I recently was terminated from my warehouse job because of a minor incident.
I was moving a box off a conveyor when I noticed it was leaking. It was this industrial-strength oxyclean bottle that bust open inside of the box and had soaked the bottom of the box in this liquid (we wear these cloth-like work gloves so the chemical just soaking into them as I move this box). I told my manager and I went to the nurse. Apparently the nurse wasn’t available so i asked if we had a chemical wash station. No luck. I resorted to using this saline solution that we use for washing out your eyes and that cut down on the burning. I sat down for about 10 minutes in one of the break rooms before one of the OMs came up and said I was loafing. She made a big deal about it in front of other employees (she wasn’t my even my operating manager). After explaining what had happened, she just said that I would be written up. I was told that I wasted one hour of company time and was not to report in for my next shift. They said I could come back after a call from HR. I never got that call and was just sent termination letter explaining what was going to happen to my benefits.
To explain, we have a huge warehouse. To walk to the bathroom is at least 5 minutes and to walk to the nurses station is at least a 10 minutes. I periodically washed my hands (with soap and water) before talking to my manager, after finding out the nurses station was closed, telling my manager that there was no nurse, and sitting down in the break room; all while my hands were on fire from this cleaning solution (the saline helped but only lasted about 5 minutes before the burning became unbearable).
1 month later and every other week or so I get this extremely itchy feeling on both sides of my hands; hasn’t seriously affected my ability to do thing but gives me a huge concern over what it means. I felt undervalued to begin with because of some of the interactions I had with people, but this whole situation has changed how I feel about jobs and working for big corporations.