Fired for Mental Illness

devious submitted 251 days ago

My husband is mentally ill. He has Schizoaffective Disorder with Bi-Polar tendencies. Basically, that means he's up, down, and schizo (delusional) at the same time. Very fun.

Shortly after he was diagnosed, I started working at a very small, family operated gas station/feed store. I started as a part-time evening cashier, and worked my way up to opening and closing. Everyone in charge was either close friends or family. This didn't bother me much until my husband was put on some medication that wasn't working- AT ALL!

We have a child together, and he was responsible for her while I was at work. I started receiving calls from him saying he was having breakdowns and couldn't handle taking care of our daughter anymore. I would have to find a replacement cashier and go home so I could bring him to the doctor for an eval. and anti-psychotic buster shot. After doing this 3-4 times in as many months, my boss told me that if I ever missed any part of my shift again, I would be fired.

Well, guess what. The phone call: "My voices are telling me to shot the kid!" THANK GOD WE DON'T OWN ANY GUNS!!!! I left to save my child and admit my husband to the hospital. The next time I went to work, I was fired. Their official reason? I took too long counting the tills (in other words, they didn't like paying me 30 min. of overtime each week for the 5 days I counted tills) and was not stern enough getting the other cashiers to do the chores they're supposed to. You would think that if I was doing such a bad job, they wouldn't have given me raises and would have TOLD ME? Nice to know that there's so many ways around the federal employment regulations.

I get the last laugh, though. Half of their employees followed me out the door, and they can't keep anyone longer than 2 months. Sucks to be them!!