A Day in the Life of . . .

Reasonable accommodation??!!!!?

When it comes to providing ADA accommodations, our motto is "We'll find a way." Large print or braille tests, readers, interpreters, adjustments of desk or table heights, etc. are all routine parts of our test monitors' days. But our reputation of being accommodating has been occasionally misunderstood by some of our applicants - such as a recent secretarial applicant who asked to be "accommodated" out of taking our typing test because her sculptured nails were too long!

And then there is the applicant who asked for the accommodation of having a Personnel Department staff member complete his application form for him. Since there was no apparent reason for this accommodation, the applicant was asked on what basis he was making the accommodation request. The response: "crummy handwriting." It took awhile to convince the gentleman that bad handwriting was not a disability protected by the ADA.

In early April our Personnel Department received a postcard flyer for a High-Tech & Diversity Career Convention being presented by the NAACP in Chicago on June 4th. Chicago is a little outside our normal Florida recruitment area so the convention didn't really interest me but the reverse side of the post card really struck a chord! It reminded me and the rest of our staff of way too many days in our own lives. We thought you might also appreciate the "humor" so we contacted the convention event management to ask about including it in the ACN. After all, the worst that can happen is that they say no. As you can see, they graciously agreed to allow us to reprint the cartoon. So the following is reprinted with the kind permission of SHOMEX Productions, 2601 Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 320, Santa Monica, CA 90405, 310-450-8831. Hope it doesn't remind you of too many of your own days. . .

Cartoon