[nagdu] When Treating One Worker's Allergy Sets Off Another's

Cheryl Osborn chapalacheryl at gmail.com
Tue May 11 18:34:12 UTC 2010


Too bad the paprika lady couldn't have gotten a poodle.  I wonder if a
survey was taken at her place of employment to ask if anyone had an
allergy to dogs.

On 5/11/10, Ginger Kutsch <gingerKutsch at yahoo.com> wrote:
> New York Times
>
> May 10, 2010
>
> When Treating One Worker's Allergy Sets Off Another's
>
> By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
>
> <
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/ste
> ven_greenhouse/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
> http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/stev
> en_greenhouse/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
>
>
>
> INDIANAPOLIS - It's a case of King Solomon meets the Americans
> With Disabilities Act.
>
> In her first week at a new job, Emily Kysel suffered an allergy
> attack so severe that she had to go home early one day. A
> co-worker was eating buffalo wings at her desk, and the wings
> contained paprika, to which Ms. Kysel, 24, has a rare and
> potentially fatal allergy.
>
> She nearly died five years ago from eating chili, and since then
> her allergy has sent her to the emergency room five times and
> caused her to jab herself with an anti-allergy injection 11
> times, sometimes from just inhaling paprika nearby.
>
> "It feels like someone poured acid down your throat," she said.
>
> Fearing a fatal encounter with paprika, Ms. Kysel's parents and
> grandparents chipped in to buy her an allergy-detection dog,
> which works much like a narcotics-sniffing dog. After she had
> extensive talks with her employer, the City of Indianapolis,
> officials gave her permission to take the dog to work. The golden
> retriever, named Penny, cost her family $10,000 - it jumps up on
> Ms. Kysel whenever it detects paprika.
>
> On the first day Ms. Kysel took Penny to work, one of her
> co-workers suffered an asthma attack because she is allergic to
> dogs. That afternoon Ms. Kysel was stunned when her boss told her
> that she could no longer take the dog to work, or if she felt she
> could not report to work without Penny, she could go on
> indefinite unpaid leave. She was ineligible for unemployment
> compensation because of the limbo she was put in.
>
> Ms. Kysel filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity
> Commission < <http://www.eeoc.gov/> http://www.eeoc.gov/> ,
> asserting that her employer had discriminated against her by
> failing to accommodate her disability. Legal experts say her case
> raises tough questions about how to balance the sometimes
> clashing interests of co-workers with disabilities and how far
> employers need to go to make reasonable accommodations for
> workers under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
>
> "I was crestfallen, angry," Ms. Kysel said. "I thought I had
> jumped through all the hoops to get permission, but then it
> immediately felt they were favoring this other individual."
>
> Greg Fehribach, a lawyer for the city, denied that Indianapolis
> had violated the law. He said Ms. Kysel's supervisors had gone
> far to accommodate her, holding a meeting where she explained her
> allergy to her co-workers, and barring employees from eating
> foods containing paprika at their desks. Several managers and
> co-workers have questioned the seriousness of Ms. Kysel's allergy
> - some see it as a quirky, almost laughable oddity. To buttress
> her case, two allergists wrote letters saying her allergy was
> life threatening.
>
> While working for the city's Department of Code Enforcement, she
> had an attack because the tiny snack bar in her office building
> began serving paprika-laden pulled pork.
>
> One thing that galls Ms. Kysel is that the City of Indianapolis
> has barred her from using her service animal at work although it
> allows blind employees to have them.
>
> "I don't think I deserve preferential treatment over anyone," she
> said. "But I think I deserve equal treatment."
>
> Christopher Kuczynski, assistant legal counsel for the Americans
> With Disabilities Act division of the equal-employment agency,
> declined to comment upon her case because it was pending.
>
> But in such situations, Mr. Kuczynski said, "what's important
> when you have two people with disabilities is you don't treat one
> as inherently more important than the other."
>
> "What the employer has to do," he continued, "is work out some
> sort of balance between the accommodations needed."
>
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-- 
Cheryl in Mexico
chapalacheryl at gmail.com




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