I know I'm preaching to the choir here but I'm in a shit situation and need to rant.
My brother recently caught Covid from work. His job could be done remotely and was for two years, but the powers that be decided everyone needed to go back to the office. He is very cautious and wears a mask, but his anti-vax, anti-mask coworkers make a joke of coughing on him and one of them gave him Covid because dude showed up to work knowing he was positive but “felt fine”. My brother's work does not have sick pay so he's taking a week off unpaid. That's 25% of his monthly income gone. He's gonna have to go into credit card debt to pay his bills this month.
Unfortunately, he saw my family (self, husband, and two kids) before he realized he had Covid. Now we have it. It's unfortunate timing because we all had the stomach flu last week and missed work and school. My kids, understandably, are not allowed to return to school until they test negative (meaning they will most likely be out all week).
My husband used up all his sick leave when he was out with the flu. He works remotely so he's expected to continue working. He does UX for a big box chain. None of his work is critical to anyone's survival, his job literally exists to make the company money. But the company's stance is that if you're not in the hospital, make us more money. Otherwise he'd have to take the time unpaid, which we can't afford. So he sits at his desk trying to be productive through fits of hacking coughing.
That leaves me to take care of the kids. I work in a small private medical practice that's owned by another doctor. I don't have any PTO and took last week off unpaid when I had the flu. My boss texted me over the weekend saying that I better be over the flu because the practice needs to take on a full patient load this week. When I told her I had Covid and wouldn't be working because 1) I'm not gonna give our patients Covid and 2) I need to care for my kids, she called me flakey and said she needed to find someone more dedicated to the practice who wouldn't leave her hanging. And she fired me.
To recap, we have:
- one person whose company is not paying them for sick leave even though they got Covid at work
- one person whose company is making them work while sick with Covid
- one person who lost their job for not coming to work with Covid
Capitalism does not care about your life, your health, or your well being. Unless you are one of the lucky few who ended up at a truly great workplace, your company will punish or discard you for existing in a fallible human body. This system does not work. Do what you need to get through the day, but also do your part in burning this whole capitalist system to the ground. We need to kill it before it kills us.