I "came out" to my employer

[Anonymous]

Couple of points here…

1. Our HR Director here at work is a good friend of mine and has advised me in these matters in the past. At the end of the day, HR will weigh one thing, can you sue? Their job is supposed to be to advocate for the employee, but in most cases they will just figure out if something is violating your rights or the law and if it is borderline or not in direct violation, they will side with the company. If laws are being broken, they will side with the employee. In your case, so many laws are being broken that with careful documentation, you could probably get a large out of court settlement.

2. Blackmail is illegal. So is giving someone your prescription meds. Also, in most states, giving someone a substance they are unaware of, such as a laxative, is a felony and is considered poisoning. Don’t mess around with any of this any longer. You might go directly to the district attorney, explain what has been going on and see if they want to investigate.

At the end of the day, you need to make a strong case to HR, sue or get a different job. The situation you are in is unhealthy to say the least and is probably holding you back from leading a more fulfilled life! I am truly sorry you have to go through this, ignorant people suck.

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[billd]

>>Stargoop……. I’d be careful……really careful….many HR departments in a conflict situation line up and back the management team,sorry, that’s what they do. I know this may not be morally or ethically correct, but, none the less, it’s true. All the legal support and human rights documentation is nice to know, however, mostly it’s bureaucratic bullshit…..the application and execution (the reality) may leave much to be desired when tested in the workplace. Managers will generally back their managers……sorry but you asked.<<

Been there, done that. Yup – happens waaay too often.

I’ve twice gone to HR at different employers, only to find they ran to the boss………… I was the bad guy.

Lucky you if your HR isn’t that way. not all are, but for me, the odds are against one that won’t go running to management about a trouble-maker they need to deal with.

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[Anonymous]

I told my co-workers and boss about my ADHD when I got diagnosed officially. I was an educator and then got promoted to pedagogical consultant. My boss was aware of my weaknesses with organization, timed tasks, on the spot reporting and writing reports. I have always asked to be sent to workshops or to have help with my work/ I went to get the help I needed and payed for an ADHD coach for the work issues for about 3 months (too costly, had to stop). I did a group therapy for CBT (Cognitive Behavoural Therapy), this helped me with my anxiety issues relating to my ADHD and learning how to create new positive habits to get my work done. I thought my boss understood me considering he told me and other employees that he too has ADHD and writing problems. My evaluations by him were always great each year.

I was wrong, he started to say that I was unable to do the job and wanted to demote me to educator with the possibility of giving workshops for parents.He and other upper management made fun of me when ever possible, telling me that I was all over the place and people didn’t understand me. This I didn’t accept! I told my boss ” You tell me that I am all over the place, no one understands me and yet I have always had ADHD and my symptoms are the same as when I was an educator and you want me to do workshops with parents! You say that I am not good as a pedagogical consultant with the clients and yet you offer me a job with as much responsibilities.

I told my boss that I went on my own, although I have asked to get help through the company and I never received it.

My colleagues who worked with me day to day, disagreed with the boss’ complaints. They saw how hard I worked, making sure that our clients had the proper costumer service, I animated workshops and had a big turn out each time and created tools for our clients.

At the end of June 2011, I made the decision to leave that unpleasant environment.

I have learned about my Human rights through this journey. Although I worked in early childhood and we deal with children getting all kinds of diagnosis, we are there to help their parents to accept , cope and get the proper services to help their child out. This doesn’t mean that employers will have the same attitude with their own employees on getting the help they need to get their work done.

I have no regrets about talking about my ADHD.

I educated myself on this topic and I’ve educated others on it as well.

If I need to tell the next boss about this, I shall.

It’s not that we can’t do the work. We need the tricks and new habits to do it. I have other strengths and it shows with my relationship and help I have given to others.

Wow this took a long time to write…..LOL………..I hope you understood my story about work and if you should or shouldn’t tell.

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[Anonymous]

lindagirouard92. good for you for taking a stand. It is people like you who chip away at the stigma. Not everyone is in the position to do so, so your education and advocacy help them too.

These stories freak me out a bit because I’m on the edge of a “do I tell or not tell”. My issue is that I may be needing to ask for accommodations soon. I work 12 hour days for 8 hour days and now they are threatening to throw us out of the building and make us drive to another facility to finish up… and are increasing paperwork responsibilities. sounds kind of outrageous until you find out that the only people with serious problems surrounding this are me and a colleague who confided in me that she has ADD.

sober reminders that I have to very closely watch my back because those once smiling congratulating administrators will not.

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[Anonymous]

I am a Human Resources Staffing Coordinator for a very large retail company. I was also diagnosed with ADD last month and am now on Concerta. When I was diagnose I did tell my HR manager and the management team at my store. They ALL were awesome and have never metioned it again, but I felt that it was imporatant for them to know so that if I am scarter brained, forgetful, un organized some days that they would understand why I am that way and that I cant help it. Fortunately the medication is helping me tremedously and I find I am so much more productive at work that I ever was. I could never sit at my desk for more that 1/2 hour or so. But now I can sit for hours and get everything done so much quicker than before.

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[billd]

Thanks for the upper, so to speak. Maybe there’s hope in my case..

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[Anonymous]

I told my former clinical mentor.. such a big deal that we haven’t talked about it again. I still kind of want to as I am still having difficulty due to the high volume of paperwork and legitimate inherent difficulty of the job.

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[billd]

Network administration and security is extremely high-stress, and you just can’t keep up even on good days due to constant updates- Cisco sends out an update for the OS in their routers, next week it’s their switches, Mickysoft has security holes everywhere, constant updates, Adobe can’t get it right if the fate of the earth depended on it, constant updates for their huge, no, VERY huge security holes (due to their arrogance), you just can’t keep up. Then someone visits a link they should not have, even after warnings, infects their computers, then they gripe and moan and groan…….. it never ends.

I used to design the computers used at a company where I worked. The computers were the interface to very high-end control systems for turbo-compressor equipment. I spoke with the folks who built the computer motherboards and worked with their engineers a lot. The person I worked with most told me one time that the part of their health insurance plan used the most was the mental health part – the engineers would last a few months then have to leave from the stress, sometimes hospitalized.

It’s not an easy job in IT on a good day, and here the boss keeps wanting us to do more, do more, more more – with less and less resources.

He believes multi-tasking is actually possible. He’s a fool. It’s been proven it’s not possible, only a tiny fraction of humans can handle more than one task. The human brain was wired to handle only 2 things at one time – in decision making, you actually decide between 2, then toss another in, decide between those two, and so on. You THINK you have decided between 10 items and chosen 1, but you’ve actually processed it internally in the brain as chunking it down into decisions between 2 of the 10 at a time.

-And ADDers, don’t get going on the myth orf multi-tasking, you are *NOT multi-tasking*, you are time-slicing – big difference regardless of what you THINK you are doing – the more you take on, the less detail you can remember of each task (shown in studies over many years), and the more mistakes creep in (again shown in studies) – quality of each drops off a huge cliff. Oh, you think you’ve done well and gotten things done – but those things would be better quality, and you’d remember more of them had you done them serially.

Even the ADD wired brain can’t actually multi-task. I’ve got a bulletin board on my wall at work loaded with studies showing the results – I keep it up there to be able to point to it if the boss ever gripes again. Multi-tasking is a myth perpetuated by uneducated management-types. Only corporate America believes in multitasking, medicine and science does not, and neither do I. –

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[resipsa]

Recording a telephone conversation … Pete-puma, you might want to take another look at the Federal rules regarding recording conversations without the consent of ALL the parties … and then take a look at applicable state law. In California, anyway, such recordings can be a good way to quickly get into some deep legal doo-doo (to use a legal term).

see, for example, Cal. Pen. Code sec. 632:

(a) Every person who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, by means of any electronic amplifying or recording device, eavesdrops upon or records the confidential communication, whether the communication is carried

on among the parties in the presence of one another or by means of a telegraph, telephone, or other device, except a radio, shall be

punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year,

or in the state prison, or by both that fine and imprisonment. If the person has previously been convicted of a violation of this section

or Section 631, 632.5, 632.6, 632.7, or 636, the person shall be punished by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), by

imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or in the state prison, or by both that fine and imprisonment.

billd … you are correct, actual multi-tasking is a myth. It sounds like you have thought this ADD non-sense through, so I wonder if you or anyone else have any suggestions regarding a particular ADD albatros around my neck. As brief back ground, I am 52 y.o. and have been dealing with ADD since childhood and am currently on Adderall.

On any particular day there may be 35 discrete tasks I need to get done (pick whatever number you want, the number 35 is just what popped into my head). I have no problem identifying which of those tasks is going to bite me in the butt the quickest and/or hardest. Lets call that task RED. When I get the point of doing task RED, there are many times when I look at the task, I know exactly what needs to get done, I know that task RED needs to get done, then my irrational brain kicks in and I ignore task RED and work on some other task. It’s akin to a fight or flight reflex. I say my irrational brain kicks in because my frontal cortex knows there is nothing frightening about task RED … but try telling that to my lower brain. Sometimes I can push my way through and get to work on task RED. Sometimes I can’t. What do you do when you run into a road block?

Any suggestions are appreciated.

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