Unfiltered Story #342669

I was recently working for a company that had a contract with a major cell phone carrier. Basically, it was a call center that handled your run of the mill customer service questions. This past September, I basically had a month from hell. I lost two friends within a week of each other (both were unexpected accidents), my sister was hospitalized, my mother was undergoing a biopsy to make sure the lump on her neck wasn’t any type of cancerous growth, and I was going through a horrible depressive episode on top of all of it.

As a result, I missed a few days toward the beginning of the month for the funerals. After I came back, the assistant GM of our site pulled me into a meeting and asked why I hadn’t been there. I explained, and he responded. “Yeah, you know I’ve lost people too but I still make an effort to show up to work every day.”

A little irritated with his attitude, I got back to work. Two weeks later, my depression was at meltdown point and I was considering going to the hospital because I was scaring myself. I touched base with a few people (supervisors and the AGM himself) and asked if there was any paperwork that needed to be filled out to protect my absence. I was told there was not. So I missed 3 days. In that time, I found a therapist, got an appointment with my regular doc and reached out to friends and family for support. Mind you, I called in each day around 6:30am to make sure everything was set at work before I got into my day and forgot.

I got a call on my last day out from the AGM saying we needed to go over some “options” for me. I figured I probably had to fill out some paperwork. Nope. Went in the next day to find my badge wasn’t working. Was then treated like a criminal by security because they thought I was trying to break into the building. At that point I was crying and the guard realized I had no idea what was going on.

Turns out I had been fired as of the day before and they just didn’t think I was worth the conversation. The AGM did eventually deign to give me five minutes of his time, during which he basically parroted BS corporate statements. Tried to fight it with HR but they said there was nothing they could do because I had no legal paperwork filed, despite me having specifically asked multiple people if it was needed.