So, for context, my roommates were cooking upstairs and using the gas stove the night prior to my noon-8pm shift. They accidentally left it on (the burner wasn’t lit, so it was just leaking gas) from 10pm to almost noon the next day. I found the knob turned to the “Medium-Low” setting right before I was heading out the door.
I started freaking out because I had been feeling nauseous and lightheaded and decided I was just going to push through it at work. Migraines aren’t foreign to me. I had already thought the house smelled off, like rotten eggs, but it wasn’t until I went upstairs to leave that the smell smacked me in the face. Thankfully, none of us died in our sleep, but I instantly jumped into we need to air out the entire house now mode and woke everyone up. I took my dog outside to get fresh air. I live 20 min away from work. Us opening all the windows and fanning the doors open and closed took us 15 min. I sat outside to get fresh air and reminded everyone not to smoke or light anything.
I wrote my manager an apology text and explained the entire situation. How I had just spent the time that I would have taken traveling to work waking everyone up, airing out the house, and getting me and my dog fresh air. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my dog in the house, in addition to how I was feeling, so I told her I was calling off because of our gas leak emergency. (While the house was airing out for the next few hours, I drove me and my dog to my aunt’s so we can have some fresh air and recover.)
She wrote me up my next shift because I called off last minute. Dude, I’m sorry but my dog’s and my roommates’ lives are more important than me expediting food (especially when we’re sending people home all the time because of labor and how slow we are). Apparently, I should’ve let them know ahead of time that I wasn’t feeling well, but I was still planning on going in until I realized why I was having those symptoms?! My coworker told me the next day that they were completely fine and it was slow so me not being there had no impact. And we’re not a popular restaurant either, we’re a semi-casual food joint that just opened a year ago. I’m salty. I always call in hours before hand and try to find a cover for every shift. However, given the fact that I didn’t find out about the gas leak until I was on my way out the door, cut me some slack.