TLDR:: My father figure (my uncle. My mother's brother) died in a car crash yesterday morning because he fell asleep behind the wheel while driving home from having to work mandatory overtime at a car factory
He was only 52 years old. And what had happened was he had already worked his regular 8 hour afternoon shift (4pm-12am) and only a half hour or so before the shift ended, his team leader came up and told him that he needed to stay for an extra 6 hours. According to his coworkers, my uncle originally refused but was told that if he didn't stay, he would risk being let go (fired). So he stayed because he couldn't risk losing the money
So at 6am his shift finally ended and he tried to drive home. One of his friends offered to let him stay at their house so he could sleep for a bit (the friend lives only a few minutes away from the factory), but my uncle was adamant on getting home because “I'm tired as all shit and I just want to go home to my own bed. I'd never leave your house if I went over now”. So he thanked the friend and left work to make the hour and a half drive to his own house.
So instead of dealing with the morning rush hour traffic on the highway (it gets pretty bad early in the mornings because he lives close to an airport), he decided to take the back road he usually takes when heading to work on day shift. On this back road, there's a set of train tracks and what my mom figures is that he must have fallen asleep or dozed off for a second behind the wheel and lost control of the car once he went over the tracks (because if you're sleeping, your foot would obviously still be on the gas pedal and you wouldn't be able to slow down) and did a nose dive straight down into the 6ft ditch on the side of the road (this ditch separates the road from a farmers field. It's a steep straight drop directly down). The farmer that owned the field was actually out plowing and seen the accident. My uncle was dead by the time the farmer crossed the field and pulled him from the car. He died on the ground while the farmer waited for 911 to show up
So now all of a sudden my mom doesn't have a brother anymore, my nan lost her only son and I won't ever see him again. All because work said “you work or you're fired. You've worked for us for 15 years and we know you just worked an entire 8 hour shift. But miss this overtime and you're fired”. The funeral will be in our small hometown in Newfoundland on Friday, I had to practically threaten my own work with “I'll just quit so I can go up for the funeral. I CAN NOT MISS IT” because my manager thought that it was to oddly convenient that the funeral was going to be in the place I was vacationing next month (originally I had my only week of the year vacation booked for the end of June to go to up to visit family).
So I showed him the obituary and the texts between myself/mom/family members about sorry for your loss, the funeral date and the flight time and he extremely reluctantly agreed to change my vacation but just so I know – “you'll only be getting 160$ for the week. And you won't be paid for the last three days of your time away from work. Really I shouldn't be approving this at all. Uncles aren't covered under extensive bereavement leave” (By “extensive” he means loss of a child. If you lose a child where I live, you get 2 weeks of unpaid leave to “get over it”. For parents -biological only- you get 3 days unpaid leave. Every other family member except godparents/cousins/friends you get 1 day of unpaid leave)
This whole thing has made me realize that no one cares about what you're going through or what's happening when you're an adult. You work or you fuck off and they'll replace you with someone else who's “unburdened” or “undistracted”.