Terminated for attending my mother’s funeral.” After five years of loyalty, I was fired by email while still grieving.

For years, I had repeated the same thing most people tell themselves when they work inside a rotten system: keep your head down, do your work, collect your paycheck, survive. I had a mortgage. I had medical bills from my mother’s treatments. I had student loans that still seemed impossible to kill.

So when I found the first irregularity, I documented continue reading …