I was let go from work on Wednesday, three days before Christmas. I was at that job for just about a year, and was expecting to be laid off at the end of January anyway, but since I had some attendance problems (mainly because I had my own health issues to deal with and because I took some days off to take care of my wife, who has been having more serious health issues). I used up all of my medical leave and my unexcused absences. I was supposed to have been let go on the 10th, but the union managed to keep me at the job until the 22nd, and they considered that to be a small miracle in and of itself. It just goes to show how little power the union really had, though I don't doubt tha the union President fought hard on my behalf. A co-worker who used to live in Philadelphia told me that if that had happened in the union up there the worst that would have happened was for me to have been put on probation. As it is, I went a day and a half over my allotted time off, so they canned me. Hey, this
is a red state, after all.
Siemens Tucker has what they call a "points" system as far as absences is concerned: you are allowed 8 "points" a year, that is, eight unexcused absences. Every day off, you are given a "point". When you go over eight, you are terminated. I was at 5.5 (you can get a half-point if you stay only six hours of a a shift) until late November, when I missed a day to take care of my wife, a day because I went to the auto repair place expecting a fifteen-to-twenty minute fix on my alternator that turned into a five and a half hour marathon, and two days because I had throat surgery. I guess I thought I still had some sick days coming, but I was wrong. Anyway, they gave me two points for those sick days and that put me at 9.5 points, enough to give me the boot.
Not too long ago, in fact they changed in summer of 2003, you were given 12 points, and at the beginning of the year everything reverted back to zero. The new system only gave you a point back an entire year after you used it, which is going from one ridiculous extreme to another. I mean, I know there were people who were abusing the 12-point system, but there are always better ways of dealing with these issues than screwing the system up for everyone else. Even eight points would have been acceptable if you got a point back after three months, but a year is kind of ridiculous. Unfortunately I had no power to change things, and nether, apparently, did the union.
You know, losing the job doesn't bother me. Seriously, it doesn't. Even though the pay and bennies were pretty good for that kind of unskilled labor, the truth of the matter is that it was a boring job in a badly organized plant filled with supervisors who were a combination of arrogance and incompetence. I never expected to make a career out of it, but I at least hope to leave on better terms. Now I'm uncertain about getting my unemployment benefits, if I have to I will bring not only my own medical records but my wife's as well, jist so they know that it wasn't a case of me taking days off to be lazy. I don't deny I took two or three days off because I was too stressed out to go to work, but there were at least as many days that I took off because my wife was in so much pain that I needed to be with her just in case something happened. We're all alone here, we have no family to watch over us, so we're operating without a net. But since I was expecting to lose my job at the end of January anyway, the loss of the job itself didn't bug me.
No, what bugs me is the complete and utter lack of, well, humanity, for want of a better word, by the company. They weren't concerned about my health and welfare, nor that of my wife. All that mattered to them was that I took a day and a half off more than I was allowed to, and that was that. See ya. I mean, never mind the fact that it's Christmas: frankly I think all that stuff is kind of over-rated. If it's wrong to fire you at Christmas over something trivial, it's wrong to do the same thing in May or August, especially true if they refuse to budge knowing you have some real issues to deal with. I betcha some corporate executive weasel had a good laugh over how they saved the company (which earns profits in the billions annually) a couple hundred bucks, meanwhile I have to fight with unemployment, because the state is strapped for cash and they're going to skim as many dubious people off unemployment as they possibly can. The plain truth of the matter is that they didn't have to let me go under those circumstances. Letting me stay on until the official layoff wouldn't have cost them anything, nor would it have cost them anything to change my status from terminated to laid off. This is something they did because they wanted to do. Period. And that says something about the kind of atmosphere that exists in the American workplace (especially in the red states).
And to top it all off, my wife went to the hospital on Tuesday for her pre-operation physical and wound up being admitted: it turns out she's diabetic, and she'll be in the hospital probably through Christmas. Sorry if this all is horribly depressing: It's a crappy ending to a crappy year, we can only hope it gets better in '05.
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