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Antiwork

My partner has a disability. Her employer is battling to get her in to the office.

So the story begins thusly: My partner had an interview with a pharma company for a role that was advertised as fully remote. The job represented a decrease in pay but a chance to work from home, which for a person with a disability would have been great and therefore is why she wanted the job to begin with. A few weeks after starting the role, the company announced that all employees would have to come back in to the office. Her contract is not technically a remote contract, so she had to comply. A manager even admitted that the change was simply to justify their expensive office space but I'm sure that doesn't surprise anybody. Anyway, the company in question started to receive great backlash because of this change, so they created an “exceptions” policy and invited staff to apply. My partner's commute would have been 3 hours by…


So the story begins thusly: My partner had an interview with a pharma company for a role that was advertised as fully remote. The job represented a decrease in pay but a chance to work from home, which for a person with a disability would have been great and therefore is why she wanted the job to begin with.

A few weeks after starting the role, the company announced that all employees would have to come back in to the office. Her contract is not technically a remote contract, so she had to comply. A manager even admitted that the change was simply to justify their expensive office space but I'm sure that doesn't surprise anybody.

Anyway, the company in question started to receive great backlash because of this change, so they created an “exceptions” policy and invited staff to apply. My partner's commute would have been 3 hours by car, each way, or 5 and a half hours by public transport. Her request for an exception was denied because presumably we are expected to live solely on board a train or bus, now.

At this point, she decided to divulge her disability to the company and was sent to an OH doctor, for assessment. The OH doc told her in-person that the commute was insane for a healthy person, let alone herself, yet the letter they sent to the company declared that she could commute to work. After this, she had a stream of conversations with her manager & HR who wouldn't believe that she had a disability at all until they were confronted by a letter from her personal doctor. The attached email photo (can't screenshot due to company monitoring software), is their response to her.

Tldr: Partner is disabled & lives minimum 3hr commute from work, yet nobody thinks this commute is insane.

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