Month: March 2022

The original owner of the business I worked for was amazing. I'll call him Larry. He cared about every employee and realized how much we helped the company with our respective positions. He had even let me go negative on my sick time once when I was hospitalized for a week following a double pulmonary embolism with the agreement that I would work the time back (and I did). Just painting a picture of how wonderful Larry was as our boss. Larry finally retired after 45 years of running the business and sold it to his son, who I'll call Eric. Most people know how bad an idea that is, but Larry thought his son could handle it. He couldn't at first, but that's another story. Eric thought I wasn't doing enough during working hours (office job, dealing with inventory coming into a retail store), but what he failed to…

Let me preface this by saying, forgive the formatting, I'm on mobile. My father was a carpenter and construction worker. I routinely worked as his unpaid apprentice from age 7 to age 13. My labour included hauling lumber, operating power tools such as chop saws and nail guns, mixing and pouring cement, and carrying tools to and from workplaces. At age 12 I began to work as a lumberjack, in addition to my construction and carpentry work, once again under the tutelage of my father. After a series of injuries on the job, I was left with a twisted spine and early onset arthritis, as well as lung damage from inhalation of sawdust and the various other airborne particles that come with such a job, that left me extremely vulnerable to a case of double pneumonia that nearly killed me. I stopped working with my father around the time I…

I've been working for a metal fabrication company ($18/hr) mostly grinding and sanding. I love what I do, love the people I work with, even my manager. But God dammit I have young kids AND both my wife and I have to work, so when they get sick I have to sometimes, yknow, be a good fucking parent and take care of them, and then I get sick (doy!) And tbh I will work if I can, and I'll even stay late (12 hr shifts) and come in on weekends to make up for it, because in the past I've been pulled aside by UPPER management (the owner) and tod that we're REALLY behind and we need more overtime from you. And I HAVE made considerable effort to make the 20 extra hours per paycheck, I actually did it quite recently too. Well yesterday the owner comes and talks to…