This pretty much sums up the experience I had volunteering. I was at a north suburban hospital in the Chicago North Shore. It was in a well-to-do community and was definitely not understaffed. Unlike you, I spent all of my time in the ED, and it was mostly techs that were bossing me around, and sometimes nurses (I was usually invisible to most nurses and all but one doctor over the years). While I was asked to clean rooms by the techs, they spent that time lounging around during shifts. It wasn't exactly the best feeling. I remember my greatest moment volunteering was when I was about to leave during my shift, and a tech came to me telling me to clean three rooms. I then told him, "Sorry buddy, I'm heading out!" It was the greatest feeling ever, and in hindsight, I'm kind of sad that this was the highlight of my experience. While I enjoyed the patient contact, it was few and far between. The majority of the time was spent doing janitorial work, which sucked since the hospital wasn't understaffed and financially it did just fine.
@LizzyM has a point that some hospitals are definitely understaffed and are reliant on volunteers to get a lot of things done, but this doesn't occur at all of them. Had I gone to inner-city Chicago, I likely would have experienced this. Even so, I spent a few months during my third year rotations at a inner-city hospital, and it wasn't understaffed and was run like a well-oiled machine. Also, despite disliking my janitorial duties, I really enjoy the patient contact to this day as a medical student.
If
@baratheonfire is performing so poorly, then the volunteer coordinator would go ahead and let them go and get another volunteer to cover the shift. At hospitals that are around large universities, there is always this specific group of students that are always incredibly willing to do volunteer work, but I can't seem to remember who they are or what they are studying!
But anyway, one's performance on a job is all relative. For instance, let's compare this again to the corporate employee model. For every employee, managers might have different opinions and ratings in an evaluation. One can rate an employee as being 4/5, while another can rate them as being 2/5. Would an employee be "unethical" if they don't stay beyond 5PM if they came in at 9AM? Would an employee be "unethical" if they don't do more work than is assigned to them? Would an employee be "unethical" if they take a full hour or even slightly longer for lunch? Would an employee be "unethical" if they take really long poop breaks to read stuff on their phone? All of these can describe employees which do at least the bare minimum of work that is assigned to them and can be rated on different levels based on different managers.
I can tell from your posts that you were an "honorary member of the hospital team" since you put forth as much as effort as possible during your shifts. I think that the employees greatly appreciate such service. At the same time, you'll have people all the way down to the other end of the spectrum, which includes people that will sit in a corner doing their own thing, and then do the bare minimum when asked. If these volunteers at the other end of the spectrum are doing something wrong, then the volunteer coordinator has all the reason to fire them. If these volunteers are really doing something wrong and the volunteer coordinator isn't doing anything about it, then it's the volunteer coordinator that is doing something wrong, and perhaps it is the volunteer coordinator that is being lazy and "unethical" themselves!
Now if baratheonfire was signing in, then ditching the shift, then coming back to sign out; then that would be a whole other story! But as for one's level of performance, then that's all relative and it's up to the volunteer coordinator or whoever is in charge to make that determination.
