I've been wanting to tell this story for awhile but my NDA prevented that for many years. Even though it's expired I am still going to keep things really general.
Many moons ago I was a single father of a 2-year old working in a call center for a very unpopular telecom company. The scheduling was the opposite of work/life balance, customers spit venom on every call, middle management was underqualified for anything outside of babysitting and asking you what you're doing if you weren't on a call for 25 seconds, of course there was a sales quota even though we weren't sales, etc. The most important aspect to this story is the attendance policy was ridiculous. You had 8 points to termination, each absence was 1 point and being late was .5 points which lasted 6 calendar months. If you got another point in that 6 months, it reset the clock which meant you could be teetering on unemployment for years. I'm really glossing over a lot of other terrible aspects but I want to keep the story moving.
My latest supervisor was super cool and just not with the culture of other managers. They gave me the inside track and told me that everyone in the call center had FMLA due to the attendance policy. They told me I need to go to my primary care and tell them about the environment and I was guaranteed to get FMLA which provided the freedom to leave or call out when necessary. To set the stage further, I was broke and grew up broke, so I didn't have a primary care and didn't have a primary care my entire life nor had I seen a dentist in about 15 years. I did feel my health declining but ignored it because I didn't feel like I was dying. My manager told me to leave, go to a doctor, and get FMLA paperwork so I can start having some job security due to the attendance policy.
Me being an idiot and inexperienced, I went to the ER. I didn't make it out of triage. A doctor came in and asked me if I was diabetic, I said no. She said, you are now because your blood sugar is 540 and I don't know how you're standing; you're also not leaving. I said I had to go back to work. She said, I don't think you understand, you're not going anywhere today. So I called my supervisor back and said that I'm apparently on my deathbed and the doctor won't let me leave. I spent 4 days in the hospital and barely remember it because I was just sleeping as they came in every 2 hours and hit me with some insulin. I checked myself out because it was the day before my daughter's birthday and I went to Toys R'Us with my arms covered in bandages and bruised so I could be a good dad before stopping back by my job to prove I was in the hospital.
TL;DR: Job was so terrible I went to the doctor to get FMLA paperwork for job protection and discovered I was a diabetic.
If you're still around and want to know what happened and why I had an NDA, upon my return I was retaliated against fully. The terrible insurance company they outsource FMLA/ADA/disability to is known for making things incredibly difficult and denying claims so I got denied my leave in the hospital twice. QA took a very special interest in listening to my calls and there was negative feedback each time. When I asked where did all this come from my supervisor said they didn't have an explanation and it is odd that QA is only listening to me. I was also written up for checking my blood sugar or using the bathroom due to the medication and was told I need to get ADA approval to go to the bathroom off break. Lastly, I was denied a scheduled raise because I didn't have metrics for the days I was in the hospital so they couldn't tell if I was meeting goal entirely or not.
I raised my concerns to HR who absolutely loved firing people and terrorizing agents. I was fired after being told I do not qualify for ADA and there was nothing I could do. I went to a lawyer who filed an EEO complaint on my behalf. The employer didn't respond but the HR rep and the HR manager were fired. EEO released the case with a legal version of them giving their blessing to sue. We settled, lawyer took near half, IRS got their cut, and I signed an NDA.
If you're curious about me personally, since then I've completed my MBA, have an awesome career, and have successfully managed my diabetes for about a decade with cutting a few things from my diet and a little bit of exercise (I suggest everyone does this just because sitting at a desk 40+ hours a week eating snacks will put you in my shoes).