Categories
Antiwork

I was fired* because I asked to nurse my mom.

I’m a Brazilian immigrant living in Canada; the last time I saw my mom was in November 2020. Now, I’ve received the news she’ll have to undergo a high-risk emergency surgery (cancer). I asked the company for three-week unpaid time off to go to Brazil to be with her, and they refused. Allegedly, they need “all hands on deck” at this moment (which is kind of true because of some internal changes that are overworking everybody at the company). The problem is that the company has an internal policy of not posting the job opening before the person leaves. Once, a former employee gave them five-week notice, and they could only post the job opening once they left. The company took three months to fill the position and another two weeks to train the recently hired. So, if they need “all hands on deck,” it’d be faster to let me…


I’m a Brazilian immigrant living in Canada; the last time I saw my mom was in November 2020. Now, I’ve received the news she’ll have to undergo a high-risk emergency surgery (cancer). I asked the company for three-week unpaid time off to go to Brazil to be with her, and they refused. Allegedly, they need “all hands on deck” at this moment (which is kind of true because of some internal changes that are overworking everybody at the company).

The problem is that the company has an internal policy of not posting the job opening before the person leaves. Once, a former employee gave them five-week notice, and they could only post the job opening once they left. The company took three months to fill the position and another two weeks to train the recently hired. So, if they need “all hands on deck,” it’d be faster to let me go and come back than to hire and train someone else.

But the cherry on top is, *in the call with the manager, the one they said they needed “all hands on deck,” they asked me to write my resignation letter, which I obviously won’t do; I sent an e-mail to HR saying, “ if you want me gone, you’ll have to fire me.”

So not only is the company unfairly dismissing me, but they are also trying not to pay me my severance and all the other things I have the right to receive.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.