October 2017 Federal Employment Law Training Newsletter

Do you want to know why we love this work here at FELTG? Well, consider the following. One of our favorite readers recently dropped us a note about a problem employee he had to deal with several years ago:

“The most interesting case I had was an employee who would go into trances during the workday, speak in tongues, then faint.  When her supervisor told her she could not do that, she responded that it was God, not her, speaking.“

Most folks who would read about this lady would immediately feel sympathy. Poor thing. She’s having hallucinations and delusions. Perhaps she’s in need of medical care for her apparent schizophrenia. Normal people would worry about her ability to take care of herself. Perhaps she needs to be hospitalized for a while. Well, you know what we civil service lawyers and employee relations specialists here at FELTG immediately think when we hear about this?

• We can’t charge her with Insubordination because her actions are not a “willful” refusal to follow an order.
• If her condition is a disability or the result of a religious belief, we need to try to reasonably accommodate her by finding another position in which she can perform the essential functions while speaking in tongues and fainting.
• If her spells equate to a religious practice, we need to determine if accommodating these is an undue hardship.
• Perhaps there’s a critical element in her performance plan that says, “No more than one fainting incident in any 30-day period.”

Some days I don’t know if our business is calling or a sickness. Take advantage of us by attending our training while you can. You just never know when “they” may take away one or the other of our team and institutionalize us along with this poor lady.