'Jess thinks we were just trying to get a day off work': Nurse gets her know-it-all manager fired after they try to circumvent safety laws, ends up with kudos from the big boss

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Jun 3, 2025 9:00 AM EDT

When it comes to the healthcare industry, you're not a tattle-tale if you tell your superiors about unsafe medical practices. At a certain point, telling on someone who's breaking the rules in place to protect people is more 'whistle-blowing' than it is brown-nosing upper management, and any manager caught trying to cut corners in the healthcare space deserves to be thrown under the bus of punishment. 

This nurse was working a blood drive event and noticed that one of the critical air conditioning vents was broken. Knowing it was going to be 90 degrees that day, they worried about the safety of the samples from the donors and pointed out to leadership that they'd be well-above the threshold of safe transport. 

Thinking they were trying to get off early, the manager fudged the thermometer numbers and pushed the donation even through, but not without this diligent nurse quarantining every sample they received that day in order to protect future recipients from contamination. 

Because protecting your patients is more important than a day's work….

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  • "Want us to keep working? I'll make the entire workday null and void"

    Worked as a supervisor for a blood bank many years ago. We would travel to set up local blood drives in various towns/locations. Went to a community center about an hour away and found
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  • out their HVAC system was broken. It was supposed to be a hot day, somewhere in the mid 90's. FDA regulates the blood donation/collection industry, and they have strict rules in place.
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  • One of them is that the temperature in the collection area at a blood drive cannot exceed a certain amount. This is to prevent bacteria growth in the blood collection process, and to
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  • prevent donors from having a bad reaction during/after donation (fainting, vomiting etc.). I called our manager (Jess) and said "hey, there's no AC in this
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  • building and it's already getting close to the cutoff temp. I think we should cancel and reschedule." ABSOLTELY NOT. Jess thinks
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  • we're just trying to get a day off work. Like we didn't already load all the equipment up and drive out here to waste our time, but whatever. She gets in her car and drives out to the site. She then
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  • takes the QC thermometer, which was already out of range by the time she got there, and places it on a window where a fan was blowing. After a minute or so, the temp drops just below the
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  • threshold. "It's fine, set up the rest of the site and continue with the blood drive." "Well, the temp needs to be taken in the collection area, not
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  • on the other side of the building by a window." "The temp is fine; you all need to stay here and do your job." She gets in her car and leaves.
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  • Ok, let's do the blood drive then. She's the boss! After each unit of blood collected, I quarantine the units and fill out the proper paperwork
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  • per SOP guidelines. We get back to the blood bank that evening and I hand off the coolers of quarantined blood to the lab. They ask me if I really quarantined an entire blood drive
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  • and I say "yep." So, they document and incinerate each unit of blood. A 10-hour workday with travel expenses, medical equipment, staff, etc. all thrown out the window. Not to mention wasting the time of all the people that donated.
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  • The next day, the site director calls me into her office, I assume to chew my ass. She was actually confused and wondered if something happened at the blood drive that caused every unit to be
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  • quarantined. I told her the reason, and about Jess. Not sure how the conversation went afterwards but unfortunately, she was able to keep her job for a few weeks before being fired.
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  • Don't make a set of rules if you don't expect people to follow them.
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  • Ok-Entertainer9968 Rules for thee but not for me Love it when this comes back to bite uptight knowitall managers in the a
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  • AngrySquidlsOK Some people, too many people, just want to be bossy and power perks when on positions of management. Ugh. Good call and well played.
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  • DriftlessHang ⚫ Nice to hear the big boss actually heard you out instead of losing their sh about it. Sometimes the right people do make it into leadership.
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