Sorry if this is long and rambling, I just needed somewhere to vent.
So, last March, 2 months after finishing training for my job, I got seriously, seriously ill. Ended up in the hospital for a month and was out of work for two months all told. I went back to work 2 weeks after getting out of the hospital because I had no other choice financially and my bosses had been nagging me about when I would be back since I was admitted to the hospital. So, I went back. I was taking 40mg of oxy and 2000mg of ibuprofen/naproxen a day to endure the pain and only sleeping 2-4 hours a night due to pain. I had a PICC (long-term IV) in my arm for a month and a half after I went back to work because I had to administer myself IV medication daily. My doctor told me that in the 20 years he had been practicing he had never seen someone go back to work so quickly after such a serious illness.
Due to all of the above factors, I had a hard time with attendance. My company's policy on absences is that every unexcused absence – including illness, transportation issues, and emergencies – is an incident. After 6 incidents in a rolling year you get a written warning, 7 incidents is a 2 day unpaid suspension, and 8 incidents is automatic termination. The same policy if you are more than 5 minutes late (though tardies and absences are tallied separately). I ended up getting suspended for a my 7th tardy. The tardies were for various reasons: dead car battery, car blocked in to parking lot with no notice, oversleeping (I was getting <4 hours of sleep every night), traffic due to crashes on the freeway. After about 6-8 months I was feeling much better, off the oxy, and in a lot less pain. I'm still suffering from chronic pain but I can sleep normally now and have only had 1 tardy in the past year. If you look at the numbers it's insane how much I improved and seems very clear that I had something else going on than just laziness or being irresponsible. My most recent performance review was good, and my last performance review was "meets expectations" even with the attendance issues because I performed well in other areas.
My supervisor was aware of all my circumstances and was extremely hostile toward me about my illness, telling me on various occasions that I was no longer the person they hired and they wanted that person back, that she didn't think I cared about my job, and that she thought I was intentionally trying to get fired. My coworkers were generally very understanding, kind to me, and angry that it seemed like management was making an example of me for something largely out of my control.
Recently I applied to a position for a job in another department at my company. I feel like I've exhausted the potential in my current position after being there almost 2 years and this other position is more mentally stimulating, more flexible, and would allow me to work more independently. I applied twice and did not even get an interview, which surprised me because i have the exact same qualifications as their other employee (C) but more experience. They interviewed and offered the job to two other internal applicants with fewer qualifications, both of whom turned the job down because of low pay. They offered them $7/hour less than what C made when she started… 2 years ago. $5/hour less than what I make at my current position. I'm no longer interested if they're going to low-ball people like that, but I found out from C today on the lowdown that the reason they won't even interview me is because my boss told them about my attendance issues 1.5 years ago but failed to tell them any of the context or how I had improved. I'm trying not to be upset because I don't even want the job anymore but it's really depressing that I might never be able to advance in this company if my illness is held over my head for the rest of my time here.