u/Worried_Ad_1427

I worked at a law firm for 6 years and honestly thought I had a great job.

Then I told the owner I was engaged.

His first response was: "So when are you going to leave work?"

I asked what he meant, and he told me that women get married, have kids, and eventually leave their jobs.

I told him I wasn't planning on having children, but apparently that didn't matter.

After that, everything changed. Suddenly they were watching when I stepped away from my desk, questioning time I took for appointments, and treating me differently in ways that were hard to prove but impossible not to notice.

Then they took the office I'd had for six years and gave it to a new male employee, moving me into a cube without even having a conversation with me.

That was the moment I started seriously looking elsewhere.

I eventually found a new job where I'm making more than double what I was making there, and I'm actually treated like a professional.

The best part? After I left, I found out I had been making significantly less than the men doing similar work.

Turns out getting engaged wasn't what ended my career there.

It just showed me I was overdue to leave.

I was working as a tech in pest control, and I fell about 28 feet when an old ladder failed. The ladder was labeled as being able to hold 275 lbs, and yes, if it had been brand new, those things can usually hold more than what's written on the sticker. But this wasn't even close to new, and I weigh 315 lbs and I'm 6'1".

I usually don't climb ladders because I was doing termite work most of the time, but our branch had a lot of people call in sick that morning. My manager put me in someone else's truck because mine only had termite equipment in it.

The job was installing an exclusion device for bats on a five-story building. I hadn't done that exact installation before, but the basic idea wasn't complicated.

When I got the ladder out, it looked really worn out, so I took a few pictures of it and sent them to my manager saying I wasn't comfortable climbing a ladder in that rough of shape, especially since it wasn't even rated for my weight. He called me and said he had used that same ladder to clean his gutters about six weeks earlier and it was perfectly fine. I also called the owner of the company and tried to explain, but my manager had already framed it to him like I was making excuses or scared to climb.

The owner basically told me that if I was afraid of heights and couldn't do the job, maybe I wasn't a good fit to work there. So I set up the ladder even though I knew it was wrong, and started climbing. I got maybe a little less than halfway up before it collapsed. One of the bottom supports broke, and I fell and broke my right leg and ankle.

The moment it really hit me was when I realized I had literally documented the exact thing I had been worried about before it happened. Those pictures and messages turned out to matter a lot more than I'd imagined.

While I was in the hospital, the company owner and his wife came to visit me and offered to pay the medical bills, keep paying my salary, and give me a $30k bonus. I was under the influence of painkillers and not thinking clearly, so I agreed and signed papers saying I wouldn't sue.

When I got home and my head cleared, I understood that they had played me. I called a lawyer, and he said that agreement probably wouldn't hold up because they had me sign it knowing I was under the influence of heavy medication.

After my lawyer formally notified the company owner, they came back with a settlement offer of $120k plus medical expenses and attorney's fees, which honestly wasn't much different from what they had tried to get me to accept, just packaged differently. In the end, we agreed on a little less than three times that amount. I know there was probably more money on the table if I had dragged it out, but even with unemployment and short-term disability, my bills were piling up terrifyingly fast.

I'm thinking about using part of the money to go back to school and get into a field where I'm not at risk of falling or breathing chemicals every week. But I'm still worried that starting over in my early forties will be really hard, or that I've waited too long.

edit: for those who asking what did I do after injury I decided to work remotely , and got a very good offers got some help from interviewvip during zoom interviews and I was very impressed by its features especially the real time answers ,wonderful

My job was going really well until I announced my engagement...

I got injured at work. In the end, I settled for 6 times my annual salary.