Some Companies Don’t Have Time Or Space For Empathy

The workplace is evolving into something disgusting and cruel.

A couple weeks ago, a grieving mother sued her employer after she had been told to not only stop talking about her deceased daughter, but to also remove all photos of her daughter from her work station. The employer cited that the woman’s mourning was “uncomfortable” for her fellow co-workers, and whenever she spoke of the tragedy — her daughter died of leukemia — it was considered a “disruption.”

The woman, Cecelia Ingraham, sued for emotional stress, but the Superior Court of New Jersey found in favor of the company. Ingraham had worked at the firm for 12 years. 

Now in more disheartening news that really makes one consider what exactly the world is coming to, a mother was fired from her job because she took time off to undergo a procedure to donate a kidney to her son.

When Claudia Rendon‘s son had kidney failure back in January, she was found to be a match. Rendon had been at her job at Aviation Institute of Maintenance for a year and a half when she told her bosses she would need time off this past summer for the procedure. Her leave was to start on July 19th, and initially her bosses gave her unpaid leave until September 1st.

At the time, she was told her job was safe and would be there when she got back. However, the day before she was to start the process of the transplant, her bosses asked her to sign a letter that said her job wasn’t safe after all. Rend told ABC News:

“They said, ‘If you don’t sign this letter, you are abandoning your job and quitting.’ I said, ‘I am not abandoning my job. I am saving my son’s life.’”

It takes roughly six to eight weeks for someone to heal from kidney surgery, and when Rendon realized that she wouldn’t be able to return by the first, she alerted her bosses, provided them with the doctor’s note, as requested, and said she would return on September 12th. Four days before she was to go back, she found out her position had been filled two days prior.

On top of blatantly cruelty on the part of the employer, it brought into the spotlight, the Family and Medical Leave Act and how it only protects those companies that have 50 or more employees. A concern being that maybe such acts should exist for smaller companies, too, so as to protect all employees, no matter the size of a firm.

After the media got hold of the story and the school was called out on it’s bad form, they put Rendon back on salary.

However, what does this say about our society where business far outweighs humanity? Is there really no room for caring in business? Although these are just two cases of probably hundreds, if not thousands, of incidents were companies have treated employees with such lack of empathy, there are those stories that never come to light. Maybe it’s time that companies and firms put heart before the almighty dollar, or at the very least, fake compassion even if they don’t feel it.

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