This is very long, apologies in advance.
My Dad was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in March 2014. After struggling for several months, at the beginning of August 2014 I was signed off work with depression by my GP (prior to this I had 3 weeks’ absence for gastroenteritis, also signed off by GP, and 5 days for flu). I was prescribed antidepressants at the same time, the dosage of which was increased several times.
Whilse I was on sick leave there was constant pressure to get back to work- my boss made me send her weekly 'updates' by email- anybody with even the slightest knowledge of the experience of depression will know that this is ridiculous- I was having to essentially make shit up when all I wanted to write was 'Dear Boss, it's Friday again, my Father is still dying, I'm still having to take industrial strength antidepressants just to make it through the day. Alright thanks, same time next week, Wandering'.
I returned to work at the beginning of November. At the same time my Dad was moved into a hospice in a fairly remote village in Essex. I travel by public transport, and there is only 1 bus there from nearest town every hour and a half, with the last one leaving town at 18:50, and the last bus back to town leaving at 19:39. I realised that when I went back to working full days I would only be able to get the last bus, so I’d only be able to spend about 20 minutes with my Dad before I’d have to leave again. With this in mind, I asked my manager if, just for as long as my Dad was in the hospice (which at the time was only predicted to be a few weeks), I could possibly leave work about 40 minutes early a few days a week, to allow me to get the 17:20 bus from town and have closer to 2 hours with my father. The next day she and I spoke on the phone about it (she works from home and only comes into the office one day a month) and her suggestion was to alter my contracted working hours to two mornings and two full days a week. My workload would remain the same, but I would be spending less time essentially doing nothing in between tasks, and I’d have two afternoons and one full day free, so I would obviously be able to see my Dad a lot more. This was the element of the change that I was focussing on; it didn’t occur to me to ask about the effect on my salary, and no mention of it was made during the conversation. I verbally agreed to the changes and was sent my new contract to sign and return. This was when I discovered that my salary (at the time £25k) had been reduced by £10,000, or 40%. However since I had already verbally agreed, I didn’t feel that I could go back to her and say that I couldn’t do it. I felt like I'd be saying that spending time with my dying father wasn't worth the pay cut.
My new contract came into effect on the 24th November. On the 28th my Dad, who had been allowed to go home the day before, rapidly deteriorated and had to go back to the hospice. My uncle advised me of the seriousness of the situation and said I needed to get to the hospice as soon as possible. I left work immediately and went straight there.
The following Monday my DP contacted the office to let them know I was still at the hospice (I hadn't left at all since I'd got there on the Friday) with my father and would be there indefinitely. That night my Dad passed away.
I called my manager the next morning to let her know what had happened. She was sympathetic, but did say that she wasn’t sure how much compassionate leave she could allow me as I’d had so much ‘time off’ that year, so I would have to take the days I had off that week either out of my holiday allowance (it being December I only had a few days left), or as unpaid leave. As I knew I would be paid considerably less in December than I had been previously due to the change in my salary (I was technically overpaid in November too as the new contract started a week before payday, so that was also deducted from my December pay), I decided to take it from my holiday. The only compassionate leave I was given was the day I had off for the funeral. I went in mid-afternoon that Thursday (a day I usually had free) as my manager was in the office for the company Christmas party, but I was expected to be back at work the next Monday as, with the days I had off that week being taken out of my annual leave, I didn’t have enough holiday left to be off any more.
During this time I felt mentally and physically exhausted, those four days I had spent in the hospice being very emotionally and physically draining and having had very few hours sleep. My sleeping pattern became very fragmented; I have a great deal of trouble getting to sleep at night and would be awake until 4:30 – 5 a.m. and had frequent nightmares. I sent my manager an email on the Monday morning (at about 4:30 a.m.) and explained this, and said I didn’t feel able to go into work that day. This continued on the Tuesday, and that afternoon I spoke to her on the phone and she said that the current situation couldn’t continue, and that she wanted to offer me a settlement agreement, a draft of which she sent me by email the next day. She asked me to verbally agree as soon as possible. The sum I was offered in the settlement is £1000 – my manager said she was only supposed to offer £900 but had increased it. She also said that there were likely to be several redundancies in the first quarter of this year and that in that case, as I’d been with the company less than two years, I won’t be entitled to any payment at all. Essentially it was, take the settlement now or be made redundant later; either way you're out.
One of my tasks at work was to process the childcare vouchers issued to employees. To do this I had to look at the payroll breakdown. It was whilst doing this that I noticed that (with the exception of the company directors) everybody in the company was getting a 10% bonus, except for me. I wasn't prying; it was only through flicking through the pages in the payroll breakdown to find the childcare voucher sheet that I spotted it. So whilst everybody else in the company was having a lovely Christmas with an extra 10% of their salary to play with, I was paid less than £950. I know that the reason I didn't get a bonus was because of the amount of sick leave I had, which I would understand were it not that one of my colleagues had over two weeks more sick leave than I did, and he still got a bonus. However he had been with the company longer and was very seriously ill, whereas my sickness was 'in my head'. However his problems started when he injured himself playing rugby while he was pissed; mine started when I had to watch my Father dying a slow painful death.
Even though this was all almost a year ago, I still feel so hurt and upset by it. I just feel that I was kicked when I was down, and that I was punished for having too much ‘time off’ (as my manager kept referring to it). Before my Father got sick I'd never had any problems at work, I was good at my job and got on very well with everyone in the (very small) company.
Would you still be bitter about this? Or should I just get the hell over it?