I have been a faithful employee of 9 years and have only missed two days of work in the last five years. I recently needed to take 2.5 days off of unexcused absence and made an inquiry to my advisor for the time off. He signed my time off slip and I was ok'd for the time off. A week later he fired my co-worker then came back to me and refused my time off. I was going out of state and needed the time off. My company has an attendance policy that allows an employee to miss 2.9 days of unexcused absence every 6 months without being counseled. I returned from my trip and was met with a write up stating insubordination for lack of "team work" for taking 20 hours of unexcused absence, and if I did this again I would be terminated. On top of that, he told another hourly employee of my write up, which I feel is information directly from my personal file, and of course this employee told others. I wanted to speak to HR about my unfair write up but the HR lady lives with my supervisor. I went to the vice president of operations, who happens to be friends with the Hr lady and my supervisor, and she told me I was lucky I wasn't fired. The men in my department have talked about the way we have all been treated by this advisor, and feel we have no representation on our behalf, because of the relationship of HR to our supervisor. He is constantly using foul language and refers to some employees who make mistakes as being stupid or retarded. I feel like everyday is going to be my last with this guy. We are good employees who don't deserve to be treated this way. Is this a hostile environment and has my employer/ employee rights of privacy been violated? Thank you for responding