Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#21

Post by meragrin_ » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #11

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

Speaking is only a small part of communicating. A sign language interpreter is just the person's "voice" but their approach on how to treat a customer is still theirs, not their interpreters. EDIT>> For those missing my point. If Chris Voss suddenly needed a sign language interpreter, he'd still be incredibly valuable for his ability to negotiate. A person's skills in communication aren't solely tied to their ability…

Sorry, but the interpreter is going to need to be trained to have an understanding. They would likely be paid just as much if not more. It adds quite a bit of friction because interactions will take at least twice as long. It is not a reasonable accommodation. The interpreter would probably be able to help the customer faster alone.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#22

Post by anonporridge » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

dstaley wrote: post #15

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

The ADA already requires Apple Stores to provide interpretation services or other reasonable accommodations for customers, so it's not much more of an ask to provide those for employees as well.

Apple stores offer this on a scheduled basis, https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/25/apple-retail-store-sign-langu...

It's a completely different thing to expect a company to hire 2 people (with 2 full time salary and benefits) when 1 will do. Especially for a low skill job that has no real shortage of potential workers.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#23

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 2:31 AM UTC

adoxyz wrote: post #18

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

Common sense feels very uncommon these days.

[deleted]

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#24

Post by jimsimmons » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 2:31 AM UTC

As time goes on, Apple, the de-facto emperor of tech, will lose more of its clothes. They haven't had anything new in 10 years and each year their keynotes get more typical and lacklustre. Yet, Cook is up there using all sorts of superlatives, doing cargo cult innovation.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#25

Post by meragrin_ » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #16

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

I bought an iPhone from an Apple Store employee who couldn't speak but used a phone to communicate with me by typing out their messages. It was perfectly fine. I'm a bit surprised speech to text these days wouldn't basically take you as far as you need to go for a deaf employee. That said, if you take away jobs with a large communication component from the deaf, that rules out A LOT. I think reasonable accommodations…

> I think reasonable accommodations should be provided

Since I saw no defense of the interpreter, are you agreeing hiring an interpreter is not a reasonable accommodation?

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#26

Post by imgabe » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #16

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

I bought an iPhone from an Apple Store employee who couldn't speak but used a phone to communicate with me by typing out their messages. It was perfectly fine. I'm a bit surprised speech to text these days wouldn't basically take you as far as you need to go for a deaf employee. That said, if you take away jobs with a large communication component from the deaf, that rules out A LOT. I think reasonable accommodations…

I’ve also been a customer at establishments with deaf employees and none of them ever had a sign language interpreter.

Providing an iPad to type messages on is a reasonable accommodation. Customers who don’t like it can work with another employee or go elsewhere.

But hiring a second entire employee who basically shadows you and does your job for you seems like a bit much.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#27

Post by s5300 » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

It is definitely a bit of a conundrum though. One must keep in mind that the United States is and near or more always has been a welfare state. We're supposed to have governments and organizations to come up with solutions to these types of societal problems we encounter.

The way you seem to be looking at it - yes, I mostly agree that the company should not outright be expected to essentially hire another fully time employee to work as the deaf employees interpreter. But in the 21st century, in the developed country that is the United States, I very much feel as if there should be some way to quickly and reasonably pair this employee with a student(s) of a local sign language or whatever school/program in which they come and go assisting in translation services for part of school credit/curriculum/outreach. Anybody learning a language will tell you there's nothing better than real world experience.

This gives the disabled (in the form of being deaf) person a meaningful occupation/independence, and students an assured way to get important experience. However, since the US is a highly capitalistic machine, we seem to not have reasonable things such as this set up on any meaningful scale.

Lots of downvoting. Do HN users have beef with disability accomodations or something?

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#28

Post by majormajor » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 2:38 AM UTC

meragrin_ wrote: post #25

majormajor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought an iPhone from an Apple Store employee who couldn't speak but used a phone to communicate with me by typing out their messages. It was perfectly fine. I'm a bit surprised speech to text these days wouldn't basically take you as far as you need to go for a deaf employee. That said, if you take away jobs with a large communication component from the deaf, that rules out A LOT. I think reasonable accommodations…

> I think reasonable accommodations should be provided Since I saw no defense of the interpreter, are you agreeing hiring an interpreter is not a reasonable accommodation?

I think that depends on what other options are available and how well they work.

I don't have an NYT subscription to see if there's more detail in there, but I don't necessarily take every complaint at face value. It wouldn't surprise me - since this person was there for 6 years - if other accommodations were provided that many people would consider "reasonable" and a sign-language interpreter wasn't actually necessary to perform the job, but there's just long-lingering bitterness over not getting precisely the accommodation that was desired.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#29

Post by anonporridge » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 2:38 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #16

imgabe wrote: post #8

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire a…

I bought an iPhone from an Apple Store employee who couldn't speak but used a phone to communicate with me by typing out their messages. It was perfectly fine. I'm a bit surprised speech to text these days wouldn't basically take you as far as you need to go for a deaf employee. That said, if you take away jobs with a large communication component from the deaf, that rules out A LOT. I think reasonable accommodations…

There are many jobs that can be done through text communication alone (or close to 100% text). And the percentage of jobs for which this is true is probably increasing over time.

The fact is, many jobs are out of reach for most people. Standard disability is only one of many aspects of a person that makes them unsuitable for a particular job. Personality, intelligence, type and level of education, or physical strength/capability are another.

Re: Tim Cook Faces Surprising Employee Unrest at Apple

#30

Post by fragmede » Sat, Sep 18, 2021, 2:39 AM UTC

vimy wrote: post #5

If I was Tim Cook I would immediately shutdown slack and mandate everyone go back to using email. It’s always a tiny minority of activists organizing on slack who are causing a lot of the unrest in tech companies.

An unofficial, definitely don't tell management slack would have 1000s of users before the email prohibiting it managed to finish sending to all employees. Draconian policies seem viable and like they'd work, but they require a certain amount of compliance to be effective.