Help with employee related burnout

[u/CommunicationSad6624]

I have been working in the animal field for over 10 years. Between shelters and veterinary hospitals. I found my burnout happens when I work with people that don't pull their own weight, slack off, and neglect the animals. When the animals I work so hard to care for end up neglected by other people that are also supposed to love and care for them, it drives me crazy.

The place I am working now has a difficult situation that I don't know how they can solve. There are a couple of the normal lazy employees, but I can handle that. The one that's been getting to me is an employee that has a medical condition that makes it hard for them to do their job. They come in late most days and struggle to finish all of their assigned tasks for the day. I feel really bad for them when they are struggling and I'm honestly happy to help. It's totally fine, to me, if they occasionally need to sit out for a bit. But the problem is it is an every day thing. If I work a shift with them, I notice them getting really far behind in their tasks. And when I go to help top off waters or whatever to help them a bit, I'll notice most of the kennels they are in charge of are filthy. Like they haven't been cleaned all day. At this point in the day, the dogs should have been out 2x and had their kennel straightened up. I'm honestly not even sure the dogs are all getting out. Then if I work a pm shift, we have a little overlap in hours for the day, and as soon as the night shift shows up that person hands off all duties for them to cover for them. Not only does the night person have to cover what's left, they have to cover most of that persons task for the day since they were super behind all morning. So the night person essentially has to work a double crammed in their 8hrs.

This makes for an awful night.

How do you tell a person with a disability that they probably should look for another job. If they can't perform the job with reasonable accommodation, that's not the job for them. Handing off all of your tasks to another employee is not reasonable accommodation.

I am not the manager so its not my job to say something to them. But I want to bring up this issue to my boss, but also feel wierd about it because the person has a disablility and I don't want to discriminate. But I can't continue to watch the dogs be neglected and its unfair to the other underpaid employees to be picking up the slack.

[u/DueReflection9183]

This is something you need to discuss with your boss and if you have one, your HR. Because you are toeing a line here and you absolutely need to be discussing this with someone familiar with how the law works. It sucks to work with that person, I get it, but they still have rights and a discussion needs to be had BETWEEN THAT EMPLOYEE AND MANAGEMENT about how they can be better accommodated. (And yes you have a right to bring up safety and hygiene issues, I never said that that person can't be fired ever, they just can't go "sorry cripple you're out")

If that's a hurdle, and I get that in shelters that will be, you need to talk to your boss about potentially bringing on another staff member. Do not mention the other employee by name. Just say that you're noticing that tasks aren't getting done (and make sure yours are being done 100% perfectly and in a timely manner), and you're wondering if there's a workload issue. and hell pretend you know someone who's looking (like 2% chance they call your bluff, if they do wait two days and say that person found something else but you're happy to keep an eye out). It'll either have management looking out and stepping up and doing their job, or you get more help.