Late in your pregnancy you may need to modify your work duties.

It sort of went well with this worker. But check out what changed.

Did a store manager really just tell me that?

I’m 39 weeks pregnant and frying isn’t exactly an easy task anymore. Lifting the heavy baskets, dealing with the hot oil, the heavy filtering boxes, the cases of raw chicken, you get it.

Its a labor intensive job that I’ve managed pretty well all things considered. My coworkers often praise me for being able to do such a demanding job in my current condition and hardly complaining about it at all.

The arrangement is working really well. At first…

So being my last week of work and noticing that, despite my lack of complaining, fryer duty is causing me pain, the deli manager decides to be nice to me and takes me off of frying duty and instead on salad bar.

All I have to do for salad bar is basically chop fruits and vegetables and mix salad kits up. No heavy lifting, less time limits, so on and so forth. Much easier when you’re carrying a 6 pound parasite – I mean baby.

The day starts out just fine, I transfer my ingredients from different departments to the deli and chop up all my produce, get the salads together, and everything is going pretty smoothly.

Then it gets to be 9am…no sign of the other fryer showing up (the guy who trained me, actually). A customer calls and wants one of our organic rotisserie chickens by 11 am.

So she got back onto chicken duty.

By this point, I know that if someone doesn’t start on frying duties, we’re going to have a lot of angry customers when we open at 11.

This was a Sunday, our biggest chicken selling day. The deli manager had already left because she scheduled herself to come in during the wee hours of the morning so she could leave by 8am.

So I jump on chicken duty. I had all the salad bar stuff done so a coworker of mine offered to go set it out on the bar while I worked on chicken. I strung up rotisseries, got them in the oven and began grabbing cases of tenders and 8 piece and getting those fried up.

10:30 rolls around…

I still have to do a few other duties associated with what I was actually assigned to do that day on top of taking over as fryer. So essentially I’m doing the work meant for at least 2 people.

The chef has been trying for the past hour to get a hold of one of the store managers, who are being less than helpful through this whole ordeal.

The phone rings in the deli and chef answers it before summoning me over to talk to one of the store managers.

The audacity in this phone call astounded her.

Me: Yes sir?

SM: Listen…Coworker’s name just got off from vacation and can’t possibly be expected to be back at work. There was a mix up in scheduling and we need you to fry today. Is that a problem?

Me: Yes sir, I’ve actually already started on that an hour ago.

SM: Oh ok! Thanks! click

Thanks…Thanks? Really? I’m 39 weeks pregnant, running my butt off to cover your scheduling mistake, doing two peoples jobs, and all I get is thanks?

Not to mention, he can’t possibly be asked to come to work after being on vacation for a week?

I’m still just reeling from that conversation and how that all went down.

Here is what folks are saying.

You’d go viral!

I agree. I hope she’s okay.

How silly!

Totally. What a liability.

I hope so, too.

Quit after maternity leave!

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.