Something I thought about at lunch today while I watching somebody trying to find a parking space by driving around the lot for 10 minutes.
If you’re an employee who is handicapped and you have a valid handicapped parking permit/placard, do you get to park in one of the marked handicapped spaces in front of the entrance for the duration of your shift?
Or do you have to park with the rest of the employees in the employee parking area?
My guess would be that you can park in the marked spaces for your shift, since having you park with the rest of the employees would probably put you at the far end of the lot and would probably be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
But then I started thinking, what about businesses that have only a couple of spaces, I think its less of a problem at malls and big-box type stores and strip malls, places that have at least a dozen marked handicapped parking spaces.
I would think the owner would be less than thrilled at having one of those spaces taken up for an entire shift, but if the owner was like this, then they probably wouldn’t have hired the employee to begin with.
This is a question that would have to be answered by the owner of the business (or the parking lot if it’s not on company property). It’s more of a policy question than a legal one.
IANA disibility lawyer - but if an employer provides specific employee parking, and a disabled employee has specific needs (such as needing wheelchair access, or close proximity to the door, or whatever), then the employer must find a way to accomodate this. I guess it would be on a case-by-case basis - public disabled spaces are a catch-all, whereas a single employee may have fewer needs, for example not needing the wheelchair space.
Disabled employees at my workplace have personally-reserved spaces near a side entrance.
Doesn’t seem like a big deal - ADA requires “reasonable accommodation”, and that qualifies. If the employee asks for that, the employer doesn’t have a good way to say no.
I can report back on this next week when I start a job at a grocery store (unless something goes massively wrong in the next day or so). I have a perfectly legitimate handicap plate, but I don’t use it all the time; sometimes all the spots are taken, and since I don’t need the extra room for a wheelchair, it’s not worth the hassle of waiting for one to open up. Or else I’m having a really good day and leave the spots for those who are not.
I figure I’ll just park wherever they tell me to.
There’s a misplaced apostrophe in the thread title. AAAGH.
My building has a big parking garage shared with a skyscraper. There are handicapped spaces on one floor of the structure. They are for all handicapped parking, both staff and visitors. If there is not a space available for someone needing one of those spaces, the parking lot attendants park the car for the person.
I carpool in with someone who has a blue placard for her car. What’s bad is when she gets a ride home from someone else and she leaves early. Then I have to slink down to pick up my car at the end of the day and hope nobody gives me grief for where I parked.
The ADA standards do not make a distinction between employee parking and customer parking, just for number of spaces in a lot. So employees can park right in front of the store, barring issues mentioned below. The size of the lot should be based on the type of business and the number of offices or stores. Design standards for parking lots typically call for so many spaces per employee plus spaces per 1000 square feet of retail space if appropriate.
ADA Standards for Accessible Design (4.1.2 (5)) defines the number of accessible parking spaces required for different sized lots. (e.g. 1-25 total spaces, 1 is accessible; 26-50 spaces, 2 are accessible; 101-150; 5 accessible) If you have separate lots for employees and customers, each lot would be considered individually. That is, unless you make employees park a ways away from the building, in which case the “reasonable accommodation” mentioned by Elvis comes into play.
Of course, these are minimum requirements. A good designer would make allowances for places where there is a higher likelihood of handicap needs. I would define additional spaces for a doctor’s office or rehab facility. In addition, a good employer would also make allowances. If you have a small office that only requires 20 spaces (1 accessible), but three of your employees were handicapped, you should spring for some repainting and additional signs – enough for all employees plus the additional one for a potential visitor. (Actually, three spaces for the employees would be required under the provisions of the ADA.)
At my previous employer (a retail store), we did have an assistant manager who apparently had heart problems, which entitled him to a handicap parking tag. He regularly parked in one of the three handicapped spaces available in the front of the store.
This would not have bothered me at all if he had been handicapped to the point that he obviously could not walk the length of the parking lot from the employee parking area into the store. However, he worked 40+ hours a week, and was in constant motion from one end of the store to the other (on foot) from the time he arrived until the time he left. He was obviously not handicapped enough to not be able to walk the distance, PLUS he took up a parking space that could legitimately have been needed by a customer.
My current employer (a small, local university) has about 50 spaces for handicapped parking, but they make no distinctions between employees, staff, students, or visitors who use the spaces, as long as there is a valid handicap tag in the car. I used them a few times when my son was in a wheelchair and I had to bring him to work with me to run paperwork or some other short trip, and I know other employees who have needed to use them for one reason or another. But since there are so many, it isn’t necessary to make special arrangements for employees.
I didn’t think it would be a big problem for places like Wal-Mart or some other big-box type store, where there may be a dozen or more handicapped parking spaces, but it got me to wondering about places that have small parking lots.
With all due respect, if the assistant manager was entitled to disabled parking access as required by law, whether he was fit or not in your eyes is irrelevant. What matters is that the assistant manager obtained disabled access legally as defined in your state, often upon written confirmation by a doctor.
At work (in Michigan) we have dedicated vistors’ parking at the main entrance (the only place you can get in the building and use the pager to get further in). These vistors’ spots have handicapped spots.
Also, at each of the major wings, for example the wing I go in, there are also handicapped spots. Therefore I posit that these are for handicapped employees. Additionally, certain levels of employees have assigned parking (I don’t :() – but I don’t know if any of them are handicapped. I always see a rainbow sticker on one car that’s always in a handicapped spot, but I don’t ask about that
