'Add another zero': Manager offers ex-employee $50 to work a shift, claims to be desperate for staff

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Feb 29, 2024 6:00 PM EST

One of my best friends has a mantra in her office: "You don't work at the hospital." It's easy to get swept up in the hubbub of your job and feel like it is the most essential thing in the world, but for most of us, that's not true. Ensuring that Craig, his wife, and his three children get their bowls of Miso soup in a timely matter bears very little importance to the real world in the long term. Real life is not a catastrophizer delusion, where Craig is going to get home from the restaurant too late, go to bed too late, wake up late, be late for his job, get fired, and his three children will consequentially starve because you weren't fast enough at serving them during the Sunday night dinner rush. It's just not that serious.

One manager was so "desperate" to keep her workplace from being understaffed that she offered a former employee a measly $50 to work a shift. I don't know about you all, but $50 doesn't sound so desperate to me.