Grandmothers Death, Mourning, anxiety, humiliation, children out of school due to snow storm
by Carol Perrin
(Manassas, VA)
My name is Carol from Virginia. I quit my job on 2-10-10. The week prior I had to take a leave of absence because a death in the family oocurred at approximately 2AM the morning of 1/25/2010. My grandma, who lives overseas in Panama passed and my mother had to catch a flight within in 3 days to bury her mom. When I received the phone call at work, I continued to work my day although I was hurting on the inside and wanted to be there for my mom. I quickly filed my taxes on 1/26/10 and bought my mothers ticket. I worked the rest of that week. Between the death and Va snowstorm and the kids being out of school, I felt everything was coming down on me at once. I called my employer and asked for the following week off (2/1/10 to 1/5/10)and my supervisor reminded me that it would be unpaid and I said that's fine. Well, Monday 2-8-10 came around and embarrassingly,I needed to ask for more time. I was still mourning, the children were out of school on 2/1, 2/3, 2/5, and 2/8 (not to mention I felt as if I was having anxiety attacks because of all the stress. I called the job on 2/8 to let them know I was not going to be able to make it. I called back the following day to talk with my supervisor about all concerns. I had never been so humiliated. I started the conversation by apologizing for any inconvenience to the job and expressed to her my feelings and tried to explain to her that I would need acouple more days and she laughed, stated that she wasn't paying attention to me because she was in the middle of something else and that we could have this discussion in HR's office the following day. She did not listen to me or my concerns; she was rude and I felt dismissed before I even decided to resign. I asked to speak to HR and was on hold for such a long rime that I hung up. I honestly felt like they were going to let me go. I have never been let go and honestly was scared to have a fire on my record. The following day I turned in the key and gave my resignition letter. I made sure that it was a nice letter so that the company will give me a good referral in the future. I worked almost 3 years for this company. I received a letter stating that on 4-6-2010 at 1:30PM a deputy will call me. It states that the following issues has been raised concering my eligibility for unemployment: whether or not you voluntary quit your employer with good cause. Should I give up or continue?
Thank you for your time, Carol P.
Carol,
I will very rarely tell anyone to "just give up", because I know that unemployed people often times fail to reveal to me what I think might be relevant and workable, but I can tell you this .. that "quitting in anticipation of discharge is almost always a death knell for benefits .. with the rare exception under special circumstances in Ohio.
They have your "nice" resignation letter and that's what they will use. You didn't speak to HR therefore you didn't follow through with what I think might have been "workable" if that call hadn't resolved anything for you.
I'm sorry, but I'm not hopeful .. unless I'm missing something that would be relevant to show you quit for a reason attributable to the work and not because you were fearful of being fired.
