I'm wondering if there's any actions I can take, legal or otherwise, to not feel so impotent. But if this is just an outlet to complain and give my wife a break that's okay too
I'm a department manager for an east coast grocery chain, hired fall 2021.
Beginning of April we bought our house, mid April my mother died. She'd been sick, so when dad called and said “come back to California asap she won't last the weekend”, I told the HR person because I wanted to make sure I would get bereavement PTO since money was tight, she assured me I'd already passed the 6 months probation and had three days paid. I flew that night, saw my mom pass, and flew back at the end of 3 days.
When I returned, HR informed me I was rejected for bereavement but I could “use a day of my sick time if I needed some time off”. I didn't make a scene but probably made a face, and went back to work.
Within a day or two, I was called in to HR to “correct my punched hours”; my department had been chronically understaffed, and though I did not breach timecard protocols (OT, ect), they wanted me to change my hours to make it look better for the upcoming audit. I would lose about an hour of pay, and I was fucking pissed but I was scared of losing my job. So I took pictures of the timecard edit sheets (which I lost a week or two later when my phone died and I forgot to back up the files, but they don't know that) and signed them. I know I should have done more to protect myself, and probably should have threatened a suit but I was going through so much I just didn't have it in me and didnt want to risk losing my job too.
Over the summer, as the staffing situation worsened and my attempts to communicate with upper management were ignored, I called off sick on a day I originally wasn't supposed to work anyways. I came back to a completely fabricated write-up for disciplinary action. Luckily I was tipped off, and emailed my work email time-stamped photos disproving the allegations. I brought them up in the meeting, and there was an immediate “change of heart” and they decided “not to pursue it”.
My mother's funeral was last week, and I had submitted the request for bereavement days to HR back in early June. Two weeks before, I checked with HR, and she told me that she wasn't actually in charge of that, but assured me she had passed on my request to the store director. Something she should have mentioned to me when I originally submitted the request. So, naturally when I went to the store director he had forgotten about the request and had “misplaced” the form. I pursued the issue until he approved the 3 days paid leave.
Currently, the HR person and several of the store directors don't talk to me (which I reciprocate), and I am stuck with an immense workload and the bottom dregs of the staffing team.
Actually, to elaborate on that my requests for more adequate staffing were met by hiring a 7-month pregnant woman, where my department is the most physically straining in the whole store. I'm trying to get her transfered to being a cashier or something but management doesn't care. She's already cut her hours down to nothing and I'm sure will quit within the week.
Is there anything I can do to not feel so damn impotent? This asshole company (with a plethora of other issues) walked all over me and I feel like I told them “thank you let's schedule another”. Which, regrettably I did do to an extent.
It doesn't have to be legal–though I'd love to hit them in the only place they care about: their wallet. Currently I'm waiting for my wife's nonprofit to settle back down from its recent shake-up, then I'll probably just find a new job and remind myself you can't lapse in standing up for yourself even for a second when you're working for someone else.
But that just feels so garbage. Fuck letting these people win.