My 22-year old step daughter has been working her first job for a few months now. She's autistic, and was nervous about joining the work force, but she found a job in a place that offers dog boarding and dog-sitting.
She liked the job, as she's an animal lover and has aspirations of becoming a dog trainer. However, within the first month of her being there, a bunch of employees (including the store manager) quit suddenly. That was my first inkling that there could be problems. We're in Florida, but this is a national chain.
Around 2 weeks ago, stepdaughter developed a nasty cough that would not go away. Finally last Monday, she went to urgent care and was diagnosed with bronchitis. Her next shift was the next day, and when she came home, she gave us some concerning news. One of the rooms in the building had a bunch of black mold growing inside the walls, and they were going to have to tear down walls to clean it. Also, management had known about the problem for a while before doing anything about it.
Now, I'm not saying that the mold is the reason that she got sick, but it's a hell of a coincidence, and being in a building with that much mold is surely going to make her coughing worse. She was scheduled to work the next morning, and she felt uncomfortable working until the mold was gone. She called her manager and he told her that she needed to get a doctor's note. Stepdaughter drove back to the urgent care office and got it. When she sent him the note, the manager then told her that she needed to cover her shift as well. I told her that it's not her job to do that (it was also now almost 9pm and she didn't have any of her co-workers numbers).
She had another shift on Thursday, and even though she was still sick, she was afraid that she'd get in trouble if she missed another day, so she worked her shift. She decided to wear a mask, however. When she got there, she discovered that there had been exactly zero progress in getting rid of the mold. Also, her manager told her that she needed to take off her mask because customers were asking why she was wearing one. She didn't take it off, and when she came home and told us what happened we decided that she wasn't going back to that job.
My question is, should I do anything about this? I am definitely calling the corporate office tomorrow, but should I call anyone else? I don't know about the legality of what they're doing, but they are clearly not telling customers what's going on, and some of the dogs in this facility are boarded there, so they're breathing in these spores 24/7. Thank you for reading this novella.