It really doesn’t bother me as long as I didn’t have other plans and it’s not a case of a co worker taking advantage of me to make their schedule better at my expense.
I worked in a very small unit where it was frowned upon to even ask. Didn’t matter what was going on in your life. It took me a while to understand I should never ever ask, even the people who were OK with it as there was a core of staff who acted like you were as good as abandoning your job for even asking. Wouldn’t you know it one of the leaders of the Never Ask to Swap crew had a serious family event (child in ICU) she didn’t have the nerve to ask me to cover her On Call, a supervisor asked for her, she was very surprised to hear upon coming back to work that I didn’t expect her to “pay me back”.
In case it’s not clear, this was not a pleasant unit to work on, in fact it was straight up horrible. I transferred to a different unit and life was 100% better.
I’ve never been paid anywhere near enough as a nurse to want to continue working with co-workers who’s personal philosophy was “I will absolutely never swap or cover another nurse”. I mean really, how ugly does a unit have to been that you would believe that no one would volunteer to cover you so you could sit beside the ICU bed of your child!!
