ADHD

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A casual community for people with ADHD

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Relevant Lemmy communities:

Neurodivergent Life Hacks

lemmy.world/c/adhd will happily promote other ND communities as long as said communities demonstrate that they share our values.

founded 3 years ago

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Help with communicating with neurotypical managers (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 4 days ago by Leilys@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/adhd@lemmy.world

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So, it's my first time working in a country that legally requires workplaces to accommodate neurodivergence. I have been upfront about my diagnosis since I joined.

It's my first admin-heavy role, and turns out, ADHD doesn't like double checking if every single field on a page was filled in correctly.

After being put on a PIP, I've been working on an autohotkey script that automates the clicking and navigation, and prompts me to enter data where needed. In theory, tihs means I don't miss out on anything as long as the script works fine, and when you don't do the clicking yourself, mistakes are easier to spot when you check.

I presented it to my manager (first time manager, woo.) today during the weekly review, and this was what they said: "My concern is, would you be able to follow the process and do the task if you were to lose access to this tool you have built?"

It seems like no degree of explaining that it's not that I do not know how to do the task correctly, my brain just loathes the finer details and would mean the work would be more prone to error will get through to them.

I will be resigning before the final check next week anyway, but just want some advice on how to respond to that question in the future.

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[–] skunk@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

I think they’re literally just concerned for you to be not becoming dependent on a tool.

They said they need it in order to not commit as many errors, suggesting they are dependant on it. Why is depending on a tool a bad thing?

They might be thinking “i don’t want an employee who can’t focus for filling out a form” but this isn’t out of dislike of you, it is because of concern, also.

I'm sorry I have to ask, but do you have ADHD yourself? Because this really sounds dismissive of the fact that ADHD people have to spend a lot of extra mental energy on a task, especially on a task that requires mental focus. That's not "concerning", that's what ADHD is. That's why often very important stuff just doesn't get done. We aren't lazy, we're literally incapable of doing the things that we want to do but end up not doing, like e.g. filling out important paperwork, doing household chores etc. Or need an inappropriate amount of energy that has to come out of something else. Look up executive dysfunction please.

So you should have gone “Okay I’ll go one day jaybe two days without using the tool, to show you that I can. I just thought it could improve my efficiency.”

No! The point is that they can't, that their reports are more error-prone without this aid that they have built. This is like asking a hard-of-hearing person to listen harder for a couple days just to prove that they can still hear in order to prove that they need their hearing aid.

[–] Leilys@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

I appreciate your empathy on this.

I wish I didn't have to build a tool just so I could achieve mediocrity on par with my neurotypical manager, but them's the lemons you get with life at times.

I didn't want to be more likely to miss out filling one field out of 15 when doing data entry, but the brain doesn't like sequences and "following the process", so I've made a thing that not only does the work faster, but makes it so I don't miss anything, which I think a competent manager would have seen as wins all around.

It was strange being spoken to about why I did the first round of steps then didn't send out a confirmation email, which is when I realised that it was because my brain just felt like it was too much energy to do that next step since it felt like starting a whole new (small) task, which I understand that fellow ADHD folks struggle with. Obviously I couldn't explain that to them, could I?

This job definitely was not a good fit for me, and I've also learned from others I've met here about how I could better set myself up to succeed in a future role, and also the words to advocate for my disability with. (I also don't love that this is, in fact a disability. But disabled folks really don't get a choice.)

I wish we didn't have these massive obstacles to overcome just to function "normally". I hope you're in a place where folks are kinder with you.