Unfortunately I caught a cold from Thanksgiving and though I made an effort to go into work today (I only work in a waged retail position), I’m still sick and I can’t in good conscious interact with customers. I got management approval to go home early and it was supposedly marked as an excused absence.
However, my health the past few months has not been the best. I often get sick with migraines and such that I need to call off or otherwise I believe I have not yet diagnosed depression, which I’m going to see about getting FMLA paperwork for that. In any case, my store uses a points system, where 9 or so you’re at serious risk of termination. I’m currently at 8. By the way, we only accrue 4 hours of sick time per month. Not even a whole full shift.
I work full time so I’m still at work much more often than not, but today my manager seemed annoyed with me that I was asking to leave early while I was obviously sick—I could hardly even speak. But it doesn’t help that I just got back from a week off work that I had requested off a few months ago to see family at an important event out of state and stayed through Thanksgiving.
I know that I’m an at-will employee and they could just fire me for pretty much anything. Personally, I don’t expect to be fired over an excused absence, but I’m still worried and so is my family. I can’t afford to lose my job until I have something better lined up. I could only afford to live about 2 months with my savings right now.
Would getting fired for an excused absence while sick be any different than if it were over an unexcused absence or otherwise poor performance? That just seems wrong.