February 2020 Tuesday 09:00
Armed with a two week sicknote, I’m relieved that I have a break from the stress, bullying and harassment that is my place of work
—but I also need to drop in the grievance letter per the union.
I was told by HR that I can post the sicknote and save myself the bother. Nothing from them to say that the treatment of me is a black mark on the company policy or an abhorrent way to treat a human being. Any way as I have friends there and not seeing them for two weeks will be difficult, I call in early to catch the two production ladies-unfortunately one is off poorly but I leave the envelope and go back home.
The ‘grievance’ letter is prepared and sent in and is eventually acknowledged and I am told a meeting will be convened. I start to receive conflicting communications from the chairman and HR.
Eventually a meeting is held between HR [only does things for the benefit of the company or what they say], the chairman and myself. It’s been weeks but they’ve “not started ‘investigating’ the matter” yet.
I have to get another sick certificate for another two weeks whilst the ‘company’ seem to be dragging their feet. I cannot attend work or see friends. Totally isolated.
Finally get the chance to have the ‘investigation meeting’ and run through the list.
Now the chairman asks “What do you want from this?” to which I reply ‘What I have said all along. I want the harassment and bullying to stop and to return to my job without facing a hostile environment. For instance I want Boss’s Pet “I’m nice me” prevented from gossiping and saying things such as “she’s nasty, she’s very nasty” to all and sundry.
I’m not holding my breath.
It was the right decision not to.
Taking the union in to the outcome of grievance meeting we find that the chairman and HR do not uphold the grievance and think that I should accept a small sum to ‘go whilst signing an NDA.
It’s my best chance says the union as they’ll only make my life more of a living hell than they already do. Reluctantly I agree and the company say they’ll draw up the papers.
A short while later I now discover[i], that the chairman’s business associate and their husband had been hospitalised for Covid-19 and plastered it all over facebook then hurriedly deleting it again. They’d been to Italy skiing-en-famile in it seems, the epicentre of the misery and death that coronavirus 19 brings and now wanted to make like Shaggy ‘it wasn’t me’.
Still-InPiquet-another of the associate businesses run by the mother, has been sending in employees from their offices down to sit in our employees offices, which are a very tight squeeze. Seems more likely now that the FD/MD and Boss’s Pet knew this and suspected that they virus had been passed to me.
I quickly fired off an e-mail to the chairman telling them of their failure to disclose the sending of an employee of a seemingly Covid-19 infected boss down to the office where I worked not to mention the inter-relations the chairman had with the boss anyway. Interesting that they denied they knew who it was, they had no-one within their circles who that could possibly be and I was talking rubbish. They didn’t even go on facebook for goodness sake.
The union said I shouldn’t have sent the e-mail. The chairman spoke to the union and apparently “assured them” I was spouting “rubbish”. Really?
A few days later the chairman was back-tracking-they knew who I meant however they’d had no handshakes with InPiquet. They didn’t explain the attendance of the InPiquet’s employee sat desk-to-desk in a tiny office of five.
I let the authorities know and, claiming ‘Whistleblower[ii]’ status, retracted my acceptance of the ‘offer’.
Doctor in Italy repeated the horrific experiences of dealing with the virus and we’re kept in the dark about the virus being brought in amongst us.
Next thing I know the decision has been made to make me redundant. The only person in the whole building. The only person out of the 90 people working there. A replacement for me had already been engaged some weeks prior (presumably when they packed up my belongings from my desk).
