On the other hand…how far must tolerance for a medical condition go? It’s pretty hard to just ignore the fact that someone has just crapped his pants, and the smell can be nauseating, particularly if it is induced by medication. It reads to me like at least one of the incidents occurred outside of the bathroom. When does that become an intolerable situation for everyone else?

First, The employee’s problems were the result of a medical condition. People with disabilities may have trouble controlling bodily functions; they don’t need to be reminded it by the so-called comedians of their work environment. It’s NOT FUNNY to them. It’s painful, embarrassing and if your co-workers aren’t mature enough to understand and ignore it, it may make it impossible to stand the work environment, even if they aren’t making their little jokes “pervasively.”

Second, this decision seems to say that vicious teasing is okay if they don’t do it all the time. The employee’s ability to put up with what amounts to intermittant bullying and harrassment seems to outweigh, to the employer, any other abilities, skills or experience he may have. Pity.

At the very least, I think the employer ought to look at this situation as a wake-up call: making fun of a disability, no matter how “yucky” the occasional results of that disability might be, has no place in civilized society. People have committed suicide over this kind of “teasing.” Not all disabilities result in something as simple and clean as a wheelchair or a white cane.