I am mostly just ranting, because I am not sure if I can even go anywhere legally with this.
I have a hypersomnia issue. I have had it since I was a young child (since at least first grade. My mother was actually called because I went from being fully awake to completely passed out and my teachers though I had epilepsy at the time). I have never been able to find the answers, and I highly suspect that it's narcolepsy, but it's been hard to find a doctor willing to work with me on that until recently.
I have gone through so many tests and diagnoses only for the treated health issue not be the root cause of why it happens. This isn't just me being a little sleepy or falling asleep when exhausted. I can go from being awake to the part of the sleep cycle that is responsible for dreaming in a matter of minutes with my limbs hitting sleep paralysis and I have no control over it. It doesn't matter if I had a good nights sleep or not if my brain triggers sleep mode. That said, things that will exhaust me do make it worse and last week I had just finished up moving in 85*F+ degree weather. I also can't drive, though most of that has been due to never having the opportunity, it is likely this health issue will prevent me from ever doing so. This means I have to use other methods to get to work and those methods are bus, and then I had a half hour walk from the bus to work.
The Monday I feel asleep was the day after finally moving, the weather was already 80*F when it was time for me to walk from my bus stop to work, and I live in a state where the air quality was already starting to get poor from the surrounding wildfires. I couldn't afford to stay home so I decided I was going to tough it out.
I was open with my manager about this when I was first hired on to the place I was just fired from, explained I have been trying to find answers for years now, everything I have told you above. I have found nothing that works in stopping it from happening, and last Monday, it happened several times that day due above factors. Again, I want to point out that I cannot control when this is triggered. I cannot prevent it from happening. I have tried.
Last Wednesday, they fired me over it. They also side added on that “there were things they gave me a chance to improve on but I didn't improve on them” but wouldn't tell me what it was that I didn't improve on, but the main focus was the fact that I feel asleep on Monday.
I think the thing that pisses me off the most honestly is the fact that I mentioned to them that I had a doctors appointment coming up for another test dealing with this and the firing manager literally just told me “It doesn't matter. You should have had this figured out by now, we hired you a year ago.”
I told them I have been trying for years to figure this out!
I am so angry. I am so scared. I just moved into my new place and I can't afford to lose my new home. I have been on top of getting set up with unemployment and looking for a job (while anger unpacking when I get frustrated). For fucks sake, I don't like just falling asleep at random. Also, this place as medical field adjacent and I thought maybe they would be understanding. My retail jobs were far more understanding about this issue than that place.
I don't know how viable a lawsuit would be because I don't have any answers to this, so technically I can't consider this a disability. I also wonder if they could just pull out said “lack of improvement”.
Also, this comes about a month after the meeting where they upper management tricked us into going to a product review meeting only to have it turn into them yelling at us about how we could do more to make sure every dollar is accounted for because the company was currently losing money.
Anyways, thank you for listening to me rant. I am going to go back to job hunting and finding ways to push illustration commissions so I can cover my bills. Sure, it was a job I hated that didn't pay enough, but $14 an hour is still better than 0.