r/Advice•
shallowSnurch

My supervisor has had pneumonia all week and has said nothing about it.

Alright, this sucks. Summary below, sorry for the wall of text. My coworker, now supervisor started having HORRIBLE coughing fits a few days ago. I didn't see him for 2 or 3 days after that, but he was using an inhaler when these would come up, and he vapes and has COPD and some kinda aneurism, and asthma so I kinda assumed his asthma or COPD was getting bad, because he never said he was sick or anything. Just working like nothing at all was going on. I asked him a couple times if he was okay because he looked like he couldn't breathe, like at all, and he was like, I'm fine and took a breath from his inhaler.

But yesterday I saw him working the afternoon shift, and instead of, you know, cleaning up after his damn self he left a note for me to wipe everything down and sweep everything up today before I left. And I did. Which means I came into contact with a lot of surfaces that an extremely sick person was just working at and I had no idea why. The fact that he was taken off the schedule for 3 days means that the store manager and hr both know that he is extremely sick and they're letting him come into work, where he works in close proximity to people every day.

Today he came in, and looked worse, and was already coughing his lungs up, struggling to breathe, not wearing a mask, not covering his face, walking straight into a break room where about 20 people were eating, hitting his vape. I texted him and asked why he looked and sounded so rough. I genuinely thought his asthma was acting up because he literally looked like he was having an asthma attack.

He responded, oh, I have pneumonia. WHAT?! a whole week where I'm working in the same spot you work every day and you didn't think to tell me this?! And you're supposed to be a supervisor now? And the managers are completely fine with this? I asked him if the managers just weren't letting him have any more days off and he responded "didn't want to miss more days". Like are you fckn serious dude really? I have a lot of important shit that I really need to go to going on this week and you didn't think to tell me you had an extremely contagious virus until a whole week had passed.

I am actually beyond mad right now like I have to make money I'm in a tight spot and I just started college, I will go homeless if I don't make enough in the next 5 months and dude I'm screwed if I can't catch up with my college work. Im not working when I'm sick, either, hell no, I'll stay home and do college work but I can't do that to myself, and I respect people enough not to come in and get 200 people sick.

I can't afford to find another job because it takes months just to do that in this area so I'm just stuck in this situation. But the absolute disregard of anyone else to come into work, without taking ANY precautions to keep other people safe from a disease you yourself decided to bring into work, is actually insane to me. And really disgusting to make me wipe everything down today if you are the reason everything needs to be sanitized.

What do I do?! Like I'm freaking out a lot honestly I really can't believe that the store manager knows about this and has no issue with him coming and spreading pneumonia around to people that work here and customers. I swear dude if he actually got me sick I'm gonna be pissed. I don't get paid enough to deal with this kinda bs.

Please if anyone has advice on what I can do about this, let me know. I've washed all my clothes, and blankets are next. Is there a good preventative for pneumonia? Because I really cannot afford to miss any more work or miss any school but I'm gonna have to if he gave me pneumonia. I swear, y'all I can't believe someone would actually do this and not tell anyone at all. I am sorry about the wall of text.

TL;DR My supervisor just came into work today after a week of struggling to breathe which I thought was his asthma acting up because he vapes a lot. Turns out he has pneumonia and kept it a secret from everyone and probably just got about 30-40 people sick having a coughing fit in the break room where people are eating. He made me wipe everything down today without telling me that this is the reason why. HR and the home depot store manager are completely fine with this, they clearly know because they took him off the schedule, and let him come back yesterday anyways. This is crazy. I don't know what to do because I have a lot of important stuff going on right now and I don't know how much of that I can miss without messing up what I've spent years trying to make work. And to make me wipe everything down instead of doing it yourself. I can't believe this. I need some kind of advice, please.

Posted Sep 13, 2025, 10:51 PM UTC

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