Kendra, do not quit your job. Work right up till you are forced to leave to have carpal tunnel surgery. By the way, is there any way you can postpone having the surgery until you HAVE worked a year for this employer (the temp service)?
By the way, I do not understand anything at all about how you could have been there a year and a half, which you said in your first post, and yet you say you only have 1225 hours since January. Did you work all last year? If it is in any way elective, if there is any way you can endure it, take meds, wear a brace, somehow put it off until you've been there long enough to qualify for FMLA, try very hard to do so. Carpal tunnel isn't something that's going to be fatal if you don't have the surgery immediately, just extremely painful. But remember, you're not working at your doctor's convenience, you're trying to make things work best for YOU.
Forget the "two weeks notice." Yes, at the temp service they know the rules well, know how to shaft you and keep you from being eligible for unemployment. And it is always to their advantage if you quit instead of their having to fire you. So don't meekly accept what they tell you. Verify. If you have been with them over a year and they have enough employees, all the things in the post, they must allow you to have a certain number of weeks of FMLA. You don't have to file or request a certain way to get this to happen, this is a federal law. Remember, your employer is the temp service, not the worksite.
While they can fire you for having a medically covered absence with medical excuse, they cannot keep you from getting unemployment insurance AS SOON AS YOU ARE RELEASED BY YOUR DOCTOR TO RETURN TO WORK. If they do not take you back when you return to them with a release, you are able right then to begin drawing unemployment benefits (allowing you are otherwise eligible, monetarily, I mean). If you are fired for a medical reason, it will not blight your chances of working again or look bad on your "permanent record," as I have heard employers tell workers would happen. While this particular employer may not want to hire you again, or may say they have a policy against doing so, they won't want to pay the penalties involved with you getting your unemployment benefits if you are finished with your health issues and unable to work again, either.
You cannot draw benefits for unemployment insurance while you are under a doctor's care. To qualify, you must be out of work through no fault of your own (which you will be if they fire you for being medically unable to work) and be able, available, and actively seeking a job. It is not intended for disability insurance. If your state does not have a disability insurance program, or your company (the temp service) does not have one, then yes, I'm afraid so, you can be dumped out on your head into the work search without ANYTHING, no unemployment, no disability, nothing to live on till you are able to work again. This is the American way.
I am sure you "don't like to stand up for yourself," but that's part of being an adult, and being a professional. You need to find out about disability insurances in your state. You need to determine if it would be possible to postpone the surgery until you've been with the temp service for a year. You need to determine whether or not you'll be able to get disability, or unemployment, which you're working on here, and that's a good thing. Make sure you get FMLA if you are eligible for it, instead of quitting your job.
Whatever you do, do not let them sucker you into just saying you quit your job and giving them two weeks notice. Then you'll go and have your surgery, you'll get well, you'll come back to them, and there is NO guarantee that they will save your job for you, or that they'll even have a position for you when you are able to go back to work. And if they don't, and you try to get unemployment insurance, they'll say you aren't eligible, because you voluntarily quit your job to have non-emergency surgery.
