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Get sick, get fired

Get sick, get fired

Last updated on: October 24, 2023 at 2:22 pm by Fred Clark

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Get sick, get fired 2023-10-24T14:22:17-04:00 Fred Clark

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So I was writing about the respective theodicies of conspiracy theories and urban legends yesterday afternoon, my wife’s day off, when her boss called to tell her “It’s just not working out.”

After more than 20 years at the salon — with nothing but praise from the many, many clients whose business she’s brought there — my wife just got fired. By phone call.

Her boss refused to given any explanation for this other than responding to every question with that same weird phrase, “It’s just not working out.” But we know why she got fired.

It’s because she got sick.

Long covid put the Slacktivixen in the hospital last December and she wound up spending most of January in the ICU, on a ventilator, battling a rare form of pneumonia and a serious secondary infection. But where we viewed this as her fighting for her life, her boss seemed to view this as her blowing off work.

Even worse, in her boss’s view, was that when she finally did return to work in the beginning of March, she came with a letter from her doctor, and another letter from two doctors at the hospital, explaining their doctor’s orders about the limits and accommodations she would need. The boss responded to those letters by telling my wife that, as a business owner, she “can’t afford” such “special treatment.” And she reminded my wife, repeatedly, that the salon was “a privately owned business,” which she said exempted her from the kind of labor laws governing large, publicly traded companies. And which also, apparently, exempted her from common decency and basic humanity.

Meanwhile, my wife has been dealing both with long covid and with the condition she first developed almost two years ago. That’s been the source of serious, enduring pain, but it should be something surgery could fix entirely. Her trip to the ICU back in January derailed her first scheduled surgery for that, and we spent most of this year waiting for her lung scans to finally come back 100% pneumonia free so that this surgery could be rescheduled. That first clear lung scan happened in July after which she had another round of MRIs and various -oscopies.

That testing produced another letter, this one from the doctors on the surgical team. They explained that her condition is extremely painful and suggested part-time work or a partial medical leave until after her surgery.

It seems like that surgery — which was set for next month, about three weeks from now — was the final straw for my wife’s now-former employer. So she got fired for getting sick.

There’s no severance pay. My wife’s health insurance effectively ended with that vicious phone call yesterday afternoon and I don’t know what that means just yet for that surgery next month. I’m not sure how quickly we’ll be able to get her covered under my plan or under COBRA. All I know is that it cannot get postponed again. The woman I love is in pain and this surgery can and should correct that pain. Then she’ll have more strength to tackle the long covid.

Right now, we’re waiting to hear back from a handful of attorneys to learn whether the ‘vixen’s former employer really is wholly exempt from labor and civil rights laws. The training videos they make us watch at the Big Box are very clear about making sure we do not try to fire people who get sick or who are protected under the ADA (or both). Those videos all say that this would be illegal and that it would get the company sued and that we’d lose and deserve to lose that lawsuit. I know that’s true for the publicly traded Fortune 500 Big Box Corp. But I don’t know if it’s also true for the privately owned small business with fewer than 20 employees.

I am furious — furious at that employers’ cruelty, cluelessness, and upper-class classlessness. Furious with her tacky, no-class inhumanity and her nonchalant disloyalty. But I’m keeping that fury in check for now until we hear back from those lawyers and learn what recourse we have through the proper channels. Part of me, however, is still thinking about the old newspaper saying about the unwisdom of picking a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.

But I’m not just angry, I’m also scared. Long covid had already turned our two-income family into a one-and-a-half-income family. That’s meant putting off repairs to the roof and the Yaris. Fine. But I’m not willing to put off repairs to my wife herself, even if I cannot figure out, quite yet, how to afford that.

And so this is, as you may have guessed, a fundraising post.

My Paypal link is here:

I am also on Venmo as @George-Clark-61.

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