I’m in Canada and have been working for a large org for ~4 years. It’s long, but the backstory helps understand my situation a bit.
I recently got diagnosed with sleep apnea and it was so bad that my SO panicked and called family to talk me into going to the doctor. Turns out sleep apnea is you losing oxygen to your brain while you’re asleep so it’s like being strangled, and your brain tries to wake up but it doesn’t succeed, then you choke some more, so you’re never fully asleep or awake. By morning I feel like I haven’t slept at all, I’m falling asleep while driving, while doing my job, while playing with my kids at the park. If I’m seated for longer than an hour I’m 100% going to fall asleep. Worst part for me is being very irritable and impatient, something that’s very bad for the kind of work I do.
I work sales/customer service at a call centre and my manager was listening to one of my calls and asked me why I was sounding strange. Well, it’s because I’m slurring my words, fighting to stay awake and sometimes completely losing that battle, waking up mid sentence with no idea what I was just talking about with the customer, so I just say something completely random or put the customer on hold for 10 minutes while I gather my thoughts. So I told manager what was going on and she repeatedly suggested that if I needed to take care of my health I should go do it. I instead asked for the option to work part time/reduced hours but my manger told me we don’t have part time positions open in my dept except I wanted to switch to a different dept. I kept working for a few more months until it got to a point where I was falling asleep for 30+ minutes on the job which got me in trouble.
So we tried changing my shift start times, even splitting my shifts into a half morning, half evening shift. Nothing worked, my sales numbers dropped, and I was forced to request medical leave after resisting for months. Well, medical leave was never approved and I went through 10 months of appeals, reapplying, but never got approved. Their reason being that the diagnosis mentions that I shouldn’t operate a vehicle and I don’t need to drive for work so my work shouldn’t be affected.
After many months of choosing to focus on my health before returning to work, my manager has now put part time, reduced hours etc on the table if I choose to return to work. I wonder why it was offered in the first place. While I’m still working to get better, I think it’s not in my best interest to go to work at this stage as I know I’m not 100%. I told my manger that if I was forced to return, I would need a guarantee, in writing, that my performance can’t be held against me as I wasn’t medically fit to perform my job. She won’t offer the guarantee. I asked for a leave of absence without medical conditions, and my manager says it was denied by senior management. She said the only option is either return to work or resign with a promise to be rehired when I’m better.
I’m not returning to work in my state and I don’t want to voluntarily resign. What do you think I should do?
TL;DR
Discovered I have sleep apnea and it’s affecting my job. Not approved for medical leave, told to either return to work or resign.