it makes me unbelievably angry that there is an expectation that me or any other of my coworkers are expected to come in when we are sick. If you call in to mention that you are sick then you are harassed and guilted into coming in, perhaps even threatened if they dislike you enough or you have gotten sick one too many times lately.
And if you do come in while you are visibly sick, they really do not care. There is no worry about you infecting a customer. They really do not give a single thought to the fact that you are handling peoples produce. They do not care that you are struggling and they will continue to pull the normal bullshit that they pull.
If I see a coworker that is sick I can point out that they look like shit and that they shouldn’t be here, but all I get are weary responses and dead eyes. They know they shouldn’t be here, they don’t want to be, but they know there is no grace. They know it is expected of them. They know that management has seen them being sick and that management doesn’t care. The customers aren’t complaining so they don’t feel a need to fix anything.
And if you somehow do face their threats and come out the other side? They don’t stop at one day of guilt. Every shift is a skeleton crew because they don’t want to spend on hours, so if you call out… They didn’t have coverage when you were expected to be there and now a bad day has gone to a worse day for everyone involved.
Now your bosses have to fill the gaps, stay late to cover your shift. When the topic of blame comes up, they’re not going to look up at the poorly written schedule. All of the schedules are like that. No, they’re looking at you. You’re making their lives hard. If you stand up for yourself more than once? They notice every time you’re gone. The resentment grows and it comes back to you in some other way.
It’s not retaliation, they’re just enforcing rules that have always been there. Nobody else needs to follow that rule? Actually they do, do you know who else isn’t following that rule? Can you name names? We just want to make sure that we’re making things fair, but if you don’t want to name names there’s nothing we can do about other people breaking the rules.
it just feeds into all of the other sickening avenues of abuse that are so normalized that you can’t do anything about them. You can mention twenty things that are wrong about how they are treating you and your coworkers can say “that’s not right” but they can’t actually fix anything.
You call the union for the umpteenth time and your union leader sounds upset, they always sound upset, and you tell them about the newest injustice. You mention offhandedly a couple other issues and they tell you what you know “they can’t do that” but they are doing it. “They might say that but they can’t enforce it.” but they still say it every time. Nobody stops them from saying it. Saying something that isn’t right isn’t illegal after all. At least, it’s not illegal enough that the union can do anything other than say “that’s wrong” about it. You’re assured of what you already knew, how they are treating you is not right, but they’re not breaking your contract so the union can’t do anything about it either…
The stress of it all starts to get to you and your body stops working as well. You get sick again. Stress finally wore you down. You know that if you call out that they’re going to ask you to work. The words get harsher, the threats clearer, your reputation worse. Maybe you get tired of being ostracized and you decide to work sick. You need the money after all, you’re already struggling to get by.
You look like shit by the way, you shouldn’t be here working. When it’s pointed out to you, all you can do is give a dead eyed stare and respond wearily.