I've been with this company for a decade. My husband is a department head for a different department and has worked here about the same amount of time. I've worked my way up to middle management and have been complimented on my work often (even won an award on a state level for our field). Leaving this vague for anonymity purposes.
This past year my husband and I decided it was time to have a baby. My pregnancy was not easy. I was very sick and ended up working partially from home for the last stretch. I was supposed to be fully wfh per doctor's orders but we were severely short staffed and I was also doing the work of 2 people so felt like I had to go in a couple days a week. Well, turns out I had preeclampsia and ended up having an emergency c-section at 34 weeks. They were not prepared for me leaving abruptly despite the fact that I had made it clear how poor my health was and that they could induce me at any time due to my failing health or the baby's.
Baby and I are both healthy now. I ended up taking just shy of 3 months off work and have only been back 2 weeks. Surprisingly they left me alone while we were recovering. Unfortunately, coming back to work has been a shit show.
First of all, my company does not offer maternity leave. I was required to use all of my PTO and then most of my unpaid FMLA while I was off. I scheduled a meeting with HR during my leave to discuss when I would be returning and what that would look like. We wanted to work opposite shifts so that we wouldn't have to put the baby in day care because of the risk of him getting COVID (or any other sickness) and being a preemie and because we don't have a support system that would be able to care for him during the day. I also requested to work part of my shift from home so I could spend part of the evening with my husband. They seemed fine with this.
Today HR wanted to have a meeting with me to discuss my hours. Apparently I need to be at the office more and am no longer allowed to work from home at all. I didn't come in at all on Monday because I had to go in to cover shifts all weekend (including a surprise overnight shift which left me awake for over 24 hours). I'm also not allowed to take a day off during the week to offset when I have to work weekends despite the fact that I'm a salaried employee. They brought up the fact that it wouldn't be fair to my counterpart manager because she was so stressed and overworked when I was gone (they hired her when I left to do both our jobs, this was the other person's job I was doing in addition to my own previously) as if I had a lovely relaxing vacation.
I agreed to their demands but am now looking for a new job. This is obviously not sustainable. I literally nearly died for this job and it wasn't good enough.
This is just another thing in a very long line of shitty things I feel like this company has done to me or my husband. I could go on and on. I actually briefly left for another company a few years ago in the same field but it was the same. I feel like I'm being punished for wanting to spend time with my family. It took a near death experience for me to realize that they really don't care about me at all and how stupid I've been to waste so much time here.
Don't really know why I'm posting except that I need somewhere to scream how much this whole country fucking sucks. I have to choose between a career I worked a decade to build (even if I hate the company, I'm good at my job) or doing what's best for my family.