About 5 years ago, I worked for a company called Wolters Kluwer Financial Services (I could care less about dropping their name) for about 8 months. 5 months in, my wife and I lost our son a few hours after he was born. I got 2 and a half weeks of bereavement leave approved through HR, the majority of which was paid using my own PTO.
2 weeks in, my supervisor (Get Fucked, Josh) started texting me, asking me if I could join meetings remotely. I was barely a functioning human being at this point, and told him as such. He responded with dismissiveness and general assholery.
I went back to work after 2 1/2 weeks because we needed money to eat and my wife, very understandable, needed more time off than me. Over the next month, I was regularly blamed for missing important information during meetings while I was out, singled out by team members and management for “not keeping up with the team” (I was still technically new and still grieving) and regularly disciplined for things that I had no control over.
I asked for a meeting with an even higher manager to let him know that I wasn't ready to be back and explain my working difficulties, and when I showed up, my asshole Supervisor was there (when I requested he not be, again, get fucked Josh) to tell me more stuff I did wrong. After that point, I completely shut down.
I was fired 2 months after my son died because my “performance slipped to an unsustainable level”, while also being told that I had a pattern of unreliability and dishonesty. I said nothing during the meeting in which I was fired. I wish I had lit them up with every horrible, shitty thing they did. It haunts me to this day that I didn't.
Fuck the American working complex that dictates wealth and profits as far more valuable than making sure your employees are taken care of both financially and emotionally. This system is absolutely broken, and it needs to be fixed before my daughter's are old enough to understand just how terrible we have it.