I’ve been trying to help my Dad not lose his job for the past couple weeks. He is 67, with multiple underlying conditions (including a recent lung infection he was hospitalized for). He is a truck driver, who delivers blood and plasma from hospital to hospital — and would be doing so without PPE.
My Dad is also on the less fortunate side of the “digital divide”, in a time where many HR functions, speaking to your doctor, etc. have moved online. So I have been trying to assist him by writing his doctor for regular notes via MyChart. For a while, while he had paid time off that he had accrued — so things were going okay. But once he ran out, he had to apply for leave under the Family Medical Leave Act (basically this ensures you don’t lose your job, but are out on unpaid leave), and was rejected. I won’t go into the blow-by-blow of the whole Kafkaesque nightmare, but it has been hard seeing my Dad give up hope.
I am doing what I can, but the system is very, very broken. And COVID-19 has made all these incredible problems more apparent and palpable. Just wondering how to go about fixing it all…