When someone we love is in trouble, our world can suddenly get a whole lot smaller. The more serious their situation is, the harder it is to focus on anything besides their well-being.
Our response to family emergencies may seem universal, perhaps even obvious, but one Michigan woman had a surprisingly hard time getting her manager to appreciate that.
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Work was the last thing on Cyrstal Reynold’s mind when her 18-year-old son, Jason, came down with a 104-degree fever.
The Ann Arbor, Michigan, native rushed her son to the hospital, where his condition only continued to get worse and worse.
She only had one simple request for her place of employment at this difficult time in her life.
After Jason was put on life support due to what doctors believed to be cellulitis sepsis, she naturally, needed time off work to be with him in what could have been his last days.
By the time she made this request to her manager at PS Food Mart, she had already been through a lot.
As she told WWMT , they had already moved hospitals and she could only wait in isolation before she heard the bad news.
As she put it, “They wouldn’t let me in the room. I didn’t know what was going on, how my son was or nothing. Finally, a doctor came out and said they had to put him on life-support.”
Sadly, Crystal was about to learn that her troubles weren’t limited to that hospital room.
In an effort to help her mom out in this difficult time, Crystal’s daughter called her boss at the Food Mart and explained the situation.
However, the manager wasn’t the least bit sympathetic and told the daughter, “This isn’t the way we run things, your mother needs to be the one calling me.”
Crystal then sent a text message to her boss personally to explain what was going on and why she couldn’t come in to work.
As far as her manager was concerned, the very idea of her missing a shift for any reason was the equivalent to quitting her job entirely.
The manager didn’t word this as firing her, strangely, but rather deciding for her that she’s quitting.
The manager went on to treat this life-threatening situation as “drama,” and said there was no reason she couldn’t work.
In her mind, as long as it was physically possible for Crystal to come into work, she had no excuse not to.
Naturally, Crystal didn’t take this attempt at forcing her to resign lying down and said she’d talk to the corporate office.
For her part, the manager seemed pretty confident that corporate would side with her.
The way she apparently saw it, she was dutifully running one of their stores and not letting what she strangely defined as “drama” get in the way of that.
However, the manager had less reason than she thought to be so self-assured.
After all, not only was her response to all of this harsh, but it was potentially illegal.
According to the Nolo , the US Family and Medical Leave Act entitles Michigan employees to up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in situations like this if they’ve been working at a company with at least 50 employees for at least a year.
If these apply in Crystal’s case, her manager put the company at risk of a lawsuit.
Crystal shared screenshots of the shocking text exchanges to her Facebook page.
The post racked up more than 50,000 reactions from people who couldn’t believe the manager’s complete and utter lack of sympathy for this mother’s situation.
After Crystal’s post about the matter went viral, PS Food Mart’s corporate office got the chance to address this themselves.
Once they found out what was going on, they reversed the manager’s decision and allowed Crystal to take the time off she needed.
And it wasn’t long before we found out what happened with that investigation either.
By the next day, they were back with a public apology and an update on the action they had taken.
Namely, that they had fired the manager responsible and were committed to supporting Crystal in her time of need.
