A step I never thought I would take

I have discussed on here my anger towards my company for what I believe with every fiber of my being is their egregious mistreatment of me.

But I also figured there was probably not much I could do about it. Until today.

In discussion with some of the people still in sales, one of them mentioned he had talked about the situation with his wife who works in HR for another company. She believes that if they fill the recently opened sales position from outside it is quote "a big, big no-no" and a breech of contract.

That phrase was not mentioned, but it did get me to thinking...and yes, they DID breech the contract I have with them.

When the doctor put me on light duty, there was someone willing to shift down to the warehouse. Instead, I was sent home under the FMLA or some such law.

What should have happened is I should have been put somewhere that fulfilled the light duty particulars. So I went and asked our in-branch HR person about it and she said, "Yeah, I wondered about that at the time. It did not seem right."

It wasn't.

Now, in the past I would have let it slide and moved on.

Now, however, I am out to get mine, so to speak. Let me give you a little background.

We used to have a guy in the door shop. Lets call him Jimmy. Jimmy had a temper. He was known to throw door cutouts. Tools. Anything else that came to hand.

Sometimes at other people.

There is a word for people like Jimmy. I believe it is "jerk". (As an aside, he once came over to our place for poker and Emily found him so rude she refused to ever again play if he was around. Deservedly so.)

So he was punished. You might think the punishment for being so temper-prone and dangerous as to have people fearing he would get in a fight about once a week was too stiff...maybe not. See, since he could not handle his assigned job without threatening other employees, he was punished with a raise and move to a position driving a company logoed truck delivering materials to our customers.

I know, it was a severe punishment...but what he did was pretty bad.

Of course, his driving was impeccable. I mean, sure, we got a few calls almost every week complaining about him speeding, cutting people off, flipping people off, etc., but hey...everyone has SOME flaw.

Well, after his second (2nd) accident, he was forbidden to drive a company rig. Again, some people think the punishment was overly harsh.

He was given a raise, more responsibility, and put in a position with more contact with customers. Just now he had to drive his own pick-up (and get mileage reimbursement, lunches paid for, etc).

Finally, he lost his license to a DUI and was let go.

Meanwhile, I was a team player. I was asked to help the company by TEMPORARILY working in the warehouse so we could keep all our sales people.

I agreed to temporarily move to loading trucks at night.

They unilaterally made that move permanent.

As the pain and suffering mounted from plantar fasciitis and torn rotator cuff/tendinitis in the shoulder, I was basically given the double middle finger and told I could like it or quit.

When the pain in my foot reached a level I could no longer tolerate I went to the doctor. He was more concerned about the shoulder.

The guy in sales whose job I saved heard about it and volunteered to go into the warehouse.

He was turned down flat and I was refused work until the doctor cleared me.

Here is something I do not cop to very often. I lied. I lied to the doctor about how my arm felt. See, we were quickly going broke with little to no income. So I HAD to go back to work.

I do not mean to whine, but here is the reality of my existence. When I pick up a glass of soda with my left hand, I experience shooting pain from about mid-arm all the way up my shoulder. It is actually that sore and painful.

The other day a co-worker gave me a friendly tap on the shoulder. It hurt so bad it literally knocked me to my knees and brought tears to my eyes. Just to put it in perspective...if you burped a baby as softly as he tapped my shoulder, the baby would never burp. We are not talking blunt force trauma here.

Turning quickly brings blinding pain.

So yeah, it sucks to be me from those standpoints.

But it is what it is, and the reality is it takes money to survive so I work through it. You can bet your bottom dollar I do not do it for the company. I do not do it for the people I work for who, in my opinion, betrayed me brutally. I do not even do it for myself. I do it for my wife because she deserves to be taken care of and is going to be.

But now I am out to get mine.

I believe the company was way out of line in how they handled it. So tonight I contacted a lawyer about the possibility of pursuing a breech of contract suit. And if they do hire someone else for my job I am going to look very seriously into going after them not only for breech of contract and lost wages but for personal injury including pain and suffering.

That is quite a shift from my typical stance.

Then again...comparing how they treated Jimmy to the way they are treating me...I have to admit, if I could cost them so much money they had to close the branch I have a hard time saying it would not be justified.

Details to be posted as they become available.