Honestly don’t know where to start, since this has been bothering me for the past week or so. So basically, I’ve been suffering with injuries on both of my feet which has been hindering me from walking when I work. I work at a retail job (TJ Maxx), so standing around and walking around the store to clean up areas is required of course. So naturally, an injury that affects my two feet prevents me from working to the best of my abilities. I was denied my state insurance earlier in the year, which is why I was putting off going to the doctor and getting a procedure done to fix my injuries- I was hoping to push through till November to get insurance so the price of the procedure wouldn’t be so bad.
However, of course I couldn’t make it till then as my injuries got worse, and I had to make an appointment for the procedure on short notice, missing a day or two or work in the process- so as to let my feet heal. I called my work as soon as I could, told them I couldn’t come to work and I could bring a doctors note and everything to explain my situation, and over the phone one of my managers said that “wouldn’t be necessary” and they “didn’t need doctors notes”. So here I thought I would be excused and I would return to work with no problem, my savings of course drained due to no insurance, but continuing with no problem. Nope.
A few days after returning to work, I was pulled into a “meeting” with one of my manager, informing me that I’ve been absent and tardy for work too many times and that I would be “marked” for this (whatever that meant since they vague). They then pulled up a sheet showing all my absences and tardies for the 4 months of working, 5 in total. 2 of them were from when I first started working and I was about a half hour late, but one of the dates actually was completely made up stating I was absent on May 15th- even though I started this job in early August. And of course the last 2 dates were when I had to go to do my procedure and was unable to work.
I won’t go into detail what my procedure was for (too gross to explain), but both of my feet were numbed and bloodied afterwards, so obviously I was unfit to work and my doctor insisted I let them heal for a week before going back. I explained this to my manager of course, and said I could bring the doctors note I requested to show them. However they then told me that they only excused absences if it’s a literal ER visit. That caught me super off guard, and I find it hard to believe that I would only be excused if I was on my death bed. When I told my friends, family, and even my own doctor- they all thought it was bullshit. So now I have my managers breathing down my neck for any more tardies or absences I might commit, even though I had to for a very good reason.
Thanks for if you did read through all this, I really wanted to vent my frustrations since I found all of this stupid. What should I do going forward? Is this really how it is, or is this all complete bullshit? Please let me know!