Would an employer have to accomodate me (hypothetical ADA question.)

Factual Questions
1

I’ll preface this by saying I can’t imagine ever applying for or wanting a store clerk job…this is hypothetical but I have often wondered.

I have two anteriorally ruptured discs in my lower back (L3 - L4, L-4 - L5.) I can and do work on my feet most days…I am a painting contractor so I am very physically active. Mostly my back doesn’t bother me much; it’s been years so I’ve learned to adjust and compensate. As long as I’m in motion, it’s fine. However, standing on one spot for more than about 10 minutes makes my back ache, it becomes increasingly painful until it’s basically intolerable and excrutiatingly painful.

If I were ever to apply for a job at say, WalMart as a teller/clerk, would they have to accomodate me by providing a stool at the register? Also, could they refuse to hire me if I said I couldn’t stand for long stretches at a time? From my understanding a business is obliged to make a “reasonable accomodation” for a disaibility. I’m thinking a stool at a cash register would be reasonable.

Also if this is allowed, a second piggy-back question: why can I hike for miles and work on my feet all day but standing in one spot for a while makes me want to curl into the fetal position and whimper?

2

IANAL and this is founded on what I’ve read about ADA; someone with experience in administering it may have a better answer.

An employer is obliged by the ADA to retain a current employee, and not to reject a potential employee out of hand, where reasonable accommodation for his special needs can be made without unreasonable expense to the employer. In your case, assigning you to one checkout and providing a stool at that station would be reasonable accommodation for your condition. So would hiring you as a floor associate charged with keeping a department’s merchandise neat and stocked, provided that (a) most of the work can be done without your being forced to stand in one place for extended periods, and either (b) that you can carry from the stockroom boxes of your department’s merchandise (say 20 pounds at a time) or © restocking of your department can be done by another employee bringing you heavy (50-60#) boxes once a day or your opposite number on the other shift ensuring that boxes are brought out before your shift starts. None of these would normally be considered unrteasonable accommodations.

To give you an example of an unreasonable request, I once worked (before ADA) for a wholesaler who rented the second floor of a warehouse building without an elevator. The first floor was used as storage by the building owner, who had another business but did not need the second floor. The wholesale business was not open to the public; material was put together to ship to retail clients there, and only employees were allowed access. A person in a wheelchair would not be entitled by ADA to contest being rejected for hire, as installing an elevator in that building would be an unreasonable expense for either my boss or the landlord, and the second floor was not open to the general public. Change any one of many details to that story and he might well have an ADA claim, but as it stands, not; ability to climb stairs was a reasonable job requirement. Now, if someone were on crutches and negotiated the stairs with difficulty, so that he negotiated them only at the beginning and end of the workday, he would have an ADA claim if my boss had laid him off.

Is that useful?

3

Yes that is useful, thanks and your analogy makes perfect sense.

4

This.

The unreasonable expense stated by Polycarp is actually undue burden. In other words, an employer is obligated by law to make a reasonable accommodation unless it would cause an undue burden to the employer. So what constitutes an undue burden? Generally speaking, it is a hardship upon the employer and/or change in a fundamental business practice that would create a undue hardship upon the employer. Polycarp’s elevator may be an undue hardship for a small company, but it is not out of the realm of possibility of a larger company. Installing an elevator for a business that grosses $500,000 annually might meet that undue hardship test. On the other hand, based on Walmart’s published $3.4 billion first quarter profit (2011) installing the elevator is practically a no brainer, no matter how much the corporate egos might object.

At the federal government level, we’re told the undue burden test is based upon the cabinet level appropriation. So some little agency that may only have a $10 million budget could get hit with a $1 million reasonable accommodation issue and many might think that 10 percent of its annual budget is a bit unfair. But if that $10 million agency is an agency within a $250 billion department, the perspective changes. The $1 million reasonable accommodation is measured against the $250 billion budget.