I work in the spa at a hotel/casino, and my state has sick leave days, of which I haven't exceeded my earned hours. I'm a cosmetologist, I have a coworker who's been having health issues who is a nail technician, she was supposed to work with me on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, but was in the hospital, to absolutely no fault of her own. Because she was out, I was given all of her appointments, and I'm not nearly as fast as she is at nail services, so from Tuesday all through Friday, I worked alone, and had to skip my lunch break four times.
By Thursday I felt the stress of working alone getting to me, and I ended up crying in my car after work for two hours. I asked my direct supervisor, who is another service provider, if I could take a mental health day, but because I knew Friday and Saturday were already fully booked, I would feel immense guilt for cancelling those people's appointments. I also knew Tuesday only had one appointment in the morning, and given that I was asking on Thursday, whoever's appointment it was had the option to switch to a different day (There's another cosmetologist who's here once a week, on Sundays). My supervisor told me it was no problem, that we had sick days for things like this, and to use Tuesday (yesterday) to de-stress.
My director pulled me into a brief meeting a few hours ago, along with another manager who covers the desk in the spa on occasion, and told me that the state sick leave didn't apply to days in advance, and that because of that I had either called off, or requested the day off, which would've needed to be approved by him, and that our company didn't “have mental health days”. I tried to tell him that it was better for my conscious if only one appointment had to be cancelled than 6, but he didn't really seem to care. We also got into why working alone last week put so much stress on me, so it could be avoided in the future, and his input was basically, “Give it your best and your fastest” when it comes to nail services. I've worked here for almost three years, and my timing has not improved, so that's not very helpful.
I can't find anything online that prevents me from taking a sick day in advance, and I want to lodge a complaint with my union about him. I took yesterday off to de-stress and come back better, but now I'm even more stressed. Someone could've even just told me in advance that I needed to ask for the day off closer to the actual date, but no one did.
I'm going to find out if we negotiated away mental health days, as that's the only possible answer for him being allowed to warn me not to do this again, but my mom is a manager at a government facility, and she said that once a sick and safe day has been declared, they aren't supposed to be able to threaten me. I don't even care about being compensated for taking the day off, I just don't want to be pointed in the future if I need a break for my own mental health. I'm at the point where I want to just drop Tuesdays entirely, but I have a feeling they'll tell me I can't.
Can anyone suggest solutions? I know I'll need to talk to my union rep, but what would you suggest I do to start the process of filing a complaint about him? How would I even word it?