Earlier this month I handed in my resignation to a workplace/company where I'd spent the last four years. The place is much akin to a family run Cult.
Having joined up with the company before covid, I had the unfortunate displeasure to experience the crushing joys of customer service work for a corporation which absolutely does not value employees in the slightest. Possibly the highest fronline employee turnover rate in Australia.
The overtime is unpaid.
After everything that the front line staff have gone through during Covid times the corporation decided to take a big steaming one on the shifts which held the fewest workers. By making it so that those shifts are now responsible for the most manual labour, as well as simultaneously doing customer service duties. At. The. Same. Time. …and all the cleaning tasks too.
The business never closed, or implemented better safety precautions for frontline staff other than the bare minimum of masks and hand sanitizer.
In the last three weeks of working there my body started to physically shut down. By the end of the last work day I had spent a good week coughing up blood almost constantly. But if the last days weren't worked then I wouldn't get my banked annual leave paid out at the end of employment.
After that last days work I went home (night shift worker) tried to get my heart rate to calm down and relax. Had been having constant heart pain for a month nearly. Couldn't get to sleep that last day and eventually ended up being rushed to hospital in the middle of the night with an almost swollen shut throat. There'd been an infectious bug going round the workplace for some weeks before (actually not covid) and I may have ended up catching it. The joke is while my co-workers were able to beat the bug I have damaged lungs from a previous medical issue (non smoker, never have never will smoke). So here I am unhappily coughing up blood two weeks now, taking meds just to be able to breathe properly without choking in fluid.
I leave knowing, they'll have to find someone to fill 5 shifts a week heading into Christmas season.
If I survive this bout of illness (not joking here) there is a great jobsearch in front of me. As I quit without a new job lined up.
You all know how it is, “cough up some blood then get back to applying for new places to work”.
At the end it was either keep the job and work 3 people worth of duties (and possibly die on the job) or quit for the sake of my health and life.
So far it's proving to be the right decision to quit. Rather than die there