When Health and Company Policy Collides

Last week, it was reported that an 87 year old woman in Bakersfield, California died because the nurse who called 911 refused to give CPR to a woman who needed it.  According to the nurse, she could not provide that service as she was not allowed to do so because she was prohibited in doing so.  Sadly, the woman died on the way to the hospital because of the fact she didn’t get the assistance she needed.

What’s worse in all this is that the woman’s daughter was satisfied with the care that the elderly woman received from the senior living center she resided at.  It seems so wrong that a daughter would be satisfied with a policy that would allow a person to die rather than get the help that was required of them!

Now, of course, you may wonder what this has to do with Staples in any form whatsoever.  Well, fellow reader, Staples actually put me in a position where policy collided with the health of not only me but the well-being of other employees and customers shopping in the store.

So here is the scenario:

Around my sixth year of employment with Staples, the store manager Terence was a fairly deaf and downright stupid manager.  This plays into the context of exactly into what happened.

On one particular night, one of the security deactivation pads mounted underneath one of the cash register stations decided to go ballistic.  The pad decided to make constant “Thumping” sounds at a rate of one every 5 seconds.  These were not low volume sounds, but loud annoying sounds that began to give me a headache.  After about a 1 ½ of putting up with this pulsing problem, I decided to disconnect the wire to the unit under the counter.  Thumping stopped and sanity was restored.  That was until deaf Terence realized what I had done.  Since this register was the furthest one from me, it was rarely used and I felt not concerned that it would be an issue of what I had done.

Terence thought otherwise.  Ironically, about a year or so earlier, I received the ok from the then-manager that it was perfectly acceptable to disconnect a non-functioning unit, which at that time was doing the exact same thing.

The next day, Terence made it a point that he write me up for my ignorance of the equipment and disobeying “store policy”.  The irony was that 2 different managers would have 2 different attitudes regarding what I did.  To make matters worse, as I later researched, there was NO company policy regarding what I did despite Terence’s anger at me.

Of course, a couple of weeks later, the same piece of equipment were acting up again so I did the same thing.  Once again, I got written up and given a warning of termination if I did this again I mentioned to this idiot manager that I disconnected the item for the sanity and health of myself and others.  He didn’t buy that and I told him to stand in one spot for hours listening to that sound and see how he felt.  He didn’t like my attitude on that, but he pushed me way too far.

About a week later, a technician came into the store to fix the defective pad (replacing it, actually) and I asked if I did the right thing by disconnecting.  His response was that I DID do the right thing and actually saved the equipment from doing permanent damage to itself.  Unfortunately, Terence stood firm on what he did by writing me up and that stayed in my permanent record for the rest of my employment with the company.

Sadly, years later, this incidence would come back to haunt me when I had my grievance against the company when it would be used against me in my claim against the company.  I will have more details about that in a future post.

So overall, the nurse and I took completely opposite directions in dealing with “policy”.  I stand behind the fact that what I did was to save my health, the nurse decided to not help an elderly woman to save her job.  This all comes down to the question:  Is the health of someone worth the price of violating “policy”?  I say it is and I would do it over and over again if ever given the chance.

Would I ever recommend anybody else doing the same thing I did?  Most definitely and I would let anybody know that NO such policy exists otherwise.  I bet the dead elderly lady thinks that there is no policy that realistically the nurse would not have saved her life.

I always believe that health should trump policy no matter what, real or as in Staples’ case every time create lies and deception.  Then again isn’t that what this blog is all about in the first place.

Lunch Time – Another Chance to Lose Time!!

Lunch is such a simple concept.  You go to the time clock, punch out and then disappear for a certain period of time…or so it should be…but it really isn’t…

The simplest times were back in the Woolworth days.  If you worked at least 6 hours, you were entitled to a 15 minute break and a ½ hour lunch or no lunch if you didn’t want it.  If you worked 8 hours or more, you were entitled to an hour lunch and two 15 minute breaks during the day.  Most days this worked out perfectly, but there was the occasional snag that kept me from getting both 15 minute breaks, but I looked at it as “no big deal”.

HQ never really mattered for a lunch break because I was never there long enough to even get one.  I believe I got only 1 during the whole 7 weeks I was with the company and it was a ½ hour in length.

Staples, however, had their own rules and then even violated them.  Here is how it all started:

When I was first hired at Staples, the break and lunch procedures were similar to Woolworth’s.  At least that was the way it was supposed to work in concept, but in practice it NEVER worked out that way.  Why?  The reason has more to do with scheduling (another future post) than with my need for a break.  Usually I started my day at 1pm in the afternoon.  The management told me that I should take a break around 3pm to get one in before I went to lunch.  My lunch period was usually scheduled at 4pm because the other day cashier left at 5pm so I had to get it in before they left.  Of course, having a break less than an hour before my lunch not only was stupid but unfair as well.  Nobody else in the store had to do anything that stupid..only me because of the scheduling of help.  So usually I ended up not taking a break before lunch at all.  To make matters worse, depending on the scheduling, I never got a break later in the night either.  Certainly, there was NO fairness in all this, not only that but it wasn’t legal either.  I felt no need to complain because the management didn’t want anything to do with the problem nor did they want to concern themselves with it.  Since there was no human resources person in store anymore, my complaint would go nowhere. 

To make matters worse with the company, about 6 years into my employment with the company, Staples made a major change in scheduling.  Employees would now only get a ½ hour lunch break instead of the previous hour break.  The time employees worked during the day was cut back to accommodate this lunch schedule shift.  So now a situation that was bad got worse, a lot worse.  In fact, the store manager at the time Terence told me one night “don’t expect to ever get another night break ever again…I just don’t have the staff to cover it”. 

At this point, I thought this was a HUGE mistake, not only on personal level, but a legal standpoint as well.  I don’t think Terence realized the implications of what he said at all, but given it was just another stupid thing coming out of his mouth, it didn’t surprise me.  It was then I had decided to make a change, one that they would have to accept to be somewhat fair to me.  I told them that I wanted to take a 15 minute break along with my lunch break (total time gone 45 minutes), so that I would get at least one of my breaks.  Terence reluctantly agreed to this and it remained in effect during the remainder of my employment with the company despite being hated by the future management.

Throughout my entire employment with Staples, I figured that I was probably cheated out of about 100 hours of breaks that were entitled to me.  Certainly, nobody ever care that I ever got breaks, but eventually it came down to that management didn’t care whether or when anybody got breaks.

Interview Section:

Why did you not report the unfair treatment of breaks with the Department of Labor?

Certainly, that came across my mind a few times.  I just didn’t really feel that I wanted to make a bad situation worse by reporting the issue and chances were that Staples would have said it was MY choice not to take breaks, not a scheduling problem.

Terence seems like such a jerk.  Don’t you think he regretted saying what he did?

I don’t think Terence ever regretted anything he ever said.  He was just way too stupid to know what he was ever doing.

It seems that when Staples changed from an hour lunch to a half-hour lunch break, they also cut back employees work schedules as well.  Is that true?

Yes, they did.  And not just to compensate for the half-hour, but a complete scaling back of work hours.  I will discuss this in my next post. 

Next Up:  Full-Time or Part-Time:  Scheduling Makes All the Difference (or Does It?)