Why do highly-paid hospital workers slack off and complain so often? Most would say "because they can" or "they're just lazy" or "it's a tough job, stress release." But I suspect there's a deeper status game at play - one that may illuminate broader patterns of institutional decay.
Consider: I recently observed an ICU Registered Nurse who makes at least ~$236K/year, in a highly rated hospital in San Francisco, demonstrating conspicuous low effort. They:
- Openly bragged to 6 people in the 1 hour of my observation about how minimal of work he was doing
- Actively discouraged others from working hard
- Optimizing for maximum visibility while achieving peak gravitational slouching ability
- Consumed unhealthy food conspicuously.
The conventional view says... (read 857 more words →)
What drew my attention wasn’t the quality of the work but the attitude—assuming these can be meaningfully separated. I’m not qualified to assess the quality, but the attitude was notably negative, something that anyone observing the same situation might recognize. This led me down a rabbit hole: why would someone who chose a high-stress, well-compensated profession display such behavior? While workload might explain it—and I acknowledged that possibility in my original post—the purpose of my analysis was to explore other potential factors.
I should mention that this happened on day one. I ended up staying overnight with a family member, which led me down a separate rabbit hole about how many patients suffer or even die due to poor-quality sleep caused by excessive medical alert noise pollution. Over the next two days, however, I encountered several nurses with a positive attitude, which was a refreshing change.