A bit of context: November 2021, my little brother died a week before his birthday in a hunting accident. I was 13 years older than him, my little sister was 9 years older than him, so honestly it was like he had three moms. My sister and I made the conscious effort to really be in his life. When I got my first job and adult apartment in the same city, I would have him over on the weekends to bond. When I moved to a different city we still talked at the very least once a week. We would have Skype calls watching tv shows and I went on every family vacation I could. When he died, our whole family was crushed.
I worked at the largest office in a smaller town (about 800 people), but my group was super small. It was my boss and a coworker and me. Honestly after my brother died, I was not a great employee for 6 months. Dealing with the grief and trying to help my parents (especially my mom) was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I went to my boss and had several conversations over the course of 2022. I asked that if I was in danger of losing my job, to please be honest so that I can try to be better. I live in Texas so that wasn’t really a legal requirement, but he promised to do that. He did come to me at one point saying that I needed to be more present so I pulled up my big girl panties and got back into business. November was tough but I worked through it. The problem came at the end of December. Basically I got really sick and couldn’t be in the office for almost this whole month. I still don’t know what really was wrong but this week I tried yet another medication and it seemed to work! I was in the office most of yesterday, had a great conversation with my boss about how I’m feeling much better and talked with my coworker about how our respective Christmas’s went.
I went into the office this morning with a game plan on how I was going to catch up and some ideas for projects moving forward. My coworker called me into his office, but I went in and HR was there. In a two minute conversation he said I was let go and to leave my computer and badge.
I’m not upset I got fired. Honestly I haven’t been a good employee since my brother died and then I got sick. I’m upset that I was blindsided and I feel betrayed on a personal level. I just don’t know what to do right now.