Reasonable Accommodations?

mouse42 submitted 606 days ago

For six months, starting in January of 2004, after a long stretch of unemployment, I went to work at a gas station. The job is more challenging than you might think, considering ours was like a mini-grocery store. I worked an 8 hour shift with no breaks and no lunch (which I complained about and was quoted some long-winded rules by the Federal Government, put in place thanks to their people in Washington bribing senators, I'm sure). At around month six, my knee was swollen up to the size of a cantaloupe and I was constantly in horrible pain. I went to the doctor and she told me I had to stay off my feet and when I told her what my job is, she shrugged and said, "Ask them to get you a chair."

Well, I talked to my manager (absolutely crazy man who took his job far too seriously), and he said I couldn't have a chair because it was a "safety hazard". Apparently, I could trip over it or, heaven forbid, fall off. I staggered around with a dumb-founded expression on my face for several days.

When my limping in pain was "upsetting customers", I was given a leave of absence. A day after my leave of absence began, I was called down to the corporate office here in town and told to talk to the regional manager. She wanted me to write up a statement on my injury and what "reasonable accommodations" they could make for me to continue my work.

I ended up writing quite a bit, because I wanted to make sure I got everything straight. She snapped at me, "It's not a novel", but I ignored her. My final conclusion was that they could give me a freakin' chair. She took my statement, smiled and told me to rest up and enjoy my leave of absence, and to have my doctor fill out some forms.

Two days after that, I get a thing on my door from UPS saying they had something for me to pick up. I had to drive 40 minutes out of my way to the UPS distribution center. When I got there, they handed me a letter, which said, basically, "Because we can make no reasonable accommodations for you, yer fired."

Fortunately, I got a job a few days later by going down to a temp agency. My typing speed was high enough they were absolutely thrilled and the next thing I know, I'm a Relay Agent for the Deaf, hard of hearing, and speech impaired. Who do I discover is one of my co-workers?

A charming man who is blind, working in my call center, relaying calls for the Deaf by reading their conversations off of a Braille-reader machine.

I guess reasonable accommodations are completely relative. :rolleyes: