Nuerodiverse colleague

[moana35]

I am having a few problems with a colleague at work. She is neurodiverse so adjustments have had to be made but these adjustments are meaning that myself and my colleagues are doing alot more than we did before she was employed.

She is very black and white about time so she will not be at her desk until her digital smart watch says the start time on her contract and again she leaves at the exact time she is supposed to finish even if in the middle of something. Lunch is an hour but due to needing to re compress for the afternoon she needs to take 75 minutes as she needs to go for a walk and eat. She has to sit in front of a window which means all our places in the office have been changed.

From Monday we are not allowed to drink coffee at our desks anymore only tea as the smell makes her gag.

Aside from this she is a very good worker and gets her work done to a good standard but it is impacting on the morale of the team. She is also exempt from training mornings if they are "small room " based as she can't sit in a room with a big group of people. She will be allowed to do her training online.

Management say as she declared her nuerodiversity at interview these adjustments have to be made for her I get reasonable adjustments and I have an autistic son but are these adjustments reasonable to the rest of the team.

If we took 15 mins extra for lunch or asked our colleague to not drink coffee I am sure we would be spoken to by management,

Has anyone else come across this in the workplace.

Oooo the Kobayashi Maru…

I’ve been a manager who has had to arrange reasonable adjustments and also have a son with autism who has needed reasonable adjustments in some of the jobs he has had and I have had to advocate for him to get these

I think your employer is admirable in the way they have initiated these adjustments in order for this woman to work with you. I do think there needs to be some compromise with the coffee drinking though

As you have pointed out this woman is an excellent worker. People with autism are a very untapped resource for employers as given the right role and adjustments they can be assets.

I think it would be a good idea for someone to invent nose plugs that block smells out and that don't look too ridiculous.

I also have this problem of hypersenstivity to smells and it's got radically worse in the last year after I had two viral infections.

If I could buy some kind of nose plugs to just solve the problem I would absolutely leap at the chance.

I think they actually do exist already because I read that first responders in Ambulance jobs can buy them, but I think it would be an absolute Godsend to everyone if they were also readily available to ASD people.

Does you being ND mean you need to drink coffee away from other people? Did you disclose that at interview as the woman in OPs workplace did before she was offered the role? If the answer is no to these then your point is invalid.

And everyone else picks up her work.. #bekind

No, but I need to drink coffee. And if someone is telling me I can’t drink it at my desk, then what’s the alternative?

Also I'm not sure 15 minutes and 2 hours are comparable, never mind that you don't actually need to do that to allow you to work, and didn't stipulate that to your employer before you were given a contract.

Depends an awful lot on what the work is. Possibly she picks up her neurotypical colleagues' work because she doesn't waste time on office politics and bitching about people who don't fit in.

I'm not sure either but the issues we neurodivergent folks have can be very individual and very real. I for example have language processing problems and often need spoken instructions 3 times. My hearing is fine - excellent in fact - my brain just can't process sound quickly enough. It's worse if the person has a strong accent or the instructions are complicated.

Agree with @researchers3 . The ignorance/ arrogance of posters is astounding.
ND people do not choose to be difficult ,the sensory issues are a real problem and these people genuinely cannot cope with certain smells/ textures.
I have close family members with this disability which has effected their lives .It is a very real problem! FWIW coffee has a very strong smell !
Anyone heard the expression’can you smell the coffee’ ? Basically a very obvious,unmistakable smell!
I am NT but can remember as a child insisting that we crossed the road from a coffee shop because the smell was so strong. Quite like and drink coffee as an adult but can avoid drinking it if necessary. Maybe people should drink their coffee during their break which is what the vast majority of adults have to do during their working day

But I don’t need the adjustment, because I can drink coffee at my desk. So why would I mention it?

If someone came in and insisted I couldn’t, then the adjustment I would need is for my employer to facilitate me drinking 4 cups of coffee a day. Which I carefully space out to maintain focus.

It’s patently obviously unreasonable to ask for 2 hours to drink coffee. But no more unreasonable than expecting everyone else not to.

Reasonable adjustments exist for equity, not special treatment. They’re what allow people who think and function differently to work at all. Would you really prefer it if she couldn’t work and had to live on benefits, or if she had to work from home while you still had to commute? Inclusion means thinking about what enables participation, not what others lose by accommodating it.

I don’t think you’re fully understanding what a reasonable adjustment is. It’s about making the work day and environment a place where she can have the same opportunities as others. Equity rather than equality. What you’re wanting is equality. But this won’t help someone with additional needs.

i agree the coffee thing is a bit much and closed cups sound like a compromise. But you’re focusing on 15 minutes. It’s highly likely she is significantly masking to get through the day and is exhausted because of her needs.

have the staff team have any training on neurodiversity?

im assuming she’s happy for people to know she’s neurodivergent and that her reasonable adjustments had content from her to share?

Hope the image loads ok but I find it helpful.

Thanks - think you’ve said this better than me!

We banned peanuts from the office whilst we had someone with an allergy working here.

There's a difference between being vegan and someone else's food or drink making you ill.

The alternative is that if they have already given someone a contract after knowing that they can't smell coffee, then you wouldn't be offered the job because they can't accommodate both, and at that point they only have a legal obligation to their actual employee.

By your logic another alternative could be that you learn to adapt and not drink coffee so that you're not putting your colleague out?#

How do you manage to work dealing with the extreme sensory issues that people in your workplaces are triggering? That's a genuine question as it could be helpful to others. Does it not affect your productivity?

I have never worked anywhere where the lunch hour is paid, and I have worked in a lot of very varied roles. Consider she may not be being paid for this extra 15 mins she gets.
As she gets more used to the work her speed may pick up.
It is the law to make reasonable adjustments, we would all complain if ND just decided not to work and claimed benefits. She is different but make an effort, it could easily be us, our sibling or child that needs these adjustments one day. 😊

Who are you to say it’s not comparable!!! How judgemental, ableist and exclusionary of you.

Its ridiculous. I'd be looking for a new job or ask to move to a different department. It all sounds very stressful for everyone else.

Yawn.

But in this case the other employee is new to the office. So they can’t just sack me!

In terms of managing my own sensory triggers in the office, I tend to use other strong smells that I can tolerate to mask them. Favourite at the moment is to have a small unlit scented candle in a tin that I can sniff as needed, but I’ve also been known to put perfume / Vicks on an old-fashioned handkerchief.

In the first instance, you and the person who is nauseated by the smell of coffee sit as far from each other as possible and you use a lidded cup.

You should use a lidded cup at your desk anyway. If you knock it over, most of the coffee stays in instead of soaking your employer's computer equipment.

I don’t think anyone said she needs to de compress from lunch - but that she needs extra time so she can walk and eat.

would you prefer she had less break (60), then couldn’t cope in the afternoon so needed an extra half an hour later in the afternoon or had to go home early?

the starting and finishing exactly on time is a routine that likely helps her feel secure and safe.

So my friend with MS who does need to carefully space her coffees to work but hasn't disclosed that particular need at employment (did disclose MS, but had no reason to discuss coffee as standard procedure is for people to drink coffee at desks) - does she just lose her job because the new employee can't tolerate the smell of coffee?

The main issue here is that her RA are impacting on others.
Realistically a separate office would be preferable or WFH.
Unfortunately what will likely happen is people in the team will leave or worse she will be bullied.
Managers aren't really thinking it through