LogFAQs > #931251239

When I first started my current job 7+ years ago, my supervisor at the time was a notorious bully to male workers and had often insinuated I would either be let go or moved to another shop over the course of my first three years.
I received my first verbal warning a few months in when a blizzard closed the roads and I couldn't make it to work. By the time the plows came it was already 10 hours into a 12 hour shift and he wrote me up because I didn't come in for the last two hours. He also laughed and said he didn't even make it in either.

So after that I was terrified of missing work. I worked through numerous illnesses sometimes taking upwards of four energy drinks to make it through a shift. Later I slipped a disk in my back and showed up to work three backshifts in a row in so much pain I couldn't walk and breathe at the same time.

I also once came in so sick that as soon as people on the crew saw me they told me I should go home, but I didn't because I knew I would get another warning on my file. Keep in mind female employees pretty much had free reign as far as attendance went, often missing numerous shifts a week.

After three years he got transferred out of our shop, but I was still so terrified of missing a shift of work for being sick I still came in. The first time I showed up for work as sick as I was our new supervisor told me not to show up for the next shift. So for the first time in seven years I took my first sick day.

---

"I understand that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears." - Grendel