Disabled Woman Explains Unspoken Dark Side Of Why We're Going Back To Offices

Published December 21, 2021

Every now and then, we can hear some inside knowledge from an expert or someone who works within an industry we commonly use that changes how we see the world around us.

And while the information they share is valuable on its own, it also reminds us that we never really know who is going to change our lives. Because while it's rarely a good idea to dismiss what recognized experts have to tell us, we all go through enough different experiences in life that it's hardly impossible find another regular person with the answer to a question we didn't know we had.

And sure, it's true that those experiences have led one woman to break some pretty bad news for us. But as they always say, knowledge is power.

On December 15, a man who goes by @benhires on TikTok posted a video in which he expressed how weird it was that so many business executives are pushing for employees to return to the office.

TikTok | @crutches_and_spice

But as far as another TikToker named Crutches & Spice's experiences could tell her, "weird" isn't exactly the word for it. She suspects that there's likely an unspoken disability-related reason underpinning this trend among business owners.

To provide some background for this claim, she explained that a lot of job descriptions require potential employees to be able to drive and lift a certain amount of weight. This is despite the fact neither of these requirements are often relevant when they actually do the job.

In her words, "That is to keep disabled people from applying to those jobs."

And as she went on to explain, this practice is also relevant to why workers and employers tend to disagree on whether everyone should come back to the office.

TikTok | @crutches_and_spice

In her words, "Part of the reason why they want you back at the office is because of health insurance. Hear me out."

Once working from home became more prevalent with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, those physical requirements she mentioned earlier no longer applied.

As a result, employers who once got away with excluding people with disabilities could no longer do so without making a more obviously illegal hiring requirement.

From there, she explained that when a company has more employees with disabilities, their health insurance premiums tend to increase.

And since the number of people who could end up suffering from debilitating long COVID-19 symptoms are potentially in the millions, Crutches & Spice figured this insurance premium surge is likely to be a widespread problem for employers.

So from her perspective, the push to bring all employees back to the office then becomes a push to try the same discrimination tactic to keep the ones with expensive chronic health issues away.

As she put it, "If they can undermine disability law, they can undermine your access to health care."

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