Every country has its own issues and the natives will always have something to complain about, but many people still can’t get over how the US has so many problems when it is supposed to be one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in the world.
While we've got a bit bored from talking about the unfair healthcare system there, the new topic is working conditions. One of the aspects that really bother non-Americans is that American workers aren't guaranteed paid time off by the government. What is even more sad, if they have to take time off, it is not always approved and they can get fired over it.
Samantha really needed a couple of weeks off after her grandfather died so she could go back to Toronto to be with her family and warned her workplace in advance. But she received a personal email from her boss saying that she had been terminated. That’s not fair in and of itself, but turns out that she wasn’t even fired.
More info: Reddit
Woman's workplace couldn't make up their minds over whether she was fired or not after she left to visit family because her grandad died
Image credits: United Soybean Board (not the actual photo)
Samantha Lee studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in 2021 received her Bachelor’s degree. She now makes self- published autobiographical comics. The artist posts her work on her website and her Instagram.
Besides that, the woman also shares the process of her making comics, painting, traveling or visiting cool cafes on her TikTok account. She gives snippets into her life and recently one of her videos blew up with 7.1 million views.
The employee informed her boss about being away in advance because her grandad died
Image credits: www.tiktok.com
Image credits: samanthamtlee13
The video was actually a slideshow in photo mode and it showed screenshots of emails that she exchanged with her former boss at a kindergarten she worked at. What we find out from these screenshots is that last year, Samantha lost her grandfather and was supposed to go to Toronto for a couple of weeks.
However, her boss was not willing to approve the leave because the company was already short-staffed. Fortunately, Samantha read the rules and knew that she didn’t even need approval from her manager to take time off because she worked part-time due to her health.
Because she worked part-time, she didn't need anyone's approval, but her boss still told her that she wouldn't let her go because they were severely understaffed
Image credits: samanthamtlee13
Image credits: samanthamtlee13
The next email Samantha received from her boss told her that she could take time off after all due to bereavement, which is when a relative or a close friend dies. Samantha would have gone to Toronto whether the dates were approved or not, but that doesn’t mean that she didn't worry about her employment, especially because her boss contacted her again during her time off.
The email was unusual because it was sent from the boss’ personal email address. It said that the company was severely understaffed and because Samantha had left when the company needed her so much, her work contract was terminated. Further details were to be emailed by HR.
It’s a weird way to solve the problem because now the company had even less workers, as many people pointed out in the comments. But what they didn’t know until reading the next screenshot was that Samantha wasn’t fired at all. She didn’t receive any email from HR for several days, so she tried to get to the bottom of this herself.
When the woman reminded her boss about the different rules for part-timers, she was allowed to return after her time off
Image credits: samanthamtlee13
Image credits: samanthamtlee13
HR had no idea that Samantha was told not to come back to work. They denied firing her and told her to contact her boss about the return date after her time off. After reading the last email, people had theories of what happened.
They suspected that the boss sent out the email from her personal email address to cover her tracks and expected Samantha not to come back thinking she was fired, which would lead to her actually being fired because she wouldn’t come to work.
Thankfully, there were people in Samantha’s life who encouraged her to ask questions and speak her mind, which probably not only allowed her to maintain her job, but was a step towards self-respect, as the woman mentioned that she doesn’t usually do anything when she’s wronged.
However, during her time off, Samantha was told that she was actually fired and it was sent from the boss' personal email
Image credits: samanthamtlee13
Image credits: samanthamtlee13
The toxic boss wasn’t fired but Samantha said in another video that her boss announced that she was leaving the week that all of this was going on. That’s why the woman decided to stay, because those emails were just one part of her job, and actually, she liked working with kids and got along with her coworkers.
It was just the management that made the job not worth it. She doesn’t work there anymore but what she learned was that “no matter how good the job is, you can still decide to leave.”
In the end, Samantha was never given an explanation and was blamed for her boss’ behavior because HR told her “Sarah wouldn’t have sent that if you didn’t leave.”
So she went to HR to find out if she was still an employee or not and realized her boss was lying, because HR wasn't aware of any termination
Image credits: samanthamtlee13
Samantha’s experience is quite common and usually, people don’t quit because they don’t like the job so much. The thing that drives them crazy more are the people they have to work with. Good Hire conducted a survey of 3,000 full-time American workers that revealed that “82% of American workers said they would potentially quit their job because of a bad manager.”
People aren’t just considering it. Results of another survey conducted in the UK revealed that “43 per cent of workers have left a job at some point in their career because of their manager.” The biggest issue the respondents had with their manager was their inability to listen–half of them pointed this characteristic as a negative feature in a manager.
The kindergarten teacher worked there for a while more, but left despite loving her job, the kids and some of the people she worked with
Image credits: samanthamtlee13
Image credits: Ian Sane (not the actual photo)
What do you think happened here? Was it just one big misunderstanding? Do you think the manager was being malicious? Have you ever come up with an explanation why managers are so unbearable or only unbearable people become managers? Let us know your thoughts and reactions in the comments.
Others found the manager incompetent but also evil as they suspected she wanted Samantha to be fired when she didn't turn up for work
