I’m wondering if this isn’t a “set-up” lawsuit. If the guy was a former bartender, WHY would he want to work for Starbuck’s? He’d make a hell of a lot more money bartending.
And do disability laws REQUIRE you to hire disabled people on the spot whenever they show up? Sure if you want the guy working for you, you make “reasonable accomodations”. But what if you have a stack of applications? Aren’t you allowed to pick the “best” candidate?
“But what if you have a stack of applications? Aren’t you allowed to pick the “best” candidate?”
I have had a little experience with AWD. In general, if you have a disabled person that can do the job with reasonable accommodations, he’s put in the pool with the other applicants who can do the job, too. The Powers That Be look at the process like Affirmative Action, you better have a good reason for NOT hiring this person instead of an Able Bodied Person, if he can do the job.
The training I took was very strange. You must treat a merely short person differently than a dwarf or midget. A normal person who is 4 feet tall, you can say, sorry, I was looking for someone 5 feet tall because of the shelves here. But! If the 4 foot tall person is a dwarf, you MUST consider reasonable accommodations when hiring (lifts, ladders, the like) , but you don’t with the normal short person.
If the Starbucks manager thought that hiring a one-armed barrista would be bad for sales, or was unaesthetic, or was wierded out, AWD could slap him.
Anything the progressives push does not give you more freedom, and in the case of AWD, you can get in trouble hiring the “best person” from your point of view when you have “disabled” applicants.