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.

@LlamaNoDrama In that situation, the company can make a reasonable adjustment so that employees can still eat somewhere in the building during the working day-they can’t not be allowed to bring a packed lunch to work, for example. Or be forced to sit on a bench outside to eat!

Thats why I think the coffee break idea is a reasonable one.

No, you are deliberately misunderstanding me. Each social cause is its own. And of course, the issue of men entering women’s spaces is very serious. (And mind you, before the trans movement went insane and started to do this, it was raising valid ideas about gender conformity and people who suffer because they feel boxed into gender expectations.) But here there is the same mechanism of social discourse at play.

That is where it starts and ends.

The method is to only allow empathy for a minority and to use hyperbolic language to silence the conversation about the needs of others. That is, saying “You are putting lives at risk! You are so selfish! You are not a child, get over yourself! You unkind bigot, and how utterly misinformed you are about this special population! Any mention of the needs of the majority is unacceptable and selfish and shocking. #bekind”

We have seen this type of discourse in other contexts too. Each context has its own very complicated backstory, but the bottom line is that: each time, it has completely lost the plot. Balance, wisdom, insight, broadness, is totally replaced by hysterical moralism. And it will cause a backlash.

A specially designed desk that others have been moved off of to meet her exact demands of desks!

Complaining about an extra 15 minutes of lunch is petty. The ND colleague probably gets paid less anyway (I'm certainly behind my NT colleagues in this respect as it has taken me longer to reach this point in my career). OP should mind their own business in this respect.

To the (now deleted) poster who asked how we know whether we struggle with something because of autism or other hidden disability: there's these things called "diagnostic assessments" where skilled and trained medical staff analyse your strengths and weaknesses and tell you where you are impaired.

How does someone with astigmatism figure out that the world isn't blurry at all distances for everyone else? They don't: optometrists assess them.

How does someone with depression know that everyone else doesn't feel miserable, listless, and suicidal? They don't: psychiatrists assess them.

People who come along and challenge someone's assertion that they have an impairment and need a reasonable adjustment aren't just calling the disabled person a liar, they are also denying the competence of multiple medical staff.

Did the OP and her colleagues agree to taking on the additional work or was it just landed on them? It's immaterial whether this woman is being paid less (if indeed she is), the face is the employer is creating extra work for her colleagues who don't seem to have been considered.

It's more surprise. 3-5 cups of coffee a day is generally considered a safe amount of caffeine, although I can appreciate that a few people may need a stimulant more regularly. But there seem to be a surprisingly large number of posters on here who need regular cups of coffee throughout the working day, presumably in addition to any coffee they drink at breakfast or lunchtime.

Don’t you know that NT people have no problems at all? We all skip through life with no issues, we are never bullied or ostracised and we never feel left out, we are a single homogeneous mass of people with no distinguishing personalities beyond just being ‘NT’.

Or at least that is how it feels.

I left my last team at work because the team leader was autistic and it was all she would talk about, in our one to ones it was just about how hard she found things and how everything was alright for me because I wasn’t autistic. My own problems were utterly meaningless to her.

I don't like the use of "demands". You appear to be suggesting she feels some sort of superiority. Again, framing it with another disability. Does a wheelchair user "demand" a lift or a ramp? Or are they necessary for them to being on a level playing field?

The desk belongs to your employer, not you, and your employer can order you to move desks at will. "Someone was moved off that desk" is a not legitimate grievance.

If an able-bodied colleague was moved off the desk nearest the door, or moved off a height-adjustable desk, for a colleague who uses wheelchair, would you use such language to describe the move?

Okay I understand that. It is still a spectrum and you need to meet a certain number of criteria in order to be diagnosed. Someone might be extremely impaired in one or two but not many enough to be diagnosed. That person is NT.

Can ND people perhaps understand how someone NT might struggle to an extreme with certain parts of life? And this then gets dismissed 'because NT, not struggling in enough areas' and they have it so much easier allllll the time.

Who said it’s a grievance? Sounds like the only grievance is getting raised by those who are tunnel visioned and can’t see that other people also have needs and wants!

@TheCompactPussycat Yes, the OP can raise to management where and when can employees now have a hot drink of their choosing during the working day?

As others have said, some people do suffer from food phobias, but that doesn’t mean that their colleagues literally can’t eat all day or bring in packed lunches.

Yes, of course. We are all human and have human struggles. No one is doubting this. But ND are famously misunderstood. I am glad that our experiences are more out in the open now.

Your use of "tunnel vision" just confirms that you are spectaculary missing the point.

Some people only seem happy with ND experiences being shared when they agree with their own.

Yes, the OP can raise to management where and when can employees now have a hot drink of their choosing during the working day?

Can you re-word that question? I'm not sure what you are asking.

Quite. Done absolutely discount nt views of life as they don’t agree with their own

Her contract could include her 1hr15 lunch break, which could be unpaid. Unless you've seen her contract, how would you know she's being paid the same?

So how do you know the 'reasonable adjustments' have a minimal impact on everyone else?

How do you know the OP is in fact being petty?

Black and white about start and finish times except for lunch break start and finish times. I see.

I’d just ignore, she’s made her own arrangement and management have agreed so I’d just leave it. If you truly feel your workload has increased then that’s something to raise with management.

@TheCompactPussycat Sorry, didn’t mean to put a question mark, should have been a full stop.

This threads been really interesting and a good insight into nt views of nd people.
from mnnet I’ve established “shut the fuck up, you’re nt bitch, your opinion and views count for fuck all’

That is a problem for management.