struggles at that time too, I still kept 2 part time jobs, and was never late to anything. I don’t know what my problem is or why its been so hard lately to simply SHOW UP. I have been kicking myself for failing in that. Things are tough enough for everyone and its not good that the other nurses are left waiting for me to get to work so that they can go home. I it just adds stress to the entire team when a co worker is late to work.
Im really upset with myself and angry that I put my leaders and team in this position of dealing with me being late. I think they would have fired me by now. I think that the only reason they have not fired me at this point is because I am an experienced perm nurse and they’re desperate for perm ICU nurses.
There’s a burnout element to it all. Sure, COVID hasn’t made things super easy and has created a lot of burnout for people. Im approaching burn out, but the reason behind my burnout has very little to do with COVID. I’m burnt out more for personal reasons. I lost multiple jobs in a single year after a family member assaulted me and left me with a neck injury, cursed me out and told me to never come back home. Physically abusive and psychologically manipulative; learned that the hard way. I was without insurance multiple times while in between jobs so I had to work with a special care team. They created a payment plan the best they could with me, but I still ended up putting myself into pretty nasty debt. With that I got really determined to get back to work as soon as possible. I worked with PT and earned myself an ortho surgeon after the neck injury with all of that as well .
I was suddenly left without reliable transportation when my family got super angry with me and decided to secretly steal my car in the middle of the night. Literally one day I woke up ready to get to work. But my car was gone. Someone who go a hold of an extra spare of keys took the car. No warning. I got creative and was able to get to work, but again, ended up being late to work. When I was called in to speak with my boss about why I was late again, I crafted some sort of excuse that showed that I was taking things seriously, without sharing TMI… My boss has been super gracious with me, even though she has no idea what’s going on.
(Side note: The car was under someone else’s name so it was totally legal for them to grab a spare key set and run off with the car. I quickly found a cheap SUV on craigslist and paid cash for it so that I had a vehicle again. It has many problems however and loads of miles tacked on to it, which has also led to me being late for work lately..)
My question is coming from a place where I fully understand that I cannot make excuses for my behavior, no matter how challenging life situations get. But I really don’t know what to do. I don't know what is appropriate to tell my boss at this point. I don’t know what I could say that’d be reassuring to boss and co workers and also just let me hold on to my job. I need A JOB. I have many caring, loving people in my life who will help me in a bind but am now estranged from my family for obvious reasons and its a bit tough to figure out.
Another reason I end up late to work is because of the night terrors. They’re horrible. I've been told it may be a PTSD thing, especially because they're so vivid and there's physical pain I feel while dreaming. Whilst in a night terror, I will be in what feels like a very deep sleep and I will sleep right through my alarms. My roommate will wake me up because even though he's in a separate room he’s been woken up by the alarms. I cannot believe I am able to sleep right through them. They're obnoxiously loud alarms.
What I WANT to tell my co workers, and bosses… is that I'm not gonna jump ship just because we’re in a pandemic. Again, the pandemic stuff is easy compared to the personal stuff. Im happy with perm staff pay - I know the travel nurses pay and its 2-3 times what I get. I promise that I am a hard worker. I believe that I have some grit because of my experiences. It's really a bad time to try to be dealing with this stuff right now - for me, my bosses, my team… everyone
I have a counselor (new), a psychiatrist (not new; been working with her for five years), and have reached out to my workplace EAP services recently.
