Most people have worked, at least once, with a colleague unqualified for the job. Whether the deficiency was physical, intellectual, experiential, attitudinal, or otherwise, the workers had to compensate for the shortcomings, which made the jobs more difficult, decreased productivity, and possibly jeopardized health.
Why sacrifice the greater good for an incompetent co-worker's self-esteem?
Political correctness? Nepotism? Bad management? The reasons rarely suffice.
No one is entitled to a job that individual can not perform. Hiring an unqualified person is a disservice to anyone who might rely upon that performance – and a disservice to the unqualified individual as well, in the long run.
It's reasonable to expect a school bus driver to be able to drive a school bus, which ability would no doubt include people skills (using “people” in the broadest sense to include children).
Before driving the bus, a school bus driver would have to be able to get into the bus, and out again. The driver would have to be able to fit into the seat and behind the steering wheel. If the driver could not meet even these minimal standards because of obesity, but still applied for the job, one would have to question mental fitness as well as physical fitness.
In 2010, 495-pound Lewis County school bus driver Michael Holden suffered a non-work-related injury that forced him to take an unpaid leave of absence from his job for the rest of the school year. He took a leave of absence for the following year as well.
By the time he came back to work, two years after his injury, he had gained nearly 100 pounds and tipped the scales at 580. When he failed a physical performance test, he asked for another year-long leave of absence and was denied and subsequently terminated, whereupon he filed a discrimination suit.
A lower court ruled in his favor, but our state Supreme Court reversed it, and rightly so.
