Back in the Saddle Again

This is actually the same title I gave an entry on my homeschool blog, but given the amount of time since my last post, it seems relevant.

I'm going to whine a bit here:

I had gotten a temporary job at a major online retailer for the holidays. It was temp-to-perm. They have a detailed system whereby if you are late or absent you get "points". If you get 6 points you are out of there. A "no-call, no-show" is 3 points. An "unexcused absence" is 1.5 points (and unexcused seems to be anything that does not involve a doctors note or major media intervention).

On the day before Thanksgiving, I called in sick (I think throwing up qualifies). We do not have a doctor here, nor do we have insurance right now. An initial visit would be at least $100, especially if it involved medication. We did not have $100 either. It was taking $10 for a round-trip to work and back just in gas. I figured calling in would cover the "unexcused" part. The next day, I was not sure if we had to work or not. Last I heard was that either we would not work at all, or go in at midnight. (What they did was send people on night shift home at midnight that started Thanksgiving and have them come back in at midnight that ended the holiday in order to avoid having to pay holiday pay. You can probably guess what I think of that.)

In any case, I drove to my ride-shares home in time for the regular start of shift, because I did not know what was going on.. Her children and grandchildren were there. She said that we did not have to go in at least until midnight, and that we were supposed to call in. She could not find the call-in number. We called information and got "a" number. There was no answer at that number. She sent her daughter over to her husband's house where there was some job paperwork to see if there was another number. There was, but there was a problem with that one as well. I drove back home (about 45 minutes worth) and called the number I had used to call in the previous night. They gave me a OT Hotline number ending in 2665. He repeated the number twice and I repeated the number twice. I called that number and it said it was disconnected. Great. I called my ride-share and we decided we had done everything possible short of driving in (which would be another 1.5 hours one way for me) to find out if we needed to go to work. So we didn't.

The next night we found out that we were supposed to have worked at midnight. But about 20-40 people were not there. There was yet another problem...when they called in to the correct number, ending in 2265, they were presented with 3 options "inbound, outbound and something else". Well, we were part of "outbound", except nobody knew that. So the recorded message that was there was not heard by a significant part of the workforce that night. The bosses said they were "working with" the temporary agency to see if that would be a "pointable offense". Now, they have forms there where you can request that points be removed from your record, but you have to turn it in within 48 hours. By Saturday we had not heard anything, even though I had asked several times. So I filled out one of those papers. I turned it in to my manager, who said he would pass it along to human resources. I did not hear anything back on that.

On Wednesday, Dec 8, there was a noticed up about severe weather (which was anticipated in the area for the next day). It talked about the "unlikely event of a warehouse closing due to inclement weather" and what radio and tv stations to listen to to see. At the bottom it said not to come in if we felt it would jeopardize our safety and that our safety was of their utmost concern. Well, on Thursday, I had to kick the screen door of our house open as it had been frozen shut. The roads were icy and I did not feel it was a good idea for me to drive that far alone as there were great altitude changes and if you've driven rural Kentucky before, 2 miles as the crow flies can be 10-15 on the road. So I called in.

Friday and Saturday, I was throwing up my toes, so I called in on both days. I figured they would probably not want that on their products.

On Tuesday (my next regularly scheduled work day), I drove 1.5 hours to Lexington to go to work. (The trip has taken me an hour before, but that was before the speeding ticket - my first.) When I got there, my badge would not let me in the turnstyle, so I was asked to go to the temp agency trailer. When I got there, the attendant was apparently too busy shuffling papers to pay attention to the two people needed his help for several minutes. By the time I got up there, he told me that my assignment had been terminated on the 11th (the previous Saturday) for attendance. Then he told me he needed my badge back and held out his hand. He talked like a guard at a prison.

Now, my beef is this. Did they count the Thanksgiving snafu? I feel that would be wrong. And since they do not specify what an "un/excused absence" was, in my opinion I should have only gotten 1 point i/o 1.5 points for each of the other days.

So, should I let it go and just move on, or should I protest in some way...write a letter or....? What do you think?

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