In early February, I ruptured my (reconstructed with cadaver tissue) ACL/meniscus, causing me to need a 4th knee surgery in early April. If you’ve ever torn your ACL/meniscus, you’ll know exactly how agonizingly painful the condition is, and yet my bosses continued to schedule me with clients who required me to chase after them. (For context, I work with children with autism). This not only caused more damage to the knee but at least 4-5 times within February/March, I had my knee “pop out” on me, leaving me in incredible pain for the rest of the day. I was never allowed to leave and no one ever helped me. (No reports were ever written about my injury. Not the initial injury, not the follow-up injuries, nothing). I even had to go on medical leave early, because my knee popped out on me attempting to chase after a kid and I couldn’t walk for 3 days.
I go on surgery leave, turns out I have to have double knee surgery because my case is so complicated and they felt that cadaver tissue would ultimately fail, so they pulled from the patella tendon on my other knee.
I’m out 6 weeks, when I get an email saying they might have to cut my health insurance or force me to go on COBRA, so I made my doctor medically release me. I asked for a WEEK what medical accommodations they needed from me and they never emailed me back. I even asked for a job description to send to my doctor, so he could better personalize the accommodations based on my specific job.
From my first day back, they have under-employed me, made me do things I’m not supposed to do (while claiming they didn’t need a note from the doctors office, they needed me to tell them what my medical accommodations were. How am I supposed to know that?! That’s what the DOCTORS NOTE is for. They have targeted me for silly, stupid things like getting paper towels during a time when I apparently wasn’t supposed too and have had conversations with me, about how I am making the workplace hostile, with my “constant complaining,” because they aren’t listening to what I need from them medically.
They told me I should be “grateful,” that they “accommodated me,” by giving me specific children for clients. Clients who require diaper changes, aka picking up a 30+ pound child, something I cannot do. And I should be “grateful” for you doing what you’re supposed to be doing on a legal level, by accommodating people with disabilities?? So what, you would have just fired me instead?
They also made me pay almost $600 to cover my May health insurance, because “it’s not my responsibility to pay for your health insurance when you weren’t working for us.” Um, yeah, because I didn’t file a workman’s comp claim, thinking you were going to take care of me…like you took care of my coworker who was out for a year homeschooling her son, during peak COVID.
Anyways, I’ve got a new job that I’m starting on the 27th but that means, thanks to America’s shitty healthcare system, I will be losing my current insurance and have to establish “full time hours” at the new job, before becoming eligible for the new jobs insurance.
That means I have to now cancel my Physical therapy appointments and even my dentist appointment that I made six months ago (along with the rest of my therapy appointments and psychiatrist appointments), because my current job wanted to discriminate against me, after becoming temporarily physically disabled, for literally doing my job.
I also found out that I’m the lowest paid technician in my entire STATE. Not just my city, my literal state. I had a recruiter from a national corporation tell me, while interviewing, that I was the lowest paid position he’s ever heard of, from my entire state, including the rural areas. And y’all, I live in MISSOURI.
Catch me at a new job on the 27th, making almost $3 more, commuting 15 minutes less and hopefully getting way better health insurance too, because my former company screwed us all over on that as well.
As to why I didn’t submit workman’s comp? It’s a small, privately owned company and I didn’t want their insurance rates to go up. I also saw how they’ve treated a former coworker of mine who filed for workman’s comp after getting hurt at our job and I watched them be really discriminatory towards them. I thought my job would take care of me. Here’s your lesson folks: corporate/small business people do NOT care about you. They only care about the profit that your body can provide and when you stop being profitable, they’ll kick you to the curb, while humiliating and disrespecting you.