hi! i’m a secretary with a lifelong congenital back issue that i had fixed via surgery.
the first thing i want to point out is that the box of paper that @bransrath posted is not the weight of the box. the 20 lb in that description is the paper weight, which is the amount of force a piece of paper can take before tearing. i know this because it’s described as copy paper, and copy paper is by default 20 lb weight. so posting that picture as a ‘gotcha’ in response to this post is ignorant at best and intentionally ableist at worst. in reality, that box probably weighs no more than 15 lbs.
secondly, i have never had to actually pick up one of these boxes ever. and i have to deal with them a lot, given that i’m a secretary who, prior to the pandemic, was printing off 1000+ pages of booklets per week. i’ve never had to pick these up because you can literally just open them, grab a ream of paper, and take it to the printer to load it in. there’s no fucking reason why you would need the whole box. most places, like my office, also store them on or near the ground because they’re heavy, so what i do is a just drag the boxes to their designated corner until they need to be used.
so “must be able to lift 20 lbs” is a tactic of discrimination, and there’s no excuse for it in office jobs like mine. i can’t actually lift more than 15 lbs and chances are, i’ll never be able to lift more than 20 lbs. i can still do all the duties of my secretary job, though, and it’s really easy to find work arounds for things like heavy boxes of paper. even i can, and my office literally employs 3 people including me. a weight limit is not a reason to deny someone a job.
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