The bad part was a specific event, but it weights my review very heavily. I'll try to keep this brief but there is a bit of a story here.
During the interview process, there was some misunderstanding about me taking care of my disabled wife and how much I would need to work from home. They came away with the impression that I would need to work from home all the time, but I assured them that this was not the case and that I would be there every day. It seemed to be understood that I would still need to help my wife out during the day from time to time. My bad luck, but this happened one afternoon in the first week and I had to leave early. Once I had helped my wife I kept working (studying, I was in training), and I was told that they had seen me doing that online. Cool. That weekend I was sick and I stayed home Monday because of it. I guess this was unacceptable, because two days later they fired me because it stacked up with my "attendance issue".
I knew they were concerned about how much taking care of my wife would get in the way of things, but taking a day off for being sick? I am baffled that this was so important to them. Later I had an email conversation with their head of recruiting (who had been awesome up until then), where I asked for clarification on that: Was I expected to come to work while I was sick? Her reply indicated that it didn't matter why I was out, which to me says that yes, they expected me to come to work while sick. She also said that they needed consistent attendance to support the time slot I was hired for.... except I wasn't working that shift yet, I was still in training. Given that, I feel that their reaction was way too swift and harsh. This is the kind of reasoning I expect from your traditional corporate mindset, not from a company that advertises how they don't have that kind of double standard in their culture.
Was I naive to expect anything different? Maybe, but firing me for taking a small amount of time to help my wife and taking a sick day for myself strikes me as draconian, and wildly inconsistent with the kind of culture they advertise. Maybe what happened to me was a fluke, an isolated event, maybe not.
