| I know Michael from other parts of the Internet. He tends to write essays and blogs on all sorts of things. He is very picky about what company he will work for, for example he doesn't like Amazon's labor rules so he refuses to work for Amazon or any company with labor rules just like them. He doesn't want to work with Windows, instead he focuses on Linux and Mac OSX. He has Java skills, and lists them on his resume, but he doesn't want to do a Java job. His resume was once four pages and he had to learn to trim it down to one page. He sometimes lists obsolete technology on his resume as well. He wants to write drivers and system level programs in C/C++ and he favors Codewarrior 8. He has a point about the ADA protecting the mentally ill from discrimination, but there is a stigma about the mentally ill by managers that they can't trust them enough to hire them for a job. They see people in wheelchairs, blind, and deaf as disabled, but mental illness cannot be seen and thus not considered a real disability. I share schizoaffective disorder with Mike, it can cause communication problems and having trouble getting social clues. Just by typing or talking a person can pick up on that you are mentally ill. We communicate in word salads sometimes when we get into a bad mental cycle. Where the words are all mixed up like a salad. |
If someone is mentally ill such that it's obvious to folks around them, and they communicate poorly compared to another candidate who is in other ways equal, then is it discrimination not to hire them? (not saying this description applies to anyone here; I'm just asking a hypothetical to get a sense of what's meant by discrimination)
If you interview a person and say to yourself, "This guy is kind of strange. I'm not sure he'll pick up on social cues, so he might make people in the office uncomfortable. Sometimes he doesn't communicate well. He can't explain what he's thinking, and his words are a jumble. I'm not sure he could publicly speak, like give a presentation, and I sure wouldn't want him to represent my company to customers." Is it discrimination to pass and choose another candidate who is comparable in other ways, and not hindered in those communication and interpersonal ways?