Long story short, I took a chance on a role working remotely for a start up that is five years old. They offered the world but didn’t follow through. Yesterday I completed my second week of employment, and at the end of the day I was terminated. Now, for the longer version.
When being interviewed, the five of us that were brought on as new hires were promised 30 hour work weeks while being salaried employees. They were originally going to hire two people, but after interviewing myself and one other person they decided they would want us to move up to higher positions pretty quickly, so they hired three extra people in the same role. I am chronically ill and disabled, and since I already had a stable job with great medical benefits working from home and just wanted a change, but wasn’t desperate for a job, I decided I was going to be honest about my chronic illness/disability from the first interview in hopes of eventually landing with a company that would appreciate the fact that I’m still an extremely hard worker and worth as much as anybody else though I need slight accommodations. I had nothing to lose in being honest. That’s what I thought. So, throughout all three interviews as well as my discussions with my coach/HR, which were the same person because it was a company of 15 (including me), I was honest. They were great about it. They said they always want employees to put themselves and their health first, they were working towards a four day work week, they had unlimited PTO, and were offering a 30 hour work week currently. I negotiated my salary for much more than they initially offered and they hired me. Part of me thinks they later realized they couldn’t afford five new employees and the higher salary I got (based on the glimpse of their finances and “success” I was able to obtain in two weeks), but I digress.
Halfway through the second week, they started talking about the fact that it would be out of their control if shifts lasted longer than the originally promised six hours, and two other new hires started asking questions about it because they have other jobs and needed to know their schedules. Those employees were promised that their schedules would be worked around. I told them that I would only need one day off a month to attend doctors appointments but that I would still be able to work any of the other six days during the week I had my appointments, meaning I was not requesting actual time off. Mind you, they also claimed to offer unlimited PTO so that shouldn’t have mattered either way. Several of the original team members were off for days at a time during those two weeks traveling around and working from the road. It seemed like everything they said was true. After seeing my fellow new hires discussing their schedule accommodations, I talked to my coach about needing set hours, because I would not physically be able to handle thinking I was working a six hour shift and then finding out it was actually going to be a 10 hour shift. I told them I was happy to work 40 hour work weeks/8 hour days, but that when we were interviewed we were told nobody would ever work more than 40 hours and if they did, the CEO and other leadership would immediately discuss it and find out why it happened so it wouldn’t happen again. I was told it would be absolutely no problem, twice, and that they would get back to me about my schedule in a couple of days. I was also told we wouldn’t even necessarily need to consider medical accommodations because medical accommodations are there to protect an employee when the company isn’t willing to work with them, and this company was allegedly more than willing to work with me because, in their words, my request was more than reasonable.
After working a full day yesterday, the CEO asked me via slack if I could jump on a quick call. The call was a Slack “huddle,” meaning it, like all of our correspondence, was recorded. I didn’t see it coming. He fired me during that phone call. He also made sure to tell me, verbatim, that, “companies of 15 employees or less do not have to legally offer medical accommodations because doing so would cripple companies like us.” He knew what he was doing was fucked but he did it anyway. I was told repeatedly how kick ass of a job I was doing throughout those two weeks. I made them tons of money. I didn’t miss any hours or call out. I was ahead of the training schedule. I was working extra evening hours to make sure I was “kicking ass.” We were told that when we finished our work, we should feel free to take off for the rest of the day. I didn’t do that. We were also regularly encouraged to take breaks but nobody else did, so neither did I, aside from twice for 5 minutes and then 15 minutes. I also brought a lot of ideas to the table that they decided to implement in order to grow and better their company. I learned another lesson there, about keeping my ideas to myself until I’ve been with a company longer. As written in the employment contract, he reminded me I would be getting two weeks severance pay in addition to the pay for the week that I just worked. I was already paid for the first week.
Today, I got an email with a release in it, telling me that I need to sign said release by the 18th promising that I will not bring a lawsuit upon the company in order to receive my two weeks of severance pay. They are fully counting on the fact that I desperately need that money in order to keep myself afloat while looking for a new job (I have another part time remote job but it pays shit, and was just for extra income; my partner has a full time job so we’ll be okay in the interim), and they are aware of the fact that I do not have the energy nor the time or money to even consider taking action against them for their bullshit practices. Plus, again, I assumed I likely wouldn’t have a case because the company is so small that they are protected and I am not. All of this regardless of the fact that I have a disability certification and was honest about my chronic illness with them from the start, and I didn’t ask for anything outside of what I’d been promised when hired.
I had a friend who is an attorney look over the release just to cover my bases, and she told me that it is all very standard, and that even though the severance packages were in the employment contract, I am not legally entitled to the severance because I work in an at will state and they are offering it to me so we have a clean cut, and of course requiring the release so I cannot sue them should I change my mind and decide to try. She also said that while it seems they fired me for discriminatory reasons and I might have a case, it’s a very grey area, and my state is not super disability/chronic illness friendly.
I made a lot of mistakes throughout this process because I am hopelessly optimistic, naïvely believe almost everything I’m told, and thought that if I was honest from the start I would land somewhere that actually gave a shit. Newsflash: Nobody gives a shit about your issues. Not when it comes to your employer. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule, but they are very few and far between. Keep your personal and medical information close to your chest until you are forced to bring it up when you are hospitalized or need time off, and even then, only tell them what they need to know. I’m back to the job hunting boards this morning having learned a lot and with hopes of finding something better, so I can consider this a bullet dodged. Put yourselves first, y’all. Loyalty to an employer means nothing, no matter how new or old you are. They made me promises that they might have initially intended to keep; they decided I was more trouble than I was worth for simply requesting a reliable schedule. I assume as much fault in this, at the end of the day.