From the "I'm not a doctor, but" dept.
Comes this case of ankle-biting from the US Post Office:
In July of 2004, Lyon sprained his ankle while on patrol in Iraq, but it didn't slow him down much.
Jason Lyon/Iraq War Veteran: "I sprained my ankle and two weeks later I was back on combat patrols. I was only in the cast for two weeks."
Nine months later, Lyon was discharged and after returning to western New York, applied for a job as a letter carrier with the U.S. Postal Service. He was told that the ankle that he sprained a year and a half ago, while strong enough for combat patrol, was not good enough to deliver mail.
Karen Mazurkiewicz/US Postal Service: "Mr. Lyon was found unsuitable for the position of letter carrier. As a veteran he has had an opportunity to apply for other positions. We're not saying that he can't be a postal employee, just that our concern is his suitability as a postal carrier. "
Jason Lyon/Iraq War Veteran: "I've given them so much documentation from the VA that says that i'm 100 percent. I have a stack of documents at home that says that I'm fine and fit for duty."
Fit for duty in Iraq, but not for all the jobs at his local post office.
Karen Mazurkiewicz/US Postal Service: "The postal service is the largest civilian employer of veterans. In western New York alone, we have about 28 percent veterans. So there's a strong alliance with Veterans of America and we take that very seriously. The postal service doesn't know what kind of criteria the military uses to determine suitability. We're only looking at one specific job and one specific applicant and trying to determine if there's a suitability match. "
Now I'm not a doctor, but I had always believed that a sprain was a temporary condition, not a permanent handicap. This smells like an incomplete story - I suspect that there's something more at play here.
If, however, this is the whole story, it doesn't reflect very well on the USPS. Regardless, "We're not bigots - why, 28% of my friends are veterans!" is not a good flag to wave here, Karen.
Here's a larger story on the issue. Of note here is that his congressman is on the case:
Rep. Brian M. Higgins, D-Buffalo, sent a letter Wednesday to Postmaster General John E. Potter, the chief executive officer of the Postal Service, asking him to take a second look at Lyon's case.
I sincerely hope that he does. But while we're at it, I'd really like to know if the job entails walking all day or driving a delivery vehicle? And would either job be more physically strenuous than say, a janitor?
Debra Hawkins, the Postal Service's northeast manager for public affairs, encouraged Lyon to seek other employment with the Postal Service.
"We've had medical determinations made that he can't do the work of a postal carrier," Hawkins said. "But we have other jobs that he could do, like mail handler, mail clerk and custodian . . . As a veteran, he would receive preference for those jobs."
I know folks who clean buildings for a living who can attest to the physical taxation of the work. Frankly, this comes across as an insult.
I broke an ankle as a teenager. I suppose that I wouldn't qualify either, in spite of the fact that it didn't stop me from completing 20 years service in the military - performing difficult tasks under harsh conditions that would make the average letter carrier's duties seem like a vacation in comparison.
