TL;DR - If you have family that need your care for any reason, I actually had a good experience, so submit an LOA for it and see if where you live will give you a paid LOA.

I have worked for Best Buy in many different forms over the last 7 years, and I have tried to stay informed on all of the resources and benefits that were available to me.

I currently work in Washington state and I heard about the paid family medical leave. I always assumed it would be miles of red tape, and flaming hoops to jump through.

My mother has had brain cancer for almost 2 years now, and things looked like they were managed and she had returned to normal life. Last weekend she had another seizure and was robbed of some basic functions.

My father couldn’t handle the day to day things without her, and trying to care for her. They live in Idaho and I didn’t know how I was going to be able to go and help. I decided to just try to submit for the FMLA. There was only one form that I needed to fill out to start with and I did that while I was driving to Idaho.

I got an email from an HR rep about 48 hours later that they had immediately dumped 40 hours of LOA into my TLC and I had a direct phone number to call if I needed to submit for more time. I do have some more documents to I fill out, but I have time to complete those.

Feel free to ama.