Employer’s Help to Improve Employee’s Job Performance not Enough

The fact that an employer may attempt to help an employee improve his or her job performance and to seek to determine whether accommodations to a physical or mental impairment could be made, does not mean that the employer viewed the employee as being substantially limited in any major life activity, including work. For example, a federal district court has held that an employer did not regard a former employee with attention deficit disorder as being disabled, even though the employer sought to help the individual improve his job performance and offered him the opportunity to meet with a company physician to determine if accommodations to his ADD could be made. The court found that ''a reasonable jury could not conclude from this evidence that the plaintiff's supervisors viewed him as incapable of, or substantially limited in, performing his sales person's job.''