Pregnancy is often labeled as one of the most exciting experiences in a person’s life. But if you’re a working mom-to-be, this time can come with a great deal of stress. Feeling discriminated against for being pregnant is more common than you might think, especially if your boss is out of control and keeps having meltdowns over the smallest details.

One female employee found herself in a difficult situation with her boss, who happened to be running for office.

The employee shared on Reddit that she “works in political campaigning which means I work on short-term contracts as an independent contractor.” During a recent job, she did well and was promoted to Campaign Manager. After that, she ended up getting offers for other jobs, but she was unwilling to move for a job since she was married and recently found out she was pregnant.

She ended up taking a job on a local campaign. She shared that “the salary was lower than what I was used to” but she took the job anyway because she wouldn’t have to move and she would get to be the Campaign Manager.

There were multiple problems during the campaign that were not her fault or the candidate’s fault. For example, the employee was in a car accident. She wrote, “Luckily my pregnancy was safe but I herniated a disc in the car accident and due to my pregnancy, there were very few things that could be done as far as helping my back or pain management. If I did my job right that shouldn’t be an issue because my job can essentially be handled from home and staff could do the rest.”

Then, a couple of other problems occurred. She shared, “The candidate’s husband got deployed to a rather dangerous place for a month and she completely checked out. She stopped fundraising, which means that everything comes to a halt in campaigning. She stopped putting in the leg work to win. We also lost our only lower staff member during this time.”

Eventually, the candidate blamed the employee for how the campaign was going and blamed the fact that she was pregnant as to why she wasn’t fit for the job. The candidate said, “Since you are pregnant and can no longer door knock you can either work for (state minimum wage) or you can find a new job.”

Fortunately, at the time, the Reddit user’s husband had been out of work for eight months. Fortunately, her husband had received a job offer that very day.

Under her contract, the employee was due to pay for 30 days from the date of giving notice that she was terminating employment. Not only that, but the candidate was a month behind on paying her and owed her an entire month’s back pay.

“(I) told her I would be working my contractually obligated 30-day notice at my current salary and then leaving the campaign.” The candidate was furious and tried to back out of the legal contract.

The candidate refused to pay, so the former employee hired a lawyer. Meanwhile, the candidate’s other employees quit, all except one who was eventually fired for not taking the candidate’s side. Then the candidate called the police and made a false claim that the former employee was embezzling campaign funds. After hearing the truth, the police were on the former employee’s side too and told the candidate that it was “considered larceny to withhold my pay and asked me if I would like to press charges.”

Two days later, the former employee finally got a check for the money the candidate owed her. By the way, the candidate ended up losing the election.

Source: AWM