Good luck with HR. One thing I just thought of (you may have already done this) ... ask your doctor or a mental health therapist (if you see one) to complete a FMLA leave request for you. I have done several for clients (I'm a mental health therapist) ... some when they absolutely needed to be on leave for a bit due to their disabilities, but I have also done a couple for clients because their HR department just wanted to have documentation on file that they MAY need time off periodically for appointments and such.
QUOTE(thetreble @ Jun 5 2008, 03:20 PM)
back story necrotica, please!!
Oh boy... it's going to be a long story... luckily I can cut and paste part of it from a former vent, hehe.
I have a lot of disabilities. I'm autistic (high-functioning), I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, severe depression (which was in remission before all this crap started happening), other mental issues (condensed for the sake of brevity), a back deformity that has the capability of causing me so much pain that I can't even walk, and some mystery joint pain in my fingers which makes using my right hand very painful (a couple of doctors are giving me conflicting diagnoses regarding that). Despite all of this, I had worked in my current job doing Medicare customer service for almost a year... until this past March.
I was doing ok at work for the most part until they started training me to do other things. The stress of this combined with my disabilities and the fact that they would make no accommodations whatsoever for me even though they could have led to me having a series of breakdowns until I finally had a massive one that has rendered me completely unable to work as of March 18th. My leave has been completely unpaid, and my short-term disability was denied because my idiot doctor apparently told them something to the effect of my job causing my disability, so now they said I should file a worker's compensation claim. This is NOT a worker's comp issue; I was diagnosed with CFS and Fibromyalgia in March of 2007 before I even started working there! It's just that I had a huge flareup that resulted in burnout because they would not offer me any accommodations.
Here's a brief timeline:
Mid-September 2007 - Took my diagnosis letters to Human Resources, saying I wanted them on file in case I ever need to have accommodations. HR lady (different one than who I talked to today) tells me that I "can't have any excused time off just because I don't 'feel well'". This very highly upset me, since it's not just a case of not "feeling well"; it's a case of not even being able to FUNCTION.
Late November/early December 2007 - Tried to talk to my supervisor about getting accommodations. He refers me back to HR. I told him about what happened in HR and that my mental health can NOT handle another snide comment because I was in a very dangerous mental state of mind, and he says I have to go back there anyway, even though the employee handbook says that asking my supervisor for accommodations is acceptable and that it would be his responsibility to go to HR with my request. Obviously, that never happened.
Mid-December 2007 - Got a verbal warning for attendance. The stress on me was too much for me to handle, which was why I kept missing work. The verbal warning made my stress level go even higher, which meant more flareups and more absences (see the pattern here?).
Late January 2008 - Finally e-mail HR requesting accommodations.
Late February 2008 - Meeting with HR reharding accommodations. They tell me that working from home is not an option because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services don't want me to for some reason (even though there are others in my department who can work from home), and that they'll see what they can do about getting me into a different department with a lower stress level.
Late February/early March 2008 - I get put into training for not only Durable Medical Equipment Claims Level 1, but also Level 2 right after training for Level 1. These representatives take calls regarding Medicare fraud in relation to medical equipment. VERY HIGH-STRESS. The funny part is that there was Written Correspondence training going on at the same time, which is what I had originally requested transferring over to, and getting into that department would have meant MUCH less stress and it more than likely would have kept me from having my final meltdown. Many people were being transferred from my department over there anyway, so transferring me over there as well wouldn't have made them do ANY extra work whatsoever.
Mid-March 2008 - Was put on a written warning for attendance, meaning if I miss 3 more days of work, I'm fired. This piled on even more stress on me, and this combined with the DME training caused me to crash so hard that I could not continue coming in to work.
This is all just so ridiculous. If they could have made some adjustments and NOT give me DME duties on top of what I already had, this never would have happened. This is EXACTLY what I tried so hard to avoid all the way back in September.
I have been using it somewhat sparingly so it will last longer.... he knows how much that cheese whiz means to me.. how could he do that??? !!!! 
). Problem solved. 
... 
by that time I was sick of hearing 7 to 10 days 