Aug 23, 2019, 1:06 PM

@Macha said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Derp If they were going to prove it was an undue hardship to set me up for work from home, they would have to remove the option for everyone.

Hey! So sorry for the delayed reply. It's not showing me notifications when people use @mentions, for some reason.

So in regard to needing to remove the option for everyone -- no, not so much, really. This is part of what I was trying to say before. These cases are very fact-specific.

They don't need to remove the option from everyone, because everyone is not a valid comparator in your case. Only the people who hold your exact position (or an incredibly similar, only marginally different position) are, and whether this creates an undue hardship or is a reasonable accommodation turns very heavily on what the employer defines as the essential functions of your position. (Which, by the by, is determined by the employer, within certain guidelines, and absent an argument that an 'essential function' is pretextual, judges and the like don't question whether a function listed as 'essential' is really essential or not).

IF they argue that your on-site presence is an essential function of the position, then they are not required to grant a work-from-home accommodation, since you would technically be asking for an accommodation that negates an essential function of the position. Therefore, they can claim that a reasonable accommodation would not be possible, since negating an essential function of the position makes it an unreasonable request.

It's all very technical, and again, highly dependent upon what your actual job description is, and everyone else receiving a remote work allowance may not be a valid comparator.

TL;DR -- press for it, so that you can at least have them engaged in an interactive process, but don't assume that you're entitled to such a thing, because that's just not the way that any of that works.

ETA: This is not meant to discourage you in any way. Just trying to make you aware of what all goes into these sorts of things, so that you can go in with reasonable expectations.