Thursday 18 February 2016

When ‘Reasonable Adjustment’ Isn’t…

A woman with dyslexia who worked at Starbucks says she nearly tried to kill herself (Ed: meaning what, she thought about getting the top off the aspirin bottle, but didn’t?) because the coffee giant treated her so badly because it did not understand her condition.
Her difficulty with reading, writing and telling the time- which she says she had always made clear to her employer - led to her supervisor duties being reduced, leaving her with suicidal feelings.
There are some jobs where this wouldn’t be an issue, but clearly, her’s isn’t one of those:
Ms Kumulchew worked at a branch in Clapham, south-west London, where her job involved recording temperatures of water and fridges at certain times of the day and writing them on a duty roster.
She said she needed to be shown how to do tasks visually, as she was a visual learner and stressed the most important thing that could be done was to “apply what Starbucks say - ‘do show and tell’ - which works brilliantly for me as I can do it physically”.
She added that the company should have “brought in the Dyslexia Association” and that having someone check what she had done would have helped her.
Yes, that makes sense. What company wouldn’t want to have two people employed doing the same job? *rolls eyes*
The tribunal found Starbucks did not make any reasonable adjustments to help her do her job and instead discriminated against her and victimised her.
Starbucks said: “We are in on-going discussions with this employee… and we are not able to comment on a case that has not yet been completed", reported the BBC.
In other words, her lawyer’s trying to screw them for the maximum compo…
The CEO of the British Dyslexia Association, Dr Kate Saunders, said: “Many dyslexics are struggling in the work place with very high levels of anxiety, because employers do not have the training or the awareness to make adjustments for them.”
All things being equal, why on earth would you hire someone who can’t perform the duties they are paid to perform without handholding?

14 comments:

Weekend Yachtsman said...

She's dyslexic and part of her job is recording the temperatures of the fridges?

Oh my.

Note to self: don't eat any fresh food in Starbucks...

Trevor said...

Many dyslexics are struggling in the work place with very high levels of anxiety ...

And many of us normal people are in a near-permanent state of piss-boiling apoplexy thanks to the amount of fuckwittery being tolerated.

AndrewWS said...

Just think of the consequences of her writing down people's names on cups.

SteveA said...

Rumour has it that the post office no longer have a reading test as it discriminates.

Anonymous said...

Bunny

Note to Starbucks why employ the bloody woman in the first place?

Ed P said...

SteveA, judging by the mail I get which is clearly addressed to other houses in the same road, or sometimes in other roads, I agree that the post office now employs illiterate delivery people.

No discrimination may be applied nowadays regarding competence - "It's their ooman rites, init?"

Anonymous said...

What Trevor said.

Anonymous said...

There is no dyslexia, it's just lakc of parcitce raeding and if you scanned that then I'm right.

Northish said...

One person in ten has dyslexia. It is a different way of decoding (reading) words. It is not a disability any more than being left-handed is. You just learn how to cope with it, and that learning process gives you skills in overcoming all sorts of other problems that give you marketable skills to an employer, because you have to be better at thinking. Yes, you will always have trouble spelling, but copying down stuff like temperatures is not a problemn for a genuine dyslexic, just for fuckwits who give dyslexica a bad name.

Andy said...

I'm all for more deaf mutes at call centres.

selsey.steve said...

I give up.
Incompetents claiming all sorts of poorly described, poorly diagnosed and barely acceptable symptoms to most psychiatrists are attempting to progress up the promotion chain because they can't function. And we must applaud them for their persistence!
Can't do your job?
You are FIRED.
End of.

Flaxen Saxon said...

When I were a lad, we couldn't tell the difference between the mongas and spakkers, so we called them, collectively, dyslexics.

JuliaM said...

"Note to self: don't eat any fresh food in Starbucks..."

Quite!

"Just think of the consequences of her writing down people's names on cups."

If she just works in Brixton, she'll do fine... :)

"SteveA, judging by the mail I get which is clearly addressed to other houses in the same road, or sometimes in other roads, I agree that the post office now employs illiterate delivery people."

I always put that down to laziness, but now I'm wondering...

"When I were a lad, we couldn't tell the difference between the mongas and spakkers, so we called them, collectively, dyslexics."

I'm old enough to remember when there was a 'Spastic's Society'!

Jonathan said...

'Meseret Kumulchew'

Sounds like a traditional cockney name.