I've been talking with my friend about this situation for the past few days. She's overwhelmed and fed up with how her main supervisor has been treating her about needing to take time off.
She works part time for a company that produces food packaging products. Her schedule is pretty flexible in that she can go into their computer system at the beginning of each week and put in for what days and times she's available for the next week and they will schedule her accordingly. But there doesn't seem to be much flexibility as far as last minute things are concerned. She has an autoimmune disease and struggles with chronic illnesses a lot. They get some sick time and personal days, but as a part timer, it isn't a lot. She started in 2021 and they used to be a little more lenient with illnesses, but started cracking down within the last year.
Back around January or February she had to be out for a couple of weeks due to a combination of covid and a flareup of her autoimmune issues. Her department supervisor (or her supervisor's supervisor) had kind of a talk with her and told her she really needed to watch her attendance because she had gone beyond allotted sick days and they'd only let her return with a doctors excuse, and so on.
She decided to get more proactive with her health stuff. Tried some new medications, started researching about dietary changes she could make to limit flareups, and so on. And she had been doing really good. Feeling better overall, and not missing any work.
Last week her sister in law passed away. Her brother is currently incarcerated, and the brother and sister in law have 2 kids. She called work to let them know and they said they needed some kind of documentation. I think that's scummy, but fair enough. I understand some places have those policies. So she goes, helps with arrangements, and now she needs to figure out what to do with the kids. Her SIL's family aren't in the best circumstances themselves. Her own family isn't really equipped, so she's taking them for now I guess. She called her department supervisor today to discuss this to see if she could take some unpaid time off to arrange to take on 2 kids for who knows how long.
She called this woman directly because she knew that her own supervisor would have to run everything by her anyways. She explained the situation, and instead of responding with any kind of sympathy or understanding, this lady immediately cuts her off and starts asking her about documentation. She asked for the SILS name. She tries an online search for the name but couldn't find anything. My friend said she had a little pamphlet from the celebration of life they had, so the lady asks her to email her a picture of it within 10 minutes.
So my friend sends it to her. And the lady emails her back saying she needs to see the whole pamphlet because “there's not much information there” But I guess it was just a one page card type thing with the name, relevant dates, and time/address of the celebration of life. So my friend tells her that, even offers to show her the death certificate once it comes. My friend hears nothing back for a good, long while.
This would be a good time to add that her SIL died young, unexpectedly, and without life insurance. She also came from a pretty poor and disconnected family. So there was no fancy funeral home wake with a church service, flowers, catered lunch, graveside service, and all of that. It was basically just family scraping together what they could to have her cremated and have a little get together in a park. They probably couldn't even afford that.
Finally my friend gets an email back that says something like “Thank you for sending what you have. We will take you off the schedule for now. Please let us know when you are able to return.” Like it was sent by a totally different person or something, because the tone change is just…
I'm guessing that the lady (department supervisor) had to run it by HR and they told her she was being unreasonable. Because I don't think this lady has the final say, though it sure sounds like she wishes she did. It's like she was on a freaking power trip. And all of this time off would be unpaid, so it's not like my friend was trying to take advantage of the company and get something she hadn't earned. And it's not like this place is a hospital or store or something where if someone doesn't come in everyone is forced to pick up the slack. It's a production facility where they've been overstaffed and ahead of schedule to the point of having to cancel or cut some shifts.
I think my friend had a grandparent die last fall that she might have needed to take off for. But other than that it's not one of those situations where someone has had 6 grandparents die just within the last year or whatever.
I'm telling her she should look for another job, and she has been. But there's not a lot of opportunities where we live. But other than that I don't know what to tell her. She's really upset and feels disrespected. She said she's been working so hard to stay healthy and to not be so much as a minute late, and has been successful since winter. But now something major comes up and all this bitch cares about is “proof”. For unpaid time off! What a cow. I hope she did run it by HR and they told her to quit being such a bitch.