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“Precarious” is a fancy word to describe conditions facing low-income workers these days. “Fired” was the translation for Shauntel Snowden one day last month.

“I went into the office having a job and I walked out of the office with no job. Not even five minutes.”

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Shauntel Snowden, 24, is at home at her kitchen table, holding back the tears. She says she was fired from Tim Hortons on May 29, midway through her shift.

The reason? She’s taken too many sick days since she started Nov. 13 at the Walkley and Conroy roads location — about 12 days in a little over six months.

As the main wage-earner in the household, she’s now left with two children under the age of four to support and rent of $1,375 a month on a south-end townhouse.

Snowden says there is an explanation for her absences from work, where she earned the minimum wage of $14 an hour. Her own premature birth was a difficult one and she was left with lifelong asthma and lungs that are less than robust. “For normal people, it’s a cold. For me, it’s pneumonia or bronchitis.”