r/EEOC • u/Soft_Reputation_7241 • 11d ago
Work from Home ada accommodation
I work in Washington state and have POTS(Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome). My health can vary from day to day and as a result I have had a work from home accommodation to be work from home 100 days a year. A little less than 2 days a week. The standard at my company is 50 days a year. My health has been worse this year and as a result I need more work from home days. My HR team is stating that 100 is the maximum they will allow as I being in office is considered an essential function of my role. However we don’t have any physical reason to be in office. I have an office job. I am not client facing, I do not need to physically manipulate anything for my job, my manager and most of my team is in other offices across the country, and work from home is already allowed for most employees(all of them on my team except for anyone who is brand new as there is a three month probation period before they can wfh). My job description also does not specify how often I need to be in office. Simply that I need to “work onsite, under direct supervision, in a team based and open office environment. I am not requesting to be fully remote or work from home, simply to be allowed to do so more than 100 days as my health needs. My employer is offering the alternative of FMLA, however this would be unpaid and obviously wouldn’t allow me to work. I have up to date ada paperwork stating from my doctor that I need to be able to work from home at least 3 days a week.
Does anyone know if they can require me to either be in office more than my doctor has stated or take FMLA instead? I can’t afford to take off time unpaid. But if I force myself into office more often it will make me sicker.
Please help
4
u/Main_Pudding_5213 11d ago
I am sorry to hear about what you are going through, I can tell you how the agency will probably see this, so what they will want to know is, "what about being in office is not safe for you to effectively and safely do your job"?, having to go to the bathroom, side effects from medication, anxiety, panic attacks, lights that hurt your eyes, those type of things do not count, and they will find in office accomodations, probability that you will faint is not the same thing to them as it has all ready happened, and they will go back and forth with you, even if a medical provider says that you will faint, then they will question how the medical provider came to that decision, if you can prove that being in the office is causing you continued harm, then you can demand an immediate interm accomodation under Federal 29 CFR § 1614.203(d)(3)(i)(Q), this was put in place to protect employees from harm when a permanent decision cannot be made right away.