I’m not a lawyer, nor am I suggesting you or anyone else should do this or that anyone could win a case like this because, you know,… shithole country

This seems like a potential case of ableism or rather, for legal purposes, discrimination against people with specific disabilities. There’s a lot of reasons someone could not have a license ranging from lack of access to a vehicle, lack of time/money, disinterest, whatever else, that probably fall under “not discrimination” to just never mention and then fire(?) or whatever they did here.

However, if someone is disabled, or however you’d like to word it, with a medical condition, physical or mental, whatever, that either prevents them from getting a license or makes it incredibly more difficult to get one and a job doesn’t explicitly require driving as part of the job, that seems like an easy lawsuit of some sort. The employer would have to provide a reasoning for not employing someone without a license. “Well, we just want them to have one” or “it’s expected” wouldn’t be good reasoning. Someone could ride the bus or have a friend/relative/whatever drop them off.

The US courts are dogshit, etc., hence my statement at the top, but this is more of a ranting thing like “these laws exist, but no one actually enforces them.” Or maybe they do. I kinda doubt it though.

This specifically just annoyed me because I do have my license, been driving for 20 years (holy jebus), but due to a medical condition that I won’t go into here for the sake of avoiding another essay, I’m always “at risk” of losing it basically at the whim of any doctor I see. If they see my condition on my chart and go “oh, wtf, he can’t drive safely” that’s it for me for until I go through the necessary paperwork and doctor visit bullshit to get it back. In theory, probably a good thing doctors can get a license yoinked (you know, from very elderly or even people like myself if a medical professional seriously thinks me driving endangers public safety, you know, it sucks but ultimately good as long as it’s a fair process done in good faith and all that). But in our society if you do lose your license it’s almost always without exception due to driving either drunk or on drugs or doing other reckless stuff. Losing it due to medical reasons is pretty rare. Most people (me basically) opt to just not drive unless totally necessary. Like I can do it, I just recognize the risk involved is a bit higher so if I can just not do it then… makes sense.

Along those lines, I resigned from a job after repeatedly informing them I didn’t want to drive to another location and that I had purposely chosen that job because of the location being close. I had to avoid, for obvious reasons I think, saying “I can’t keep driving 2 hours over to that place everyday because it’s not safe for me to do that” because then well 1) I’m openly giving them my medical information that’s none of their business and 2) that job, ironically…, fell under the motor vehicles department in my state… they could be petty as fuck and potentially (probably more lawsuit territory) do an anonymous “public safety” report that anyone can do and potentially get the state to dig into my butthole about my medical situation… all of this is stuff to be avoided, so, I stuck basically being like “yeah, I can’t drive that distance daily. If it was very very rare like twice a year, maybe, but you’re doing this every other week.” And they’d say “ok. Why? We can’t just exempt you without a reason.” And then it’s a circle of “I don’t feel comfortable explaining the details. I just can’t…”

I even submitted the information to the HR department for a medical exemption and they denied it basically because “you have a license. That means you can do it. Also, that job doesn’t require driving.” “But… they’re making me drive…?” They literally told me they couldn’t issue an exemption or even just tell the managers to not send me long distances because my job didn’t require it. Wow, great fucking system! What a clown show. I have to admit to considering driving my car purposely into something that wouldn’t kill me or anyone else just to force an accident after that email and speaking with them on the phone. I can imagine the negligence suit would have paid out nicely after I simply show what I submitted (documentation from my doctor saying I’m fine to drive, but it would be best to avoid unnecessary long drives. something like that) and how they responded (lol, just drive asshole). But, I did the easiest and more mature thing that didn’t endanger my safety by simply resigning with no notice a day later. I did their procedures, I kept driving to the locations while shit was pending, and when they laughably responded like that I was just like… nah. Fuck you all of you. Just told them in the morning I would do my job per normal, but I wouldn’t be back the next week and I’m resigning effective at the end of the shift.