I (23M) am currently being forced by my new employer to make a decision between performing my job in a manner that works with my disabilities, and actually getting to keep said job.
Trigger warning: brief mention of self-harm
This is a very long winded story, I will include a TL;DR at the bottom. As background I am adhd and autistic, when I was hired I did inform my employer about the adhd. However, I did not tell them about the autism as I have learned to work with it well, also I have received lots of discrimination and lost past opportunities by revealing that to the wrong people. I have worked nearly 4 months at this current job.
So to get into the meat of the story I also need to add some more background. In order to deal with the attention issues of my adhd and the burnout / emotional regulation issues from autism, I have learned that I need to basically supply myself a sort of IV drip of intense, but not too distracting environmental stimulus. Upbeat and aggressive music with good vocals has proven to be very effective at providing the slight distraction I need to keep my adhd from making my brain wander to tasks I don't need to be doing. And the upbeat mood helps keep my emotions stable throughout the day to prevent the burnout. I figured this out years ago and have fought multiple past employers on this. At my current job I have been wearing one earbud in for my entire shift at about mid volume since day one, and nobody noticed till three days ago.
Fast forward to three days ago and that's when things actually get interesting. Up until this point I have loved this job, the pay is good, opportunities to learn, train and promote are good, safety is top notch, and more importantly, I love what I do there. I've gotten along fantastically with nearly everyone in the company, aside from one coworker (38M) we will call Ed. Even my boss was impressed enough with my performance. Then all of a sudden it was like the entire mood of the company and my place in it changed in a single day.
On that day, it was going pretty normal, I was instructed to take a grinder and remove some fit-up jigs that were tacked to our work table. (I work in a fab shop) Ed was working on a ski jet trailer near the end of the table I was working on. I'll admit I made the mistake of losing awareness of my surroundings. I got too zoned into my work and I didn't notice I had blasted sparks at Ed. This isn't something new just for me, let alone everyone else in the shop. We've all done it before, but Ed in particular has a tendency to let his emotions dictate his actions and blow up at pretty negligible situations.
According to Ed he had yelled at me 3 times to get my attention and have me stop, and I never heard him. I only noticed out of my peripheral when he started dancing around and waving his arms behind the trailer. Even my supervisor (~35M), who at the time was on the opposite side of the wall from me in our shop, said he couldn't hear Ed yelling. However, when I finally did notice him I immediately understood what was going on, I realized my mistake and without saying anything I stopped my grinder, put it on the work table, and started walking to the scrap pile for a plate to block my sparks and solve the problem.
The unfortunate thing is that when Ed saw me hurry and put my grinder down and walk away without saying anything, he interpreted that as a sign of aggression towards him and assumed I was upset with him. At this point he gets hysterical, the volume of his voice increases, he's pacing back and forth between me and the trailer while cussing me out and flapping his hands in the air in exasperation. What he actually said to me isn't important since it was all just intended to insult me and get under my skin. Not to mention he was screaming so much I barely understood half of what he said.
Either way I understood that there was a misunderstanding on Ed's part and that he took my actions as a show of hostile emotions towards him. So that's exactly what I tried to tell him, I said that he was making an assumption that I was angry in the first place, and that any of my emotions were directed towards him, none of which were true. At least, that's what I tried to tell him, he only increased the volume and I gave up trying to explain something to someone who is unwilling to listen. I stopped engaging him and continued my intentions towards the scrap pile, all while he continued to scream and cuss at me from the trailer.
At this point my supervisor walks over with a look on his face that clearly said “This is not the job I fucking signed up for.” Ed is continuing to scream at me and I'm just staring back and forth between him and my super, waiting for some sort of cue. After a few seconds Ed calms down, pulls out a cig and walks a few steps off. So I take that as an opportunity to take off all of my gear (including the earbud, which was my first mistake) and collect myself before I make my case to my super.
I started off, explaining the whole situation from my perspective exactly how I did here. I said to my super that I accidentally blasted Ed and didn't notice him trying to get my attention, most likely due to the fact that I had an earplug and earbud in (mistake 2), a beanie on top of those, a face shield that covers my ears and a grinder right in front of my face. Not to mention that Ed was standing behind a trailer with 2 jet skis while trying to get my attention. I also explained how I tried to hurry and take action to resolve the situation, which was wrongfully interpreted by Ed as an act of hostility from me.
Unfortunately when I tried to tell my super how Ed started to blow up at me after setting the grinder down and walking away, I used poor word choice and said that Ed started to yell at me. This caused a technicality, because he didn't increase in volume until I stopped using the grinder. He caught onto my mistake very quickly and came running over to the edge of the table where I was, leaned in uncomfortably close to me and pointed his cig at me while saying that he has never yelled at anybody in the company, especially not me, he said.
Of course that was a lie, he very much did yell at me in increasing volume, and not just in that one situation. There have been past instances with me and another coworker where he has gotten pretty heated and started yelling at either of us for one reason or another. So, naturally I turned from my explaination to my super and called Ed out, I told him that he was full of shit. (Mistake 3)
So far my super hasn't said anything except “what happened?” He stood there while Ed screamed, walked off and came back to lie and say he's never yelled at me, and didn't offer any response to Ed. However, as soon as I turned back from calling Ed out and looked at my super, you could tell he was even more sick of the situation than when he started. When I continued to make my case I started by saying that I wanted to clarify my poor word choice. I tried to make it understood that I meant to say that Ed blew up at me, and that I understood that he didn't initially begin by increasing his volume with me… Except now it was my supervisor's turn to start talking over me, and I never got to finish that thought either.
My super cut me off when I tried to clarify my word choice, he said that it looked to him like I was just trying to start an argument. I tried to make it clear that I wasn't trying to argue or fight with anybody and that I wasn't even upset with anyone involved. I simply wanted an opportunity to state my case and prove my innocence.
I spent the next 5 minutes trying to explain the whole situation to him, but every sentence was interrupted by some version of “I'm not gonna argue with you” or “stop arguing with me” or “stop trying to justify that you're just trying to fight me.” He seemed especially unhappy anytime I mentioned the earbud, what I use it for, and how I don't think it was the cause of mine and Ed's situation. I had to ask my super to stop multiple times because he would just roll his eyes and start to walk away when the earbud came up while making my case.
Eventually I had to stop explaining my case and instead explain how frustrating it was that my entire conversation with him I have been unable to complete a single thought without being interrupted. His response to that was to death glare me even harder and give me the silent treatment. Neither of us spoke for a few seconds until I asked him if he wanted to listen to me. He just shrugged and grunted, so I collected myself again and tried to give him the quick and condensed version of my side. To which his only response was “well, we're definitely going to have a meeting with management about this later, so let's not worry about it right now.'
I'm absolutely dumbfounded by this point, and all three of us spend the rest of the day in almost total silence. At a later point that same day I went to my super and explained to him at the start of this conversation that I had no intention to fight, argue or be dramatic, that I only wanted to be upfront and clarify myself. I tried again explaining to him how the earbud is essential for me to be able to perform my job as effectively as I currently do. I tried explaining how I've spent years of trial and error finding a method of working with my disabilities, as well as fighting nearly every employer I've had over my method of choice.
All of this was met with more interruptions and accusations that I was trying to argue and start a fight. Eventually I felt like I made my point as clear, or redundant, as I could. I did tell my super that the earbud is essential for me to work, and that if it's an issue for this company then I am willing to find a different company or industry that is willing to work with my disabilities. All that resulted from that effort was another dismissive response about how “management will handle everything.”
Fast forward 2 days after that and I finally get called into the office with my super and my project manager, the CEO was not present. The meeting was sort of sprung on me out of the blue at the end of my shift on a friday. I got no warning or time to prepare, and I kick myself now for not thinking to record the meeting with my phone.
My PM begins the meeting by asking me for my perspective of the events that happened with Ed. And of course as soon as I start talking, my super interrupts me and tells PM that I'm lying. Hadn't even gotten a full sentence out yet and anything I did get out was pretty much word for word of what I originally told my super. My PM actually interrupted my super and told him to let me finish talking… Unfortunately even my PM would cut me off multiple times during this meeting….
So I start from scratch and explain the whole story with Ed as methodically, honestly and carefully as I can. However, as soon as I get to the point of the story where my super walks in asking what happened, my PM interrupts me for the first time. He says “It sounds like we get the gist of the whole situation and what catalysed it. But what I'm more concerned about is what you said to the super after the whole matter.”
Obviously I know he's talking about my explaination to my super about my use of my earbud, even though my PM wouldn't directly ask me that. I simply responded by saying I meant everything I told my super. I explained how the earbud works for me, the effort and time I've put in to figuring out how to work with my brain, and how I'm unwilling to compromise my mental health for an arbitrary and outdated job policy. I would've expected my PM to be more on my side. Although he isn't asd, he does have adhd, so I assumed he was in a position to understand me.
Unfortunately my PM just made excuses about how he also has adhd, but he doesn't have the same issues I do, so they can't be as bad as I'm saying. Keep in mind he still doesn't know I'm also autistic.
The conversation completely devolved from this point onwards. I tried bringing up every point I could think of and every fact that might help make my case. I kept getting interrupted by my PM throughout this process and a couple times I just had to keep talking over his interruptions until he eventually stopped. I guess he could tell I was getting desperate cause he kept making comments how I'm going to regret my immature decisions, I'm only setting myself up for failure in this argument, how my “youthful arrogance” was finally starting to show for the first time. The conversation became completely degrading and condescending once the earbud was brought up.
He would also deny the fact that he was forcing me to make a decision between working in a healthy manner with my disabilities, and getting to keep job. Whenever I would make this statement he would just turn my words right around and say “no, you are forcing yourself to choose between your job and your arrogance.” I tried to explain to him how it had nothing to do with arrogance, I was protecting my mental health and setting boundaries to accomplish that, which he was refusing to respect.
I made one last desperate attempt to convince my PM and super to change their minds. I got way more personal then I should ever have to with an employer. I explained how in previous jobs I have been forced to make the same decision and chose to give up the earbud. The months following that change in my job would be absolute hell. My efficiency and speed would decrease very noticeably, my mistakes would increase, I would miss more days due to mental or physical health reasons… and worst of all, during that job my mental health got so low to the point that I self harmed for the first time in my life.
I went into much more detail about that memory during the meeting than I will in this post. The only important thing to know from that is that after being that vulnerable in front of my PM and giving that much personal information…. his response was “sounds like you just had a panic attack, and you're trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill”
I completely gave up on the conversation after that. I wanted to grab my things and just walk out, and I probably should have by that point. I told my super and PM that my boundaries were decided years ago and that a job is not going to change them. They told me to go home for the weekend and reconsider my decision before I respond on Monday. I told them I will either be there on Monday to work just as I always have, or to collect my personal belongings.
At this point my plan is to have a conversation with the CEO and explain everything to him. I've worked with him before in certain instances where other company staff have let me down. And so far he has always been supportive and responsive to me. I don't know him very well at all, but he hasn't given me a reason not to trust him. After the way my super and PM have responded to the whole situation, instigated by Ed, I'm honestly uncertain whether it's even worth it to stay with this company. Up until a few days ago this was the best job I've had in years, but now literally half of the company is out to get me to quit my job.
It's just so disappointing how the whole situation arose from Ed's lack of emotional and behavioral control. And that the situation with Ed turned out to not be the actual concern from management's perspective. They cared more about me wearing a single earbud than they did about an aggressive employee who tried to instigate a fight with me. Ironically, this company knows I wear prescription eyeglasses at work that aren't safety rated. The company and I could both get fined by OSHA for me wearing them. They turned a blind eye to that and said they won't enforce that policy and make me buy new glasses…. but they're making me choose between my job and wearing my earbud?? I feel like I'm missing some piece of information and don't understand their motivation here
I've basically got my options figured out at this point. I'm going to speak with the CEO, and see if we can fully resolve this, but either way I'm searching for a new job. I just don't feel safe here anymore. Right now I'm just seeking validation for my decision and maybe some helpful advice
TL;DR
Coworker nearly starts a fight with me over a minor mistake I made. The argument leads to the discovery that I wear an earbud at work to help me deal with adhd + asd. My supervisor and project manager are obviously biased against me and are forcing me to choose between my disabilities and my job. Don't feel safe at this job anymore, but I will try talking to the CEO to resolve the issue and stay till I can find a better place. Looking for validation and advice.