Hi,
Years ago, I almost died while working at Pinterest because there were dogs everywhere in the office. They left me in severe pain, low energy, and seeking medical attention till this day. Everyday ended up being a struggle to breathe. People like myself have asthma triggered by being indoors with dogs. Many people don’t understand allergens (i.e. dead skin/dander) can fill an indoor space like odor or viruses. It’s been painful and at times life threatening. I just don’t know what to do anymore now that pets are common at workplaces, ride-shares, restaurants, planes, and hotels. I’m always worried about my safety and if this will lead to my death. Under the American Disability Act, I tried contacting workplaces, restaurants, and airports but it often leads to being ignored or nothing significant. Many places historically did not allow pets but now they are allowed and an entire group of people are excluded or harmed. I could really use your help on sharing this information and getting any ideas on building some awareness for people like us to feel safe again?
I often find myself crying my way to sleep. My body hurts. Life outside is hard.
My Story
Like an odor can fill up a floor, dogs can spread their allergens throughout an entire space. I would breathe it in and have an asthma attack. Asthma can be life threatening, counts as a disability when occurring, and is protected by the American Disability Act, but I’m finding fewer and fewer companies caring about people with pet allergies.
Without knowing there were dogs, I started working at Pinterest. On my first day, I had an asthma attack. I alerted my manager, HR, and then ultimately the CEO. I met others who were struggling with severe symptoms. With several Pinterest offices in the area, I asked if they could make our building with the dog free floor completely dog free given many of the allergic employees were in the same building in order to do their jobs with their teams. I also told them that there were daily sightings of dogs on an assigned dog free floor and even if there weren’t, the floor itself does not work because there’s a giant staircase through each floor spreading air with allergens in it. They didn’t budge.
We had to tolerate symptoms and were sick for weeks at a time. I medicated with the support of a doctor and had severe asthma attacks throughout the experience.
My manager and HR said I can work from home but there was constant pressure from my manager to get me to show up in person at the office.The environment included people asking to fire me and making jokes about people with dog allergies on Slack. I was also afraid of being found out when people ask me why I'm calling into meetings. My management chain kept suggesting it would be good for me to be in the office.
Over many months, the company often said they care about my safety and verbally committed to items in regards to the dog allergens at work and my health but often failed to deliver on them, such as: air filters, adjusting work conditions, workload adjustments, lobby policies, responding to emails promptly. They experimented with signs that said no dogs on the dog free floor that employees continued to ignore. When someone posted on Blind about the health issue with allergies and asthma, employees commented saying people like me should not work here or be fired. All this time, I was heavily medicated and had a massive amount of chest pains and difficulty breathing everyday. My health was getting worse.
I tried finding another company but I was not in any shape to do well in an interview. I kept getting allergy shots in hopes they helped but they’re not a cure. Work was very demanding. When I looked at other companies (i.e. Airbnb, Lyft, Uber, Asana, Workday, startups), many of them already had a dog friendly policy. Recruiters would not follow up when I told them that I’m allergic to dogs. It’s very hard to find opportunities to work in a safe work environment.
I was explicitly begging for my life and saying I’m afraid of dying to my manager and HR. Finally, a senior leader who has been trying to help because his team had someone who was also getting very sick told me that they’re removing the dog policy because there were many cases of dogs in the dining area where the health department brought it up as an issue. It just really made me feel like my life was so expendable. Free food beat out dogs at work, but nearly killing us did not.
Due to the many months of exposure, I continued to have health issues after the dogs were removed. I barely slept, as I’d have severe daily chest pains at night. I’ve been working with doctors ever since to try to relieve my pain and to breathe normally again. I’ve lost years of my life to this now due to the incident and the symptoms that have followed me since. I’ve spent so much time laying in bed wishing for the pain to stop and questioning if it would have been better if the incident had just succeeded in taking my life.
I brought up my manager’s behavior with the company where he was not following up on reasonable accommodation items that he said he would. He even said I would [f-word] this new task up while referring to how my asthma made his life harder. The company performed an investigation on this where he got feedback then promoted a month later. It did not matter if I continued to have asthma attacks. As long as the company was trying something like talking about doing something, they were accommodating. It’s been rough from so many angles.
At the end of the day, people love dogs. I don’t really know what to do. I see dogs in restaurants, bars, planes, workplaces, and hotels now. I feel people like me are doomed to not have less access to many places in the future. I’m still overwhelmed from seeing physicians in hopes of being able to breathe, sleep, and feel safe again one day. I see others are struggling with this too, but I just don’t know what to do. I feel so weak and low on energy from my experience at Pinterest.
Also people often focused the conversation to service dogs but the vast majority of allergens at work were from pet dogs, not service dogs. I believe people who are allergic to dogs and those in need of a service dog can figure out a way to not impact each other. I’ve also heard many service dog owners prefer their dog to not be around non-trained dogs due to how they might react.
Articles on other people's experience and even having an attack on planes
https://www.askamanager.org/2015/07/my-new-office-is-full-of-dogs-and-im-allergic.html
https://www.fastcompany.com/3049578/help-my-new-office-is-full-of-dogs-and-im-allergic