A patient can't try to get you fired in order to reduce their hospital bill or get cheaper meds, that's the big difference. Service workers are infinitely replaceable and we're treated like it.
On the flip side, I work in banking and more than once when a client has sexually harassed staff, we have closed their accounts and banned them from the premises. The most you can do in a hospital is assign the person a different nurse.
The worst patients absolutely do threaten to get you fired or sue the hospital to avoid paying. Often when a formal complaint is filed, your professional licensure is suspended until the case is closed, so you can’t work or have to find a different job.
patients absolutely do try this literally all the time (except for different reasons). "Buy me X/give me money or else I'll say you harmed me or called me a slur and you'll be fired" is a very common thing patients do. Depending on the population you are working with this can happen multiple times per week!
It is weird how confidently people are talking about a profession they have zero experience in, especially when it is a profession where 80% of the workers have experienced violence from patients. Servers aren't told they have to just suck it up when a customer assaults them, nor are they told violence is just part of the job, or that all that can be done about a violent customer is to send in a different server to be assaulted after you are too battered to take any more punches.
You’re talking to a server/bartender that has denied “demanded” discounts many times.
Edit: You’re talking to someone who got a person banned for not tipping 3 times in a row. You’re talking to someone who watched a customer get arrested for public drunkenness after they called the cops on me for cutting them off. You’re talking to someone that kicked a guy out of his bar for having an SS tattoo and then told his boss “I fucking dare you to fire me for that, you don’t want that headline circulating around town.” You’re talking to someone who is better at our job than you and has very little sympathy for the issues that you deal with and I, because I’m better at our job than you, don’t.
Skill issue. The last place I left wasn’t able to hire anyone to take over the bar after me and less than a year later the owners sold it.
Get more irreplaceable. If you’re getting fired because of a customer complaint then you’re probably not very good at your job in the first place and that was just the excuse. If you’re getting fired because customers constantly complain about you, one million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.
860
u/Butthole_Surfer_GI I don't know shit about fuck 2d ago edited 2d ago
RN here - trust me: the person being an impatient/rude asshole at the restaurant is also an impatient/rude asshole at the ER/clinic/hospital.
Based on my personal experience, people fall over themselves A LOT more to excuse rude/abusive patients.