Buckle up folks, you’re in for a ride of a story. For clarification: I live in Germany, 23 and a woman.
Two days before NYE last year I was hit by a car. I was lucky and the only real injury I had was a broken big toe which left me unable to properly get around. Because of this and me needing to take public transportation, my doctor put me on sick leave for 7 weeks.
My first mistake was 1. not calling the police after the accident and 2. telling my supervisor why I wasn’t going to be coming into work.
I healed up all fine and went back to work end of Februrary. On my second day back my boss and supervisor called me into the office. It was a pretty long meeting but the gist of it was him asking me why I didn’t offer up to work from home when I had “only broken my toe!”. Then he pressured me to go the police to document the accident so he can get his money back, from the insurance of the guy that hit me with his car, that he paid me during my sick leave – in his words: “I paid money for something that wasn’t your fault or mine.” That doesn’t even make sense. He would have had to pay me anyway. This intimidated me to no end so I said yes I would go. He also educated me about having a “winner mindset”, that “I don’t know what it means to be scared” when I told him why I don’t want to go to the police and that I should think about the company more “so that we can all get paid”.
I was scared shitless and slept horribly. I spoke with every person I know and even sought out a free legal counsel to get advice. I know I am/was in the right and don’t have to do anything. So I didn’t. A week later he asked me for an update and when I said “I’m not going to the police after all” he got really mad and said “Well, then you can pay me back the money I wasted.” I scoffed and said sure, lmao. At this point he was really close to kicking me out and I just wish he would have. Afternoon the same day I had a meeting with what you could call HR in my company (we don’t really have that) and they talked to me to get my version of the story and explain to me the viewpoint of my boss – side note: one of them was his wife.
Anyways after that I gave out the details of who caused the accident so they can deal with the insurance stuff themselves. Everything was quiet the next month so let’s fast forward to now. You didn’t think it could get worse, did you? Surprise!
I am currently on forced leave because the company is not doing well, I don’t work and I get only half of my monthly salary – paid from the government. It’s called Kurzarbeit here which is part of the Covid Aid for companies. I just left his office where he called me in after 4 weeks of silence – telling me that the insurance company of The Guy only paid them half of what they asked for. We are talking about 1300€. Not more, not less (!!). Now he wants me to work FOR FREE in Kurzarbeit to make up for the difference – so we can both be done with the topic. He presented the idea it like it wasn’t just completely illegal. Anyways I was once again scared shitless and just said yes because it was a small project I could complete in a few hours. That’s where we’re at now.
You may be asking yourself, and rightfully so, why the fuck didn’t you just quit?! Believe me I am working on it. I have no savings and have to pay rent. I get no money from the government if I quit myself and my parents can’t fully support me. I am looking for a new job and working things out – however it’s not that easy. The worst thing about this is that he knew I was too scared to say anything which I think is even worse. Manipulative bastard. I hate him.
And I know all this could have been prevented if I just didn’t tell them why I was sick. I just wanted to have a little faith in my fellow humans after I got hit by a car – but I will never be doing that again. And yes I also learned to call the police after an accident.