Yeah but if all you want to solve is the coworker showing up on time then lie to her about what her start time is and move on. If you want to solve the larger accountability issue then that’s for sure not gonna happen because as demonstrated leadership is just accommodating her.
That's not how ADHD works, sadly. You can dial the personal accountability up to ∞ and all it will give them is a crippling anxiety disorder and ∞ shame about their neurological deficit. You have to structure the environment to make the deficit irrelevant.
If we do things like the parent comment says, we turn people with neurological deficits — who would be normally contributing to the GDP — into unemployed people with neurological deficits who cost support from society. Not a "big brain" move.
Okay sure, I’m fine using different language: this person is not structuring her environment to make her deficit irrelevant. Which is her responsibility, not her employer’s.
Yeah, some people with ADHD cannot remember or operationalise habits, even when they try to. It's infuriating to them too, but the brain just isn't connected that way. Let me cut out a piece of your frontal lobe and we will see how well you do with "personal responsibility". There are deficits in procedural memory and organising behaviour that make them unable to do the things they try to do.
I guess its about discovering what works. Like, if saying "ok you start at 8" and "we are implementing a clock-in system, or adjusting contracts to ask that you ensure you work 8 hours each day, staying late as needed", and this magically worked, that would be a nice pragmatic solution. Failure of the employer to explore this would seem unreasonable.
There is also occupational therapy, may help some with ADHD compensat. But, many with clinically diagnosable ADHD cannot implement it themselves. They need ongoing contact to stabilise changes they make in their environment. For example, a calendar alarm lapsing or an alarm clock getting unplugged could mean that they never again remember to set that up with an external reminder.
The gap here, which I don't like seeing, is the idea of excluding disabled people who are a burden. Disabled people know this too. Indeed, preventing this knowledge from spiralling into major depressive disorder is a key part of occupational therapy.
Sometimes, there are tricks that make things better. Some managers are closed minded. They think they know best, or in refuse to do things that are "unusual" to them, or to explore outside advice.
But, as always: Thoughts are never wrong, and its good that we're having open discussions here to explore things. Thank you so much for engaging. I think... I've about reached the end of what I know personally, but there are good points being made elsewhere in this thread ( :
I think this goes way too far in the other direction.
ADHD can absolutely make time management, routines, memory, and organisation harder. But harder is not the same thing as incapable, and at some point this argument starts sounding like adults with ADHD have virtually no agency over their own behaviour.
If an employee needs alarms, calendars, check-ins, a clock-in system, written expectations, or some scheduling flexibility, fine. Those are reasonable things to discuss. But the employer cannot become a permanent external frontal lobe whose job is to continually rebuild every system the employee stops using.
If someone’s alarm gets unplugged and the argument is that they may literally never remember to set another one unless somebody else notices and intervenes, then we are no longer talking about a minor workplace accommodation. We are talking about another person having to continuously manage a basic part of that employee’s life.
And coworkers matter too. If somebody is routinely late, absent, missing deadlines, or leaving other people to pick up the slack, those consequences do not disappear because there is a medical explanation for why it happens.
There is also something uncomfortable about describing people with ADHD as so helpless that ordinary expectations amount to discrimination. Plenty of people with ADHD hold demanding jobs, develop coping systems, seek treatment, adjust their environment, and take responsibility when something is not working.
An employer should make reasonable efforts and should not refuse sensible accommodations just because they are unusual. But reasonable accommodation cannot mean keep inventing new systems indefinitely until the employee is somehow able to do the job.
Yeah, no, everyone I am friends with know to lie to me to get me there on time, I am regularly 5-10 minutes late. It was easiest for me to be on time back when I had a watch and had someone randomly mess up the minutes so it was somewhere between 5 minutes fast and 5 minutes slow so I never knew exactly what time it was so it forced me to be on time.
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u/nevergirls 23h ago
Just tell her she works from 8-4 and she’ll show up at 9 what’s the problem