Thursday, January 12, 2006

Work Vent

I’m having some difficulty with my job, without going into too much detail my Manager seems to be in denial about the fact that YES I AM PREGNANT. I have requested next Tuesday off as Annual Leave and for my Wedding Anniversary in Feb I have asked for 3 days. I have more than enough Leave owing to me. But for some reason he won’t approve the leave, being too worried about the work ahead.

This weekend I started suffering the great side of being pregnant, riding (or rather driving) the porcelain bus. Having my head down the toilet bowl so to speak, all the while smiling away. I travel about an hour to work each way and couldn’t predict when I would need to visit the bus again. So I didn’t go to work on Monday or Tuesday.

Maxalon is now my friend and I don’t leave home without it in my bag. So I have been coping well with the morning sickness, nausea I can handle vomiting anytime of the day is difficult to schedule in. Yesterday morning I approached my Manager to ask for a status update on my Annual Leave request and was taken into a meeting room where I was asked to provide an estimate of the work effort I will be committing to over my pregnancy. In other words I was asked to predict if I would be at work for a full 5 days or should he estimate me being here for only part of the week.

Needless to say I was very upset by all this conversation and expressed my outrage of how I was being treated. When I told my Manager about Bobim I did mention (now on a number of occasions) that I wanted to be removed from the Supervisor role, but continue working on the project. He doesn’t like that idea and refuses to discuss this topic.

Instead I’ve been asked to take on additional responsibilities rather than lighten my load and unfortunately even though I would love to quit, I can’t as Tim is still on working on a casual basis, and we need the money I earn.

I don’t need this in my life right now and I’m stressed and worried when I should be happy and excited, I just feel used and abused. The one bright light in all this was an email I received from my old department asking for people to go back and work there as they are under resourced for the year.

So my question to you is what would you do in my situation?
Would you apply for the new role even though you know you will not be there for the whole year?
Would you just stick it out?
Or, would you just contact the Human Resource department and get them involved?

There is another pregnant lady in this department and I asked this guy if the same questions on sick leave and annual leave were being asked of her….his response….”This has nothing to do with K”…I said yes it does, unless you are treating me the exact same way, it only illustrates how unfairly I’m being treated.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You certainly dont need the stress. Do everything you can to alleviate it!

I suppose it all depends on whether you want to, or can be, a SAHM after Bobim is born? If you can afford to change jobs now, or leave, I would!

It all sounds very, very discriminating to me, and Im sure its illegal! I dont work, so Im probably no help at all.. sorry!

Good luck with it all, remember.. you are the most important issue involved here. :) (And your precious little one!)

felicity.

Anonymous said...

This is really infuriating, and, if you were in the u.s., I'd say blatantly discriminatory and illegal. I'm guessing employment protection laws there are similar, so I'd go strait to h.r. I'm sorry you're having to deal with this jerkface.