I’ve been working at my job for around 5 months now. I’m a good employee and rarely call out. The only times I’ve called out were when I was extremely sick and one week when I had a family emergency. I used to call out a lot from my old job due to mental health issues, and have tried to do better this time around. Clearly It’s not worth it.
I work at a pretty big named store, with a grocery side and a home, electronics, and apparel side. The grocery side has tons of employees, my side not so much. When I first started working here, there were several employees who could work the floor and cashier on this side. We are now down to what I believe to be literally under 10 employees. Only like 5 people including me consistently show up. Most everyone has quit by now because the managers are all crazy and treated them like crap. I’ve made the mistake of keeping my head down and basically doing anything asked of me without complaint. They often times call me in on my days off, begging me to come in because they’ll have nobody to close either at the home register or in the electronics department. I often close the electronics department alone.
Today I attempted to call out of work. My boyfriend had surgery this morning and I’ve basically been up for the past two days straight (my two days off) taking care of him since he’s been extremely sick. I got about 2 hours of sleep last night and had to get up at 6 am to drive him to the surgery center. I’ve felt unwell for the past couple weeks, getting horrible migraines and having kidney pain from a possible kidney stone, which could knock me out at any second. There is a really bad sickness going around work right now too and a lot of people have been out because of it. I think I’m catching it on top of everything else.
I decided to call out before 9 am, my shift would start at 3 and go until 10, so I wanted to give them plenty of time to find a replacement. When I called, my manager was furious. She told me that she’s already down 3 cashiers today (?) which I guess would be literally everyone scheduled to cashier. Probably because the entire department is sick. She asked if I had a fever. I told her no but that I was really sick. I had already decided against telling the full truth, that I’ve been awake for two days due to an extremely sick bf who’s currently in surgery on top of everything else, because I knew that wouldn’t even be a good enough reason in her mind for me to not show up. She told me that I’d be putting immense stress on the team. She told me to wait and call her later to see if I feel better. I was pretty clear on the fact that I am not feeling well enough to work, but that wasn’t enough for her.
I’m super angry right now. I know it isn’t my problem that they don’t treat their employees well enough to keep things running. I still plan to call out in a couple hours. I feel like she needs to respect the fact that I am sick, like everyone else, and that it isn’t my fault or my problem. I’m not calling out for no reason. I am exhausted and have been going to work feeling like shit for over two weeks. It’s just so frustrating because these people don’t actually give a shit about me but expect me to basically run entire departments on my own most days. Just because everyone else is sick doesn’t mean I can’t be. I have so much anxiety now, not only with my bf in surgery but now this. I don’t think she’ll try to fire me, or legally could especially since they can’t afford to lose more employees, but I’m so frustrated and I thought this would be the best place to vent. I fucking hate working for these companies who blame minimum wage employees for adding stress to the team, when they’d still have employees if they treated people with respect. I know most of the people who recently quit did so because the mangers don’t respect them. I don’t want to get caught in a loop like at my old job where I am basically running the store and getting stomped on until I mentally cannot handle it anymore.