Partially Paralyzed Woman Was Fired For Not Smiling Enough (Walmart)

[matcom]

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ST. PETERSBURG - Molly Beavers lost her smile early on in her 19-year career of pushing food samples and collecting grocery carts she could barely see over.

Her scowl may have cost her the job.

A Sam's Club manager fired her in December 2003 for not smiling enough, she says. Beavers' face is partially paralyzed from surgery related to her condition as an achondroplastic dwarf.

Beavers, 49, filed an Americans With Disabilities Act complaint in federal court Friday, alleging that Sam's Club and parent company Wal-Mart discriminated against her when they fired her. She claims they knew about her health problems and failed to accommodate her.

The complaint says Beavers is seeking a jury trial, but Beavers says she's really seeking an apology and some compensation for the last two years she has been unemployed.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Christi Gallagher declined to speak about the lawsuit.

"I can tell you that Wal-Mart's policy prohibits discrimination of any kind," Gallagher said.

Beavers is also one of the 5,000 women alleging Wal-Mart discriminated against them in a high profile class-action lawsuit that's working its way through the courts.

Although partial paralysis has saddled her with a permanent frown, Beavers said she lived for her food demonstration job.

She commuted by bus each morning for one hour from St. Petersburg to the Clearwater Sam's Club along Gulf to Bay Boulevard to offer tastes of biscuits and gravy and pigs-in-a-blanket to Sam's Club customers.

She started working for a Sam's Club's predecessor, Pace Membership Warehouse, on U.S. 19 in Pinellas County in 1984, when she was 28. She rode her bicycle about 10 miles to and from work every day, until a car hit her and left her unconscious, battered and bruised.

Beavers said she can't remember the exact date of the surgery that paralyzed her face but that it occurred when she was working at Pace and it was to correct a glandular disorder.

http://sptimes.com/2005/06/14/Tampabay/Suit_says_missing_smi.shtml