I started my first job around six weeks ago, I’m young and I don’t have any living costs, just on a gap year and wasn’t allowed to just sit around. It’s barely above minimum wage and we all know fast food is rubbish, but I’ve been enjoying getting out of the house and a bit of the social aspect and of course the spending money, management is mostly competent and I haven’t had many problems. I need to rant because that has shifted a little today.
I’m sick today, nothing massively serious, just the common cold, but I’ve got it bad. It happens to us all once or twice a year, but I haven’t had any sleep last night, my eyes and nose are running continuously and uncontrollably, I’m coughing and sneezing a lot, sore throat, the works. I feel like shit. This didn’t come from nowhere, my first day of work this week was yesterday and several people saw me battling with a bottle of cold medicine, my supervisor asked if I could come in earlier today and I said I’d rather not in case I was feeling worse which was relayed to the manager, I was complaining to coworkers all day (when appropriate). I called in sick pretty much first thing this morning and honestly my generally lovely manager goes cold as ice. She’s asking what’s wrong with me and tbh I’m not sure how that’s any of her business but whatever I tell her, and though she doesn’t tell me I CAN’T take the day off she tells me the ‘protocol’ for the cold, and it’s basically drug yourself up and get on with it, and I have to let them know if I’ll be in tomorrow by 2pm which to me seems like not the time to know if I’ll be ill the next day, so I’m probably going to lose out on tomorrow’s shift too.
I just can’t believe they would even want me in when I’m ill? I know we’re ‘understaffed’ (we have four pages of names on the timetable and our shop is tiny, so I’m not sure how far I believe that) but I work in a customer facing role serving food, if I were a customer I would not be happy to be served by someone as obviously sick as I am. I guess this might be a bit mild for this sub, but I’m just a bit disappointed because I think I’ve been doing a good job, but now I feel like I’m not valued as a person but only as a worker.