Observant Jew Cannot Work Saturday Shifts

If a job has schedule requirements that you cannot fulfill, it is not a good match for you, no matter how much you want it.

This, exactly. There are many RN jobs that don't require working Saturdays - you need to find a job where the requirements meet your needs even if the job doesn't fulfill your wants. Prioritization - needs over wants.

"Is the manager correct for asking me this? I feel like she's opened a religious can of worms and as this is a really big corporation, how could they not be accommodating?"

How did she open a can of worms? She told you the scheduling requirements and asked if that would work for you, which is completely appropriate and reasonable.

As others have mentioned positions in hospitals/acute care generally require working every other weekend. To give you every Saturday off it would require someone else to work every Saturday and not all employers are going to be able to work that out. If you have an employer who is willing to work with your scheduling why would you leave?

Unfortunately, we all have to make compromises somewhere and if you don't want to compromise working on Saturday that is reasonable, but it might mean you have to compromise working certain jobs. Lots of nurses have to make compromises when it comes to the work/life balance. Working in acute care I compromise on the wonderful M-F hours with weekends and evenings off because I like my position and the pay is a bit better. But someday I would like to find a M-F gig so I can enjoy spending time more time with my loved ones.

We all have things in our life that are important to us and in order to be fair to everyone and also meet the needs of our patients staffing in certain areas of health care often requires everyone to work some form of weekend and holiday rotation. I can't speak for the OP who mentioned wanting off to watch football, but I would just like to say that nobodies personal life is more worthy than another's. I'm not trying to compare religious faith and sports, but we all have aspects of our personal life that are important and if you want to spend your weekend off practicing your faith or watching football or spending time with loved ones, they all deserve the same respect.

Nurse Beth, I so appreciate your balanced response to this writer, and your manager's perspective. It's very helpful to see these things from the viewpoint of the PTB.

But I am struck by the language of the person who wrote to you, and what it says about lack of responsibility she or he is taking for choices made. I wouldn't respond to this thread except that it's something I see more in more in many work settings, not just healthcare, and at all levels.

Because it isn't that this nurse can't or is unable work certain days, the nurse chooses not to be available based on beliefs held. The nurse wonders if the manager was correct in asking if the nurse was available for the schedule required by the position. How on earth would that be incorrect? The nurse feels she or he is an excellent candidate, but is unwilling to work the days required. Isn't a willingness to show up the starting point for being a good candidate? And it's not the interviewer that opened up a religious can of worms, it's the candidate. Further, the nurse feels because it's a large corporation someone other than the candidate should be willing to make the sacrifices the nurse's choices and beliefs are driving. The nurse candidate feels this "personal" matter shouldn't interfere with their candidacy, as if it were just an issue of her belonging to a particular faith community.

I recall as a teen being in a prayer group where we were asked to pray for God's guidance for a man whose new supervisor required he work Sundays. He made the very difficult decision to abide by what he felt was God's mandate to keep the Sabbath holy, and not work on Sundays, and he lost his job. My respect for him living the courage of his convictions was formative; he understood that choices have consequences and knew he needed to be prepared to accept them.

Recently, I sat in on an interview for a nurse who was a great candidate, until he said he would need to leave work - for just a little while as he cheerfully explained - mid day to go home and let his dog out. He lives practically next door, you see, and he was stunned when he was told that request couldn't be accommodated. To him, we should just get someone to cover for him, because he decided to get a rescue dog.

I feel like a dinosaur. I've long held that our choices have consequences and that people's priorities inform their options. In other words, you can often have anything you want (if you are willing to make sacrifices), but you can almost never have everything you want. I wonder; has our culture really shifted so far away from that, or are these just isolated examples?

The solution is to apply and work in places where people are not required to work on Holy Days if you cannot get dispensation from your clergy.

Problem solved. Everyone happy (including coworkers who may not want to work more than their share of weekends to cover you).

Have you tried switching the Sabbath with another co-worker? I often worked holidays when I switched with my other co-workers. When i left due to a move to where I live now, I was given a wonderful "Going Away" party, given a great letter of recommendation, and a check for 375 dollars.

As with all things with Judaism, I suggest consulting your rabbi, since those of us who are observant Jews know, halakhah (translation for non-Jews = Jewish law) is very complex. However, as you are also aware, life-saving and life-preserving activities are permitted on Shabbat (the Sabbath), but perhaps you could refrain from other activities which would not be shomer Shabbat (translation= not guarding the Sabbath) outside of your patient care duties.

Interesting. While this makes wonderful sense on paper, in the real nursing world, working Christmas Day would hardly make up the difference for that entire year of Friday and Saturday nights.There would quickly be intense resentment.

Even if administration allowed it, soon gossip and anti-Semitic sentiment would take over the unit. Nurses are notoriously petty and jealous about anyone who is perceived to have an "easier assignment", even if it is just for the shift. Forget about a permanently "easier" assignment!

I have known nurses who had legitimate paperwork to show that they needed a fairly small ADA accommodation. Nothing that different from the usual duties, but anything that is seen as any type of an accommodation ( read "easier assignment") is akin to blood in the water for sharks.

I had to get out of nursing, as I have said in many other posts, because of the petty mentality, but there you have it.

It all comes down to what a reasonable accommodation for the business is. An example of a reasonable accommodation is allowing a Muslim or Mennonite woman to cover her arms, head, and legs in a clean, traditional but safe manner. That does not impact patient care, safety, or running the hospital as a business.

Universally excluding an individual from needing to fill a hospital policy-mandated requirement for the posted job of working the two single most difficult shifts to staff every single week, is not a reasonable accomodation, for any reason, particularly in a new hire. It directly impacts the hospital's ability to provide fair, adequate nursing staffing and safe patient care.

That being said, hospitals have a wide variety of requirements and they all vary from facility to facility, day to night shift, part time to full time, to PRN or Flexi. It's not out of the realm of possibility a position or unit exists that may work...prn may be a better option if you can spare the benefits. Who knows.

However, I find it hard to believe that any job candidate, regardless if the reason being a protected class, would win a legal battle with a 24/7/365 hospital over the right to be hired with an exclusion of working any weekend requirement, as it exists in the policy, if that requirement is listed as part of the job description and is a pre-hire requirement.

Furthermore, unless the manager comes out and says they aren't hiring you for your religious affiliation, they are pretty much in the clear.

If questioned, they could provide almost any other rationale for not hiring and that would be the end of that. I've worked with managers whose reason not to hire someone was as simple as the candidate's facial expressions when touring the unit and observing patient care...no joke. It was a psych position and the candidate had a look of abject terror on her face when she shadowed. That was all the director needed not to hire her because she had a pile of other qualified candidates to chose from. That's life.

Just keep looking.

Best of luck.

The Old Testament States that it is the "Ox in a Ditch" situation which means that if an emergency arises, we are allowed to help others. I observed the Sabbath on Saturdays also, and went on ambulance calls. One call was concerning a baby that had a brain tumor, and went into grand mal seizures.

As an RN just starting her first hospital job who is a Christian, I'd have loved to have Sundays off for church. However, that's not feasible and that's okay. God knows that we aren't twiddling our thumbs. I can't expect a fellow coworker to take all Sundays. It wouldn't be fair. You may need to find a position that is M-F. I also have my Bible studies on Fridays but I can't request those days off either. I've had a coworker (past job) get EVERY Christian holiday off yet I am a Christian who would have wanted those days off but guess who was required to cover ALL of her shifts? Me. So look at it in that perspective. It is what it is.

Agree with above ^^^ but many places still consider Sat night and Sun night the weekend requirement. Therefore, a reasonable option is to find a place that does that and is willing to work with you rather than a place that has Fri night and Sat night requirement, neither of which you can fulfill. Also there are a few months in the Winter where Sabbath ends early enough to work Saturday night, so that is also an option, but doesn't work for most of the year.