Serious post. Please give sincere advice if you have it, I’m legitimately suffering right now
I tried to post this on an alt account, but that didn’t work out due to the low karma I guess lol, but have questions for anyone who can help me because I’m honestly not sure where else to turn right now. My apologies in advance if this is really long.
I’ve been working for a great company for many years now, and I have built my way up into a pretty successful career. I was happy when I started my career path, but the excitement and hope I once had has now been slowly dying away over the past few months or so.
I have PTSD, which presents the biggest struggle for me, and it often can impact my focus severely when I’m presented with a great deal of stress. I do currently have ADA accommodations in place, and I also have intermittent leave in place in case I need any time off due to my condition. This would be a great thing if everyone understood what this entails, but the problem with this, unfortunately, is that my boss does not.
I recently dealt with some traumatic circumstances (we’re talking over the past few months), the worst of which happened to me a couple of weeks ago. It’s not something I can really go into detail about here, but what I can say is that it was traumatic enough to push me into a deep depression.
I reached out to my boss letting them know what happened, and I reached out to let them know that I really needed a few days off to recover. They didn’t respond to me at all acknowledging my request. Instead, they addressed it the next day in a meeting… and said that we can’t take days off without at least giving notice of at least a week in advance.
So even though I have intermittent leave I can take, it’s almost like I have it for nothing because my boss will not let me use it as I’m legally entitled to, and instead of letting me just go through HR to let them know when I need time off so they can deduct from my leave time, my boss has specifically requested that I go through them (my boss) and not HR because they claimed that they were willing to work with me.
However, instead of working with me as promised, they (my boss) are now shooting down my requests to take care of myself and my mental health, basically citing that my notice is apparently too “last minute”.
Two weeks later- right now- the result of this is a snowball effect. I am now dealing with an impossible workload, and I’m caving under the pressure. I’ve been crying every day now for the past few days, and my mental health is deteriorating- so much so that I ended up reaching out a few hours ago to the person in HR who has been helping me with my ADA/FMLA needs to tell them everything. I legitimately had to force myself to stop working today after hours because these entire past couple of weeks, my job has completely taken over my life. I barely eat anymore, I can’t sleep well, I haven’t had any time to take care of myself or to spend time with my family. I’ve had no time to work on my hobbies, and by the weekend, I have no energy left to be able to do anything I used to enjoy.
I really don’t know what to do right now. I’m not happy at all. I feel joy in nothing. All I do anymore when I’m not working is cry because I feel empty and hollow and like no one cares about me as a person. I feel like I’m supposed to sacrifice my mental health and to let my condition significantly worsen because the job is apparently more important even though my coworkers are allowed to take time off often, leaving me to deal with a giant workload that is becoming impossible for me to handle by myself. I envy my coworkers for this because I’ve been robbed of taking time off when I need to, especially when I have 100% the legal right to do so.
My question: Can someone advise me on what I need to do at this point to have this addressed so that my boss will stop stomping all over my FMLA/ADA rights? Is Human Resources who would handle this- if not, who would I go to? I really need all the advice I can get.
I really can’t live like this anymore. Something has got to give. I really do love my company and quitting is not on the table, but I do feel that something needs to be done to force my boss to respect my rights as a person with a disability in the workplace before my health further plummets and takes a turn for the worst because at this rate, if this continues on like this, I will no longer be capable of working, and that’s not what I want.