Yes, although they did offer me another job that I could not do. So I think they covered their behinds in the ADA area. Basically, I was worried that I would be late and I did not self cath like I usually do in the morning. No big deal, I have skipped it before. I wear an incontinence pad, too, and that works well for me.
But I didn’t that morning. I was excited and nervous and spaced it. So my bladder was not totally empty because I didn’t self cath and I had no pad. Which I wasn’t aware of because I can’t feel anything “down there”.
And of course about two hours into my first shift, I was asked to move from one chair to another and when I stood up there was a wet mark on the chair seat. The manager lost her mind (she was a little on the controlling side) and looked at me and asked if I had “done that”. I shrugged and said I wasn’t sure? Then she looked at my pants and saw that I was wet and she sent me home. I didn’t know I had wet myself, since I can’t feel it. And having a full bladder was not a good thing.
I was next scheduled to work on Monday. I came in and checked in with the manager and she told me to go to HR to sign some papers. When I sat down with the HR woman she told me that I was being moved to the position of door greeter. With COVID the front doors are kept locked. You have to have an appointment to come in and claim a stray, adopt or surrender. So my job was to stand just inside the lobby at the locked door and when people approached I would unlock the door and ask them if they had an appointment and get their name. Then I would relock the door and go to the front desk and ask if so and so had an appointment at such and such time. If they did, I went and let them in (making sure they had a mask on). If they didn’t, I would go back out and tell them to go on-line and make an appointment.
If someone came with a donation, they were not allowed in and I would have to go out and collect their donation and bring it inside.
So I had two issues. 1) I can’t stand for long periods. And I was being asked to stand for several hours at a time. I did ask for a chair and one was provided. But the layout of the two locked front doors meant that the only place I could keep an eye on both doors did not have room for a chair without blocking the door and the manager said it was illegal to block any door because of fire safety issues.
My second issue was the fact that I physically can’t carry heavy bags from the parking lot into the building. There were several people who showed up with 50 lbs bags of dog food. It was impossible for me to get the bags from outside to the inside. They are just too heavy for me. And thinking ahead, to when it would be icy and snowy? Not possible.
So I talked to the HR woman and explained that the reason I had accepted the receptionist position was because I could physically do that. That is the job they hired me to do, and that is the job the federal grant had approved. She said she understood and if I couldn’t meet the physical demands of the door greeter then they had nothing to offer me. She said I could go home right then (I think had had been there about 5.5 hours, so I opted just to go home.
Moral of the story is to always self cath first thing in the morning and always pack an extra pad or two in your car. Having bowel and bladder problems, you get taught early on how to get on a schedule. It is spinal cord injury rehab 101. I made a mistake.
Sheilah
