After I sent a very professional email stating that I did not agree that my behavior was unprofessional and that everyone was taken care of, I was immediately locked out of all work tools including email, scheduling software, and work chat. I then received an email stating “ Clearly your family needs you at this time and with your own birth coming up please feel free to begin your leave now. Focus on what is important. Please do not contact your clients, I will take care of that from here on out. Take care of yourself and stay well. If you choose to come back after your maternity leave keep me posted.”
Let me note that my maternity leave is unpaid. I did not want to go on unpaid maternity leave early. She said feel free to, but gave me no choice. At that point I told her I was no longer interested in working for her in the future due to her behavior. She then moved the goalpost, saying that I was gone too frequently. Let me note here that any time I was gone was either vacation time she approved or I was sick earlier in my pregnancy. I never took time off of work for no reason, without approval, or without rescheduling clients in an appropriate amount of time. I also never received a poor performance review.
She then said “my business in a most vulnerable state right now and I didn’t know what to expect in the last 3 weeks before your leave. This is a purely professional decision” This is essentially her admitting that the motivating factor for getting rid of me is my pregnancy.
I am aware this is all discrimination. I am lucky enough to have a husband who makes enough money to support me and is happy to during this time. Ultimately I am sad that someone I thought was my friend decided to throw me under the bus during a vulnerable time in my life, especially another woman. I am also sad because I now have NO access to clients that I had been seeing and making relationships with for the past year and a half, they have all been given to my replacement that I was training.
I filed a complaint with my local human rights commission but they want me to prove that I’m looking for work. I just don’t think I have the emotional or physical energy to essentially be interviewing for jobs I’m not interested in while I’m 7mo pregnant. Ultimately I’m probably going to have to let this go or post about it on social media at least to warn other people about her practices. Ultimately I’m not sure it’s worth my time when I could invest that time in furthering my education and working independently.
Anyways, that’s how that turned out. Be careful with your bosses guys. No matter how friendly and supportive they may seem or how much time you spend with them, at the end of the day you’re just money to them.