How OSHA Cost Me My Job

In October 2020, I started working at Michaels as a part-time Customer Experience Manager, or CEM for short. It wasn’t the greatest job, but I needed something, and I already was quite familiar with the craft world from working for a competitor as a store manager. I was never much of a fan of Michaels. Their stores always seemed dirty and their prices were often higher. Still, I liked some of the people with whom I worked, so it would work for a while.

The Knee Issues

Back in 2017, I had a strange illness that mostly destroyed my knees. Doctors were stumped at the time and had tested me for at least ten different diseases, including Lyme disease. Though my Lyme test was negative, as they so often are, a specialist decided to treat me with the antibiotics used to treat Lyme. After a week of prescription steroids — which was not fun for anyone — and at least two weeks of antibiotics, I was feeling better. However, once the steroids wore off, my knee pain returned, along with severe weakness in the joints. I have been that way ever since. This was a big part of why I left my job as a store manager at another store. That, and wanting free time to work on side projects, such as starting my own business.

I worked a few other jobs before ending up at Michaels. One of my friends/former employees was working there and suggested I apply, knowing that I was miserable at my extremely boring job with TJ Maxx. Michaels paid more and I knew many of the products — I am not a fashion person, so I did not quite fit in well at TJ Maxx. Aside from being bored and uninterested in most of the products, that particular TJ Maxx had a lot of negative employees, which created a very toxic environment. I had accepted the job because I liked the manager — a woman who seemed to be caring and very experienced. I liked her, but I could not stand the negativity from other employees, including their complaints that this new manager made them actually do work, and I hated the idea of pushing the store’s credit card on customers.

Starting at Michaels

After starting at Michaels, my knees were beginning to remind me that walking around a large store was not something I could easily do for a full shift. As they started to get worse, I debated leaving that job, too. I needed a job somewhere, and almost all of my experience was in retail, so I could not simply transition to an office job. I had tried that when I left my manager job to work in a bank. That did not work out well, and now I found myself back in the same situation: working at a job that caused me physical pain.

Part of my job as a CEM at Michaels required me to use a rolling ladder, which is just a short staircase on wheels. Before deciding whether or not to leave, I went to see an orthopedic specialist, mainly at the request of my mother. It seems that no matter how old I am, my mother still thinks of me as her little girl. In this case, she was right, so I went to the doctor. The specialist said my bones looked great, which meant the damage was to the ligaments. I was given knee exercises and told to not use stairs. This was of course impossible at home but meant that I could no longer perform some of the functions of my job at Michaels. I typed up my resignation letter and handed it to management. I would leave the job at the end of April 2021.

Health always has to come first.

The store had a new manager start earlier that year. I welcomed the change as the previous manager seemed to play favorites with certain employees and was rather nasty to people who were not buddy-buddy with her. The new manager seemed more professional, so I was a little sad that my health issues were forcing me to leave. That said, I had put career before health once before and learned my lesson the hard way: health always has to come first.

I should have taken a hint right away, but we often think that what seems obvious to us is not to others, and so I thought that the new manager just didn’t give any thought to a situation. The week before my final day, I was forced to move freestanding fixtures around the store due to a floor cleaning. I was not told in advance and had no one to help me. My anger reached a dangerous level as my right knee burned with pain while I moved heavy fixtures full of yarn, art supplies, scrapbook paper, and any other random items that were on wheels. I somehow managed to not walk out in a fit of rage and worked my remaining few days with the company.

The Strange Smell

After brief employment with Goodwill, I decided to return to that same Michaels. The Goodwill where I worked had some serious safety violations, and after an elderly employee nearly died, I quickly left that disastrous job. I applied to several other places and heard nothing — ironic considering that within a few months, many of those same places would be desperate for help. I considered returning to the bank where I briefly worked in 2020 but decided to return to Michaels. I missed the employee discount, and I already knew people there, including the manager. The old saying “better the devil you know” sums up my reasoning pretty well — I did not want another situation like what happened at Goodwill, so in September of 2021, I went back to Michaels.

Not long after returning to work in the store, this time as just a cashier, I noticed a strange smell near the registers. To me, it smelled like mold, and I brought up my concerns to management. My friend/former employee still worked there and noticed it too. He said it smelled like casting resin, which can be toxic if inhaled. He remembered that there was a leaking bottle in the locked cage at the front of the store near the registers — the area where items prone to theft are kept for purchase. He said it was there when the old manager was still in charge, meaning if it was still there, it had been there for at least six months. I brought this up to the new manager and nothing happened.

As the weather changed, the smell start to get worse. I finally was able to convince the manager to look in the locked cage for this bottle. If it was in there, we needed to get rid of it. Casting resin can be toxic when inhaled, especially for sensitive individuals. I have lived most of my life with asthma, inherited from my father’s side of the family, so I am always more vulnerable to fumes and airborne contaminants. The manager opened the cage and there was the bottle, wrapped in a hazardous bag and awaiting disposal. He immediately removed it and we thought that was the end of it. We were wrong.

Wheel of Personalities

As time went on, I could still smell the strange odor. Some days I would get a headache if I was up at the front for my entire shift (which was most of the time), other days I would feel congested, I would be coughing, or my throat would feel like it was on fire, or any combination of those symptoms. I brought this to the attention of the supervisors and the manager. There had to be something else in the store, and it was making me sick.

The store manager was always a bit off compared to other managers I’ve worked under throughout my 20 plus years in retail. Some days he would seem like a child, others like an angry dictator, and then there were days that he was like a helpless individual who just did not know how to deal with the stresses of being a store manager. I often referred to this as his “wheel of personalities,” and I never knew which one it would be on any given day. One day I would be so angry and ready to quit, then the next day he would be friendly again and I would decide to stay for at least another day.

It was his immature attitude that started to get to me, often giving off a very unprofessional demeanor and sometimes downright arrogant attitude. His constant complaints that I “whined” a lot whenever I would bring up a concern within the store started to really grate me. Whether he intended to get me to quit or just his lack of humanity, each time he make a snarky comment I was one foot closer out the door. I stayed as long as I did for the other employees and the three other supervisors I interacted with regularly. That, and I liked getting an employee discount on craft supplies, and I certainly bought plenty of yarn there.

OSHA

When 2022 came around, the strange odor persisted, which was hardly shocking since no one had done anything to even investigate it. It was assumed to be mold caused by the roof that had leaked for several years, though that was hardly better than some toxic chemical on a shelf. I started to get frustrated that no one was taking this seriously, especially management. The supervisors could only do so much and they were not sure who to speak to about the situation. The manager seemed to brush it off as me simply “whining” about yet another issue, his solution to anything he wanted to ignore.

On Tuesday, March 1, 2022, I was stocking around the area and started to feel another headache coming on. This time my head felt like it was going to implode and was accompanied by nausea and some tingling in my face. I thought I was about to have a complex migraine — something my mother often gets that tends to be inherited. Sometimes I get them, but this one was more of a headache than a migraine. I noticed that if I stayed away from the area of the locked cage, my nausea would fade, and if I went back to stocking near there, I would start to feel ill again.

It was this day that I filed a complaint with OSHA. I stood right there at the register and filed the complaint on my smartphone. I knew I was not supposed to be on my phone, but I didn’t care anymore. The toxins were affecting my health and I was tired of playing games.

This man was a corporate manager just there for a paycheck. He was not a leader.

That Thursday, the manager approached me and asked if I had filed the complaint. I was not about to shy away from it — I would stand by my actions. I told him that I had because I knew then that the company would have to do something about it. He told me there was nothing that he could do and that he was afraid the store would be shut down. He expressed that he had vacation time, but no one else would be able to work.

It was clear to me then that this man did not want to take responsibility for anything. His sudden concern over employee pay did not make sense to me. If the store is closed, employees could likely file for unemployment, if it would even need to be closed that long. And even so, was a few days’ pay worth the health risks if it was mold? No good leader would view it this way, and it was then that I realized what I had always suspected: this man was a corporate manager just there for a paycheck. He was not a leader.

The Source and Retaliation

In an odd coincidence, my friend, the one who was sure the smell was resin, had to check inventory numbers in the locked cage on Thursday. As he moved items around, the smell was getting worse. He noticed that two of the shelves were covered in the casting resin — the bottle had been removed, but the area was never cleaned. He replaced the shelves but did not have time to clean the others. After an hour, the smell was fainter, though it still existed. It seemed that the source was the leaked resin, and the product’s safety data sheet told me exactly what I needed to know: it could cause respiratory irritation in sensitive individuals and was considered a health hazard.

The very next day — the day after it was confirmed that I was the one who filed the complaint with OSHA — I was told by the manager to clean the area around the locked cage. I was not given a mask or gloves, just some cleaner and paper towels. The manager conveniently decided to stock jewelry nearby, clearly watching to make sure that I did this assigned cleaning. I had never seen him stock jewelry before. Usually, he spent his days schmoozing customers and complaining about the lack of hours to get anything done. For someone who seemed to be so busy, he certainly didn’t appear to do much, unless that was just my skewed opinion based on what I went through as a manager for the competition.

I was not cleaning the source of the smell — that was still behind locked doors.

As I cleaned the area, stopping occasionally to get a drink of water or to leave the area to breathe cleaner air while putting carts away, or just to checkout a customer with their purchase on the register further from the smell, the manager continued to hover nearby. One of the supervisors brought work for me to do for her and she was told that I could not help because, as he put it, “she is cleaning.” Only I was not cleaning the source of the smell — that was still behind locked doors. I was simply cleaning the area around the source, thereby inhaling it more and getting sick. Thankfully I happened to bring my inhaler with me that day because I needed it.

Normally I do a lot of stocking, pricing, and merchandising of items. Never have I been assigned to clean or do any type of cleaning other than sweeping the floor. And yet the day after it was confirmed that I filed a health complaint with OSHA I was told to clean… I was sure this was retaliation, and I knew it was illegal. When the next shift came in, the cashier questioned why I was cleaning, and why I was doing it without gloves. Cleaning was to be the top priority — or so I was told by the manager — and yet the next shift was not told to clean. Actually, the floater employee was told to stock, which was normally my job in the morning.

I somehow made it through that shift, coughing and congested, without just walking out. I knew the manager would want that — I was the problem now, so if I just quit, he would not have to deal with me. I had the next three weeks off to calm down, a terrible start to my vacation. I stopped in the very next day because I needed something for a project. I asked both cashiers working if they had to clean. As I suspected, they had no idea what I was talking about.

Whistleblower Complaint

Saturday morning I filed a complaint with corporate governance. Being a former corporate manager myself, I knew exactly what was likely to be done: nothing. That evening, I filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint as it seemed obvious to my family, a few friends, and myself that my cleaning duty was punishment for my OSHA complaint. I hoped that something would change, but I was already debating not returning after my vacation.

Monday I received a phone call about my whistleblower complaint. The woman was confused as she thought I had meant to file a health hazard complaint. I explained the situation to her in-depth, having to correct her numerous times. After we went over everything, she told me I did not have a case; this was not retaliation and was likely a coincidence. I was crushed. I had always had faith in the justice system and the laws of the United States. I had studied OSHA briefly in college and respected what they did to keep workers safe. During my conversation with the woman, it sounded like they were not taking the health complaint seriously from the beginning: there was no inspection, no notice, nothing. They didn’t care.

They always say the pen is sharper than the sword…

I felt helpless. I only wanted a safe work environment, and now I had a manager who treated me like a disposable annoyance and there still was a health hazard at my job. I knew what I had to do. I had to resign. I typed up my resignation letter, making sure to note that the manager knew I had health issues when he re-hired me and knew that the resin fumes were making me sick, and yet he still had me cleaning the area around the fumes. I stated that since OSHA told me there was nothing I could do to ensure the health hazard situation was resolved, I felt it best to protect my health and resign.

I knew the manager would not suffer consequences for his actions, but there was nothing else I could do. I had exhausted all avenues, and now I would be unemployed. I knew it meant he would win, his smug attitude once again allowed him to continue demoralizing the employees, insulting them in his characteristic passive-aggressive way. I had taken all the right steps and done everything the correct way, and yet none of it mattered. All that was left for me to do was to spread the word about what happened in an effort to prevent others from choosing to work for Michaels, both through social media and by writing this piece. They always say the pen is sharper than the sword, but this is far less impactful than what should have happened.

It still is a disheartening blow that one employee does not matter to a government agency that was created to protect employees from the very reasons why I had to leave my job. Perhaps if I would have sent the MSDS along with my complaint, though I know that would not have made a difference. I only hope that someday someone will make a difference, but more so, I hope that no one else suffers the adverse health effects I did at that store. And if they do, I hope that they know I tried to stop it.

This story was originally published on Medium.