so i started delivering post recently. in the hiring process they asked me a few times if i had “a sturdy bike” and since it's quite debatable what that entails exactly and i have a working, functional bike, i always said yes.
but on my first day of work my manager took one quick look at my bike and said “nope! that's not gonna work. you can lend a bike for today, but try to fix a better one for tomorrow.”
since i can't buy a new bike financially, i discussed it woth my bf when i got home and he said we should go look around for bikes in the weekend, wich seemed like a reasonable and solid plan. so of course i communicated this with my manager and he agreed to lend me the bike until the end of the week since he had to bring them back.
he had to bring them back. he was kinda overdue already. i still have no goddamn clue where these bikes came from, why he has them, why they gotta be returned, or why my own bike wasn't good enough! and I've spoken to him on my first day whilst picking up the mail for that day, and never since. a colleague told me he has a pretty serious medical issue. maybe it has something to do with that. idk.
meanwhile the main person to mentor/teach me about the ins and outs of the job was B. B shadowed me for three days and she told me she would be available to me i the next two months if i should have any questions. i never heard from her since.
and that Saturday i got real sick, real fast. like, literally. i got a pretty bad flu, but once i realized that the company policy time for calling in sick expired. so i sucked it up and did my route anyway, but texted B just because i promised manager and B that I'd communicate well with them.
and while i was sick i read up on the company news, whilst trying to figure out my rights and responsibilities. turns out some colleagues wanted to protest since, yeah, the hourly rate is lower than a discount store i worked at in 2018. but the court decided they weren't allowed to protest untill the end of januari, since we are essential workers.
i was also trying to figure out why manager had these bikes and why they had to go back, but at the same time the bike i returned at the end of every workday was standing in front of our living space for days after he said he definitely had to bring them back. and he hadn't contacted me about it, either.
and why was my bike not good enough? all i knew is i have a sturdy bike without a carrier at the front… that's…. /Probably/ what he meant?… when he said mine wasn't good. enough?
a few days pass and I'm still sick. my manager calls me to ask how i feel but also that he did expect me to work on Saturday. i told him I'd let him know how i felt on Saturday. i did, i was still sick.
he messaged me back asking if i could bring back the bike and fortunately my bf was nice enough to bring it back that day, even though he was stil sick, to.
i also told him i couldn't afford a new bike. since I'm not willing to buy a brand new bike on a gamble if it's good enough and the amount of time I'd have to work to earn it back. he agreed i could use my own bike.
i came back this morning and everybody seemed more distant. i noticed the lended bike was still there. it's Tuesday. then i went to put the bags on my bike where the mail goes into, and they didn't fit on the back of my bike. i just went home and I'm waiting for manager to do his job or fire me.