TDLR- I most likely have the flu and my work tried to force to me to come in and care for literal babies while barfing and sick.
I can’t name names because unfortunately I still work here and don’t have the money to leave right now but I’d still like to get this off of my chest. I make 9.25 an hour and work in the infant classroom, my youngest is 2mo and my oldest is just under a year. We’ve had a lot of people quit in the past few weeks, so we have no one to cover if anyone gets sick. Nearly everyone I talk to that works with me is planning on quitting as soon as their probationary period is up, and right now I’m right along with them. Most of the teachers work the morning shifts and work 8hrs straight with no breaks, they’re lucky if they get admin to come in for a minute so they can go to the bathroom. The admin will also change schedules without notice and without asking and then get mad when people complain or point out that they can’t work those hours due to appointments or other things.
Onto my frustrations that got me to type this out- I was vomiting profusely yesterday morning, I got maybe 4hrs of sleep that night and was still sick. I ended up messaging my main bosses and telling them I don’t think I’ll be able to come in for my afternoon shift (I gave them about 6-7hrs of notice). When they didn’t respond in that chat I messaged the main group chat with all the workers and asked if anyone could cover my shift because I’m sick. Their response was to message back in the other group chat with just my bosses to tell me they needed me to come in anyways, because they have no wiggle room to cover my shift. Keep in mind, I have never called out sick before now, and I work with literal babies. I didn’t feel confident enough that they wouldn’t rip off my mask or cry because of my mask (let alone me possibly accidentally barfing on them) so I tried my best to make it clear that I wouldn’t be able to make it in. Their response was first to try and convince me I needed to come in anyways, and when that didn’t work that since I don’t have to come in until hours from then that I just needed to wait and see how I felt about an hour before my shift. (Other somewhat important note- they know my husband and I are trying for a baby so maybe they thought it was just morning sickness?) I could not for the life of me fall asleep at all and still hadn’t managed to get anything down and keep it down. By the time it was an hour before my shift I was running a pretty good fever and still barfing. Their response was to tell me that they guess they’ll have to just figure it out and to passive aggressively post to the group chat that texting them will no longer count as calling out and if we try to text them instead of calling then they will consider us to have no call no showed and write us up, possibly facing termination and a report to CPS for child neglect since we left them without notice thus leaving the children without anyone to care for them.
They still, as far as I know, have not released the schedule for the next week but they may not do that until tomorrow night. However I have little to no doubt they are going to be as passive aggressive as possible when I finally do come in because that’s what they always do. They talk and gossip about teachers all the time, spreading their personal business and treating them like they did something wrong for not coming in when they’re seriously super sick. I’m fairly certain what I have is the flu (my husband bought me an at home Covid test on his way home and it came out negative). My body aches, my throat and mouth are swollen, I can’t breathe out of my nose, and I feel like I’m still at risk for throwing up. I just don’t understand why would want you to risk getting someone’s literal babies sick just because they don’t want to have to step into a classroom to fill in for a teacher that should not be in there with how sick they are in the first place. There is a lot more issues I have with this place, but in the interest of not having too many identifiers and not getting caught and fired, I’m going to leave it at this.