A Small Medium, at large

Yesterday, Sunday, April 26, I was in the Phoenix airport, checking the Southwest Airlines Departures Board. A woman walked up to me. She was middle-aged, probably five to ten years older than me. She started to talk to me. I don't remember exactly what she said. It was something like, "There is a midget....little person in Phoenix.  He is a psychic." Though she seemed to correct herself mid-sentence, as if she knew the word midget might be offensive, I interrupted her. 

"I don't like the word midget," I said. 

The woman stopped talking, registered what I said, and started to talk again. "There is a little person in Phoenix. He is a psychic.  He committed a crime."  At that point, I knew the woman hadn't approached to ask if I knew a little person from Phoenix.  

There are two little people jokes that get repeated more than any other I know. The first one always uses the m-word. The punchline is, "That's like getting the award for the world's tallest midget."  People use the joke as a tool to discredit the recipient of praise.  Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks Basketball Team, repeated the joke over Twitter, referring to Starbucks' Via Coffee being named the best instant coffee.  Matt Damon, during the interview on the Today Show, used the joke to disparage himself when the hosts announced that he had won an award, something like the "World's Sexiest Family Man." The actual meaning of the joke is troubling enough because it reveals an inherent bias against short stature. Throw in the m-word, the joke provokes tired exasperation. 

The second joke is the one the woman in the airport started to tell.  It involves a little person who is a psychic or an astrologer.  He or she is arrested, but manages to escape. The punchline is, ".....a small medium, at large." For some, a cute play on words. But if the joke includes the m-word, it only inspires more eye rolling. 

In the airport, I thought the woman was going to ask me about a real little person who lived in Phoenix.  I guessed she was going to ask if I knew the person. But it didn't take long for me to figure out that she had approached a stranger, who happened to be a dwarf, in the middle of an airport, in order to tell him a little person joke. Realizing she was leading up to the standard punchline, I stopped the woman a second time.

"I know this joke," I said. I used a monotone.  She paused, focused her eyes a bit more than they were already, gave a slight nod, then started in on the punchline. "A small...." she stopped, waiting for me to finish the joke.  I don't know if she stopped because she wanted me to prove I really knew the joke or to allow me to share in the joy of the punchline.  

In another monotone voice, I said "medium, at-large." She chimed in for the last bit. We said "at-large" in unison. 

With a somewhat satisfied look on her face, the woman squeezed my shoulder, said, "you are a good boy," then walked off. 

EEOC complaint against Starbucks is settled

About three months ago, news broke about a former Starbucks employee who filed a complaint against the company with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Here is a short blog post from late in May. Starbucks fired the employee, a person of short stature, just a few days into her training program. Evidently, the manager of a Starbucks in El Paso, Texas believed that a stool, which the employee had requested as an accommodation, would pose a threat to other employees. The EEOC complaint alleged that Starbucks discriminated against the employee on the basis of disability.

Earlier this week, the EEOC announced that the parties involved in the complaint had reached a settlement. The former Barista, Elsa Sallard, will be awarded $75,000 in damages. In addition, Starbucks managers in El Paso will attend Americans with Disabilities Act training programs. With the training programs, Starbucks will equip local managers with tools and information to address future accommodation requests.

The settlement announcement, especially so soon after the complaint was released to the public, is good news. I am happy that Sallard will receive compensation and I am happy that Starbucks is laying groundwork for an environment in El Paso, in front of and behind the counter, inclusive of people with disabilities.

Since the Americans with Disabilities Act, and well before the Americans with Disabilities Act, huge amounts of resources have been funneled to programs designed to support the efforts to employ people with disabilities in the work force. Despite those efforts, the unemployment rate of people with disabilities is still much larger than the general population. For all I know, Sallard is working now at another job. But she could be, through no fault of her own, like many other people with disabilities, out of work despite all the effort put into employment. The resources are necessary. It will take those resources to change attitudes of employers reluctant to hire people with disabilities. Attitudes are the key.

I applaud Starbucks for implementing systemic change. And I believe it will make a difference, in El Paso and hopefully around the country. But in the face of stories about lawsuits and settlements, I would like to hear some stories about the people who are using simple accommodations in order to perform their jobs. These stories might help to change some attitudes. But even though the stories exist we won't hear them because the headline "man works at McDonald's with the help of a stool" is not as sexy as "Dwarf Barista sues coffee empire."

The stories should be told though. For the sake of people with disabilities in search of employment, and more important, for the sake of employers. If the stories are told, perhaps the next time a store manager, whether it be of a coffee shop, a Big Boy or a Gap, while pondering an accommodation request from a dwarf, instead of asking himself or herself, 'wouldn't that be dangerous?' would exclaim, 'a stool! Of course. why didn't I think of that!'

De-Caffienated

By now, many people in the dwarfism community have read or heard about the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint filed against Starbucks. The complaint, filed on behalf of a woman with dwarfism, accuses Starbucks of discrimination based upon disability. According to the complaint, a woman with dwarfism was fired by Starbucks on the same day she requested a simple accommodation, a stool, in order to perform the duties of her job. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that employers provide a reasonable accommodation so long as the accommodation does not create an undue hardship. Often times an undue hardship translates to dollars. For example, it would be an undue hardship for a company to invest half of its operating budget into an accommodation. The company would probably go bankrupt. Whether its a multi-billion dollar corporation or an independent coffee shop, a stool doesn't cost much money. Starbucks justifies the firing by claiming that a stool would have created an unsafe environment for the dwarf who was fired and for other employees. Many posters on comment boards agree with the Starbucks justification, writing that behind the counter of a coffee bar, where people are racing back and forth with hot drinks, is no place for a dwarf.

Reports on the complaint and some of the public comments remind me of a U.S. Supreme Court Case from 2002, Eschazabal vs. Chevron. In that case, a maintenance worker who had Hepatitis was fired. Chevron explained that working around chemicals posed a risk to someone with Hepatitis. Chevron based its defense upon an EEOC regulation that "allows businesses to refuse to hire a worker if that worker would 'pose a direct threat to the health or safety of other individuals' or of the individual." The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of Chevron.

Before the Chevron case reached the Supreme Court, an Appeals Court found in favor of Echazabal, ruling that Chevron's action reflected paternalism. The Starbucks case seems to pulse paternalism also. Scalding hot drinks pose a threat to everyone, whether you a dwarf or are typical height. Who is Starbucks to decide a dwarf can't work in that environment because of safety. Granted the dwarf may be the only one in need of a stool to perform duties of the job, but a stool really pose more of a risk than the other equipment in a standard Starbucks Coffee Shop.

When searching around the internet, I found an interesting post about the case on a site called "The Stir." In a story named, "Starbucks Refuses to Let Dwarf Employee Use a Step Stool," the writer wrote, "If she can't work at Starbucks, that also eliminates 90 percent of the jobs in the service industry, which leaves her where? Unemployed?" That is a scary thought. If Starbucks and the employee aren't able to reach a resolution, and if the courts don't find in favor of the person who brought the complaint, what does this means for every other person of short stature in the service industry who may request a stool or another physical accommodation.

I am disappointed not just because the Starbucks employee was fired, but also because, in the two year span between the time the employee was fired and that the EEOC filed the complaint, the parties were not able to resolve the dispute. Who knows what happened in the intervening time. I know no more about the case than what has been reported in the media. There must be circumstances about which the public is not aware.

Despite this case, I've heard that Starbucks is a decent company on diversity and disability issues. My hope is that this EEOC will provide Starbucks an opportunity to build on its diversity and disability efforts, specifically within the dwarfism community. It would be great if this case ended, not with one side winning and the other losing, but with a collaboration between Starbucks and dwarfism community around corporation initiatives that will raise awareness about dwarfism, expand workplace accommodations for all people with disabilities, and increase employment opportunities for people with dwarfism in the workforce.