Nurse’s boss sends ‘thank you’ note to woman’s husband after she made her work overtime

A nurse has sparked a debate about appropriate workplace etiquette after revealing that her boss wrote a letter to her husband, in which she thanked him for “sharing” his wife with the hospital where she works.

In a viral post shared to the popular Reddit forum r/antiwork, user u/SolitudeWeeks shared an image of the handwritten note her boss reportedly sent her husband after she had worked overtime at the hospital for the past several months.

She explained that mandatory overtime at her job is “supposed to be heavily fined” but the fines were suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, she’s worked many shifts where her fellow coworkers were also mandated to stay an extra four hours, and sometimes even an extra eight hours.

“After a particularly bad week, my HUSBAND got a thank you care for ‘sharing’ me [with] the hospital,” she wrote, alongside an image of the letter.

The note read: “Thank you for sharing your wife…as she has been mandated to work several times over the past few months. We certainly recognise that this took her away from her family. Please know we appreciate her and thank you for sharing when we desperately needed her.”

The note was signed from the “Upstate Office of Patient Experience” at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York.

The nurse’s Reddit post received more than 33,000 upvotes and 2,400 comments. Many users were quick to share their uncomfortable reactions to the letter, while others were simply stunned at the supervisor’s audacity to thank the husband for “sharing” his wife, rather than thanking the nurse for putting in overtime.

“Literally speaking about her as if she is a piece of property,” wrote u/SatanIsLove6666.

“You put in your own damn hours, and they thank *checks note* YOUR HUSBAND??” asked u/whytho94.

“They really view us as property, don’t they?” commented u/juicyjules_24.

Others could relate to the nurse’s experience, and were prompted to share similar situations from when they weren’t appreciated in their workplace, with one person recalling how they once did “an absolute bucket load of overtime along with several team members” to hit their target, only to receive a restaurant voucher.

“We each got a £30 ($36) voucher to a Jamie’s Italian restaurant. I’d rather have received nothing,” wrote u/TheTackleZone. “£30 for all those extra hours was worse than nothing at all.”

After the Reddit thread went viral, the nurse later clarified that the chief nursing officer caught wind of her post and “stopped the practice” of sending thank you cards. “It was more of a slap in the face than the $10 gift cards they gave out but quickly ran out of,” she concluded.

The Independent has contacted the Upstate Office of Patient Experience at SUNY Upstate Medical University for comment.