When you are hired, you are given a letter of expectations. One of the expectations is not having more than 3 occurrences (absence/tardy/leaving early) in your first 90 days of employment. Of course, they want you to be in full attendance for training. I totally understand that. However, when you get in a car accident that you were not at fault in, and you get an occurrence for being absent, that is where the line needs to be drawn. Example, I was terminated on my 86th day of employment. 86. That is four days before 90. I had 3.5 occurrences. I was absent once due to a car accident and absent again because I had a fever and was vomiting and they made me leave (I didn't ask, they forced me). That makes two occurrences that I shouldn't have had given to me. I left early for a CAT Scan that was unable to be rescheduled for another 4 months, so that is half of an occurrence. Alright, I understand that. I left early for something non-urgent. I will take that. I was sent home for being sick and given another half of an occurrence. Those two make 3. My final half of an occurrence was for being late. Not for oversleeping, not for forgetting what time I am supposed to work, but due to excessive traffic. Here's the story: I live 5 minutes away from the San Antonio call center, depending on traffic. I left my residence at 7am, and I was scheduled to be at work at 8. That is one. By the time I usually arrived at work, it was 7:05 or 7:06 every day. Not this time. I left my residence at my normal time, and was smacked in the face with an hour and a half of traffic due to construction. There is only one route that I can take to get to the building. I can't control the fact that the city of San Antonio decided to construction on a weekday in the morning when people are going to school and work. I got to the building at 8:30. How is that my fault? It isn't like I left at 7:45. I left at 7. So for me to be terminated for things clearly out of my control. So after waiting almost a week to find out my fate, and doing my job at the same time (still to the best of my ability knowing I was being discussed for termination), I was terminated. I waited a week to find out. When I had my exit interview with Human Resources, I was told "if we made an exception for you, we'd have to make an exception for everybody else." Not true. You can make exceptions on a case-by-case basis. This entire situation was unfair. Now I am struggling to pay my bills and am unable to find a new job because of this backwards policy. I would not recommend anybody who is not a robot to work for Nationwide.
