A Millenial Example

I got an e-mail last week from Barry J. Wojtcuk, Vice President of Operations, Connecticut Ambulance Billing Service, Inc., Norwich, CT regarding millennial employees. Barry shared a past experience at a different company involving a millennial. I thought you might be interested in reading it and learning what Barry did to handle the situation. Here's the e-mail, reprinted with Barry's permission.

"I read your recent blogs on the 'new' employee attitude, Millennial Employees. I thought I would share with you an experience I had many years ago as a Nursing Home Administrator at a very small nursing home.

"One young, but adult, Nurse’s Aide had requested a Monday off so she and her boyfriend could spend a long weekend away. She was granted the day off and was to report for her regular next shift, the Tuesday following the long weekend. When that day showed up, and she did not, calls to her home were placed and to the person that was listed as a contact. No results were received, she was essentially AWOL. Upon her reporting to work the following shift, she was given a written warning for a “no show, no call” (her actions had compromised staffing ratios, causing hold-over till a replacement was found) She protested. Loudly. It wasn’t her fault, they were having a great time and had decided to stay another day, and she had called and asked that her mother call her out. It really wasn’t fair that she got a warning because her mother hadn’t called her out; at least that was the way her thought process was going.

"My response was, I thought, kind and to the point. I reminded her that SHE was my employee, that SHE was who the relationship was with, and that as an adult, SHE had the responsibility of contacting us. As she could contact her mother, she could also have contacted us. I was sympathetic to her plight, but really didn’t think there was anything I could do because her mother didn’t call in for her and frankly, her mother was not our employee. I did however, suggest that if that was the case, she should discuss her mother’s inaction and the result with her."

Thanks for the input Barry! Expect more posts on millennials coming up.


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