Advice about disabled worker

To the editor:

To the business owner who needs employment advice about a disabled worker: How would you handle it if customers objected to anyone else in your employment? There is no rule other than common courtesy that can be brought to bear on customers who behave rudely. Would you really miss a customer who is that insensitive to anyone in your employment, let alone a person with a disability? As a business owner you should have a policy in place to take care of issues like this.

On the flip side, if you terminate a person with a disability solely on the basis of the rudeness of your customers and he/she is doing a great job, then you will have opened your door to a discrimination complaint. To be fair, you would have to get rid of anyone your customers objected to. Do you have customers interview your employees to see if they approve of them? It would be grossly unfair to discharge any employee because some customers are prejudiced. If the employee were rude to the customer, you would not tolerate it and would terminate the employee.

If an employee is doing his/her job to your expectations and the customer does not want to deal with that employee (whether disabled or not), then call another employee to deal with them. What if the customer did not want to deal with you as the owner? What would you do? How would you want to be treated? In the long run, would you miss a customer like that?

MARYANN "MIKI" GUDERMUTH, Executive Director, SEMO Alliance for Disability Independence, Cape Girardeau