If there is a change in policy on FMLA's I think that personel or management should let you know of it instead of letting you apply for a leave, taking it, waiting to see if it gets approved, calling in everyday till it gets approved, not hearing whether its been approved or not until you go back to work from your leave, then finding out that it was denied and all the days you were off for the fmla gets counted against your attendance. This has happened to me twice, took a leave in Sept 09 and in Jan 10 and they both got denied. The length of both leaves were only 2 weeks each. But with both getting denied, all those days i supposedly thought I was on leave were counted against me. I had taken leaves before for the same reason and they had gotten approved. I took the leaves because my granddaughter has Cystic Fibrosis and is admitted into the hospital frequently and I took an fmla whenever I could to help my daughter out by staying at the hospital with my granddaughter some so she could go home and be with her other child. Someone has to be with her at the hospital at all times and I am the only other family member who knows how to take care of her special needs because of her condition, and she also has a g-tube and requires tube feeding that sometimes the nurses are not always available to start them when they need to be. Anyway, after the second leave got denied I found out the reason they both got denied was because the policy on the fmla's had changed sometime middle of last year and didnt cover you staying at the hospital with grandchildren, it has to be closer relation. Why was I not told this prior to requesting both leaves and being given the papers to fill out by the doctors at the hospital? If I had known that I would not have taken the leaves because I did not want or need all those days counted against my attendance. They knew it would be denied so why did they allow me to take the leaves, they knew why I was taking a leave because I had done it before. Needless to say it is stressful enough to have a grandchild who has this terrible disease, and she has a really bad case of it, but barely two weeks after the second one was denied, I had been at work for only an hour, I was told to go to the office and was terminated because of my attendance!!! Needless to say, I was very upset about this and had spoken to Corinthians Williams the day before over the phone at the store about this and she told me it was denied at store level. When in the office I was told it was denied by her. I told them that was not true I had spoken to her the day before and she had not denied it and had not even seen papers on me for any leaves. They kept me in the office for awhile trying to get me to decide if i wanted to be fired right then and there or if I wanted a d-day and then come back after that and get fired. Either way I was getting terminated so what was the sense in putting me in that unnessary situation and uncalled for stress. They called a woman manager in there because I was so upset and crying and she finally said just go ahead and let her go today there is no sense in prolonging the inevitable. I agreed and wanted to get out of there and as I was leaving I told the female mananger that this was not the end of this because I felt as though I was done very wrong. She must have told the other two managers what I said as I was leaving the office because about 40 min later as I was on my way home from being terminated my cell phone rang and it was my store manager. He said he wasnt going to terminate me that they were going to just give me a d-day and then let me come back to work. I had no choice but to go along with it because I need my job. So the reason I have waited until now to let this be known is because I dont think it is fair that those days are still on my attendance, and one of my future career preferences is CSM and since all this happened there has been 3 or 4 CSM positions to come open and I have not been eligible to apply for them because of my attendance. I am not able to move up in positions or get the pay that goes with it because of this. It is mostly younger girls that has gotten the positions and I am a 47 year old single woman who needs her job and to be able to move up in positions and get the pay raise that goes with it. I think this was very unfair and not handled very well at all and caused me alot of undue stress and I have enough of that in my life already. At least I think all those days should be taken off my attendance, at the most, well, I dont know yet.
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