All of first shift called in

Whenever the phone rings its outside ring, everyone panics a little. If DK answers, no matter who it is, he tells us that it was all of first shift - ya know, eight people getting together to make one phone call, saying they're not feeling well and won't be in that morning.

Last night, it was actually just one of the first shift lab techs. First shift calls in more than any other shift for a variety of reasons - mostly because they're a bunch of whiners.

The problem here is that there is this note posted about what to do if there is a call-in. It says that the outgoing shift should check if all the zones are covered...if not, and if no one is going to stay in order to provide that coverage, there is a list of tasks that the outgoing shift must get done before leaving - all of the 48hr, 5 day and 7 day samples, plating controls, plate reading, etc.

Reasonable, no?

Except CK has decided that means that if someone calls in, the outgoing shift must do all of those tasks... No matter what. And although the note implies that everyone should be staying an hour or two to get all of these things done, we get in trouble if anyone stays past 0645ish without being asked to stay.

So, when a first shifter called in an hour before shift change (we are supposed to give at least two hours notice...) we had to scramble to finish all of our work plus getting this laundry list of dailies done for first...even though they still had SEVEN people to cover four and a half active zones.