Gawker has a great round-up of tales from employees, mostly former, of Wal-Mart and particular horror stories they have to tell. One of the first highlighted is by a worker whose 75-year-old co-worker was hit on the head, and the store manager ordered the co-worker to first drive the woman to the drug-testing lab before the hospital.
Then I take her to the hospital where it's another two hours to get checked out. It comes back she has a mild concussion and can go home. When we get back to the parking lot, I ask her if I can drive her home or do anything to help her out. She's feeling a bit better at this point, says she'll be fine and just asks if I can drop her off directly at her car so she can go straight home. I oblige, go back in the store, log into the computer system and clock her out. The store manager finds out I did that after she was discharged from the hospital with "just a concussion" and rips me for it, saying she was fine to go back to work.
It's worth saying, though, that many low-wage jobs have these features: The people who work them have few protections and little recourse against incompetent managers, who themselves often get the same ill treatment from their own supervisors. And because American workers have few choices right now, there are few ways for them to get the upper hand.
-- Monica Potts
