DO NOT BASH ON MY FAMILY AS I LOVE THEM DEARLY. THEY JUST ARE OUT OF TOUCH SOMETIMES
Prepare for a rant because I am pissed. Also, my girlfriend and I live with my parents as the housing market has tripled in the last 5 years.
In December of '20, I was diagnosed with Covid, and it was awful. I've had lung and heart issues stemming from it, albeit not major. But enough that it concerned my doctor enough to send me to a specialist for diagnostic tests. Well, flash forward 1 1/2 years, and I still haven't had my echocardiogram because insurance won't approve it.
4 weeks ago, I was diagnosed with covid again, and thankfully, I was asymptotic but still had to miss 10 days of work because my employer doesn't follow CDC guidelines anymore. While it sucked, I got through it. I had just enough sick time to cover myself. Now, last Sunday, I started to feel ill again. I developed a fever, cough, body aches, fatigue, head ache, and congestion. Through this whole process, I communicated with my boss and did some work at home to counter me being out. I work in a prison directly with inmates. Because of the nature of prison and its operation, my employer is very cautious about people coming to work sick. This is because I work at a minimum security facility, and inmates are housed in living cohorts instead of cells like you see at big prisons.
So I played it safe and called out Monday and Tuesday (I work M-Th 7-5). I texted my boss updates as I got worse or felt better. Well come Tuesday night, my fever broke, and my symptoms were minimal. So I headed in at 5:30 to do a longer day to make up for being sick (something my boss let's us do to preserve sick time if needed). 9:30 hits, and she checks on me. I'm a mess and apparently pale as a ghost, so she sends me home and tells me to rest and get better (I have a really caring boss, tbh).
I wake up this morning at 4 am and are coughing up some serious gunk. It's hard to breathe; it feels like razors come out and weezing every time I exhale loud enough for others to hear. I go talk to my mom, a medical assistant for a family physician. She tells me I should go to work. That I should at least show an effort to my boss that I'm trying to work through this illness. I reiterate to her that my work is very cautious right now of illness as we are a pedridish waiting for an infection. She continues to say I'm not showing effort to my employer. I told her I did when I showed up sick yesterday and when my boss first saw me sent me home. She got mad at this and told me that I'm going to get fired. I have had enough at this point. I snap at her and tell her that just because she still has her antiquated work ethic where you sacrifice yourself and your family, I do not. And that if I have the time off, my job duties under control, and my supervisor is notified, I will not get in trouble. She then says something along the lines of “fine, go get fired”. And I told her I don't want to speak with her if she is going to be rude and not listen to me.
TLDR: My family thinks I'm going to get fired because I'm using sick time when I'm really sick.