I just need to rant about this. It's about both myself and my mother.
My mother and I work/ed for our local library system (she's still there, I am not due to reasons I'll get into later). She's been there 17 years, and she worked her way up from shelver to circulation manager. She's the type of manager who never asks anyone to do anything she wouldn't do. She scrubs the bathroom when people fling shit all over it (happens more often than you'd think). She bans people who abuse her employees. She secretly pays for food for the homeless regulars out of pocket, even after the higher-ups told her not to. She's all-around the type of manager someone SHOULD be, but so often we don't see.
She recently got her annual performance review. For context, she's been taking care of my grandmother, who is 81 years old and has increasingly severe dementia. Some days she needs to stay home when grandma is having a particularly bad day, since she's the only one who can take care of her (I don't live too close). For this purpose, she has FMLA, as well as over 300 hours of accrued leave time. She always makes sure her work is taken care of, and works from home whenever possible.
But her boss – a boss who spent $100k on a bathroom renovation and bragged to my mom about it, knowing my mom owes that much on a house she's been struggling to pay off for nearly 30 years; a boss who recently has been considering dropping half a million dollars on a single painting; a boss who will put $5 in a communal fund for a coffee pot and nag minimum wage employees to help pay for it – told her she's been taking too much time off and needs to “choose between her job and her family.” Mom has been a mess ever since. She's been working there for nearly 20 years as a dedicated employee, and this is how she's treated? It infuriates me.
The same library fucked me over as well. Here's the fucking hilarious part, okay? I worked in the collection department where we buy all the books. One day a week, I was supposed to be scheduled to HELP in the shipping room – keyword, HELP, as in assist the full-time shipping room person. But you know what would inevitably happen every Friday, on the day I worked in there? He would take off. Sometimes with less than 24 hours notice. Sometimes with less than 2 hours notice. I would then, as a 5'4, 125 lb woman, be left to run the entire shipping room myself while he had his three-day weekend (or longer).
I'm disabled. They all knew this. Regardless, I would have to lift 50+ lb boxes on the regular, unpack everything, unload trucks, organize boxes, push carts filled with books and movies, etc. for 8 hours at a time. It took such a toll on my health that I got FMLA and begged for accommodations, begged them to do something about his attendance, but they did nothing except tell me “you can take a break more often if you need to.” Thanks, that makes the hours of unnecessary physical labor hurt less.
Their reasoning for never, ever denying his leave requests? “He has the time saved up. We have to let him take it.” I saw his performance reviews once (they were in an unsecured folder on the network). All glowing. None mentioned his attendance at all. And for the record, his reasoning for never being there a full week despite being full-time was “I don't feel like it/I want to play video games/a new movie is coming out/etc.”
Now, I'm all for being anti-work. I'd love it if we could all stay home and play video games and still be able to survive. But when you have an obligation to work full-time, and you effectively only work part-time, that bugs me. When you leave a disabled person to pick up your slack, that bugs me. When my mother gets her leave time to take care of her sick mother denied despite having more than enough hours saved, but someone else is allowed to take time off for fun, that bugs me.
I quit in 2018 due to my decreasing health and quality of life. Ruining my body wasn't worth the $15 an hour they paid me. I was a stellar employee who developed systems to make everyone's jobs easier, and they were happy to lose me in favor of a guy who was happy to leave others in the lurch.
I now have a better job that pays a ton more, but my mother is still there out of some twisted Gen X sense of loyalty combined with the sunk cost fallacy. I've been urging her to get the fuck out, that a better opportunity is out there, but she's hesitant to take the plunge. How on earth can I convince her it isn't worth it anymore? They clearly don't give a shit about her. They play favorites and discriminate against the disabled and people with family health problems.
I don't know what to say or what to do. It's exhausting. How can anyone be so callous as to say “it's your job or your soon-to-be-dying mother?” These bosses have never struggled a day in their life, and it's obvious to see. I want to burn the whole crooked system to the ground so it can start over. You'd think a library of all places would be a little more sympathetic, especially since it's not profit-driven, but no. The poison affecting higher-ups has spread and become terminal even there.
I don't even know where I'm going with this. If you read this far, thank you, especially if you have any kind words or advice. Sorry it's so long, I'm just angry and tired. What a bullshit world we live in.