employee struggling to identify accommodations to do her job, cold-calling for internships, and more

by Alison Green on March 13, 2025

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Employee can’t figure out what accommodations would help her do her job

I work at a small organization where I wear many hats, including HR-related items. We have an employee, Nicole, who shared with us about a year ago that she was diagnosed with some conditions that make executive functioning difficult. We immediately approved her requests for an ADHD coach, project management software, and additional weekly meetings with her manager. In this last year, Nicole continues to not meet expectations in areas such as meeting deadlines, communicating effectively, and decision-making/prioritizing. When her manager discussed this with her, she frames the issue as “my work isn’t organized for me, therefor I find it difficult” and when asked to identify additional accommodations, she says she doesn’t know what she needs because it’s still a new diagnosis for her — and has implied that because of her disability, we need to accept that she may not meet expectations in these areas.

My concern is that this is not an entry-level position, so it is not feasible for Nicole’s manager to organize every task on her behalf or to identify what other accommodations or resources may be helpful. I think we are at the point where Nicole may need a more formal PIP or PIP-like intervention and a discussion about her responsibilities with identifying tools, resources, and accommodations needed for her to organize and execute her duties. Am I off-base? If not, do you have any suggestions of how we can talk with her to help her re-frame her accountability?

You are not off-base. You’ve provided the accommodations she asked for, you’re willing to provide more if she can identify something that would help, and she’s still not meeting the requirements of the job. The Americans with Disabilities Act does not exempt employees from meeting core job requirements; it requires employers to work with the employee to attempt to find accommodations if they exist, but doesn’t protect the person’s job if they can’t perform its essential functions with accommodations.

It does sound like it’s time to move to something more formal like a PIP. But before you do that, have a conversation with Nicole where you explain that the problems are significant enough that that will be the next step unless she can suggest additional, specific accommodations to try, and ask her to work with the coach to figure out what might help.

2. My boss wants my employee to report to him

I’ve been employed for 12 years at the same company in product development. I have been a manager of product developers for seven of those years, with four people under me. Over time, people have left and we’ve not rehired, so I only have one direct report remaining, Sarah, who I’ve supervised officially for seven years.

My boss is proposing that we change Sarah’s supervisory structure — I would handle the “day to day” of her work but my boss would be her supervisor of record and meet with her periodically, and we would jointly handle performance reviews. The reason to make this change would be that we’re a small team, and I’m the only person who reports to my boss who supervises someone.

I’m feeling angered by this as things are going very well with Sarah. She is sensitive to hierarchy and I feel like she may look at this as a promotion and that I’m no longer her boss. The other thing is that my supervisor doesn’t know anything about product development, and Sarah is a product developer. My supervisor is an operations specialist. That’s why he would still need me to do the day-to-day. This bothers me especially because in the beginning of my employment, there was a lack of structure and direction for newcomers, with official supervisors not providing direction. I often would end up mentoring and even serving as a direct supervisor to new people, including Sarah, even though I did not have a place in the official management structure nor any compensation and I was doing it on top of my own job. I was young and eager to prove myself, and I didn’t realize I was letting the manager slide by and walk all over me. Seven years ago, the manager left and I was given the formal manager role. This worked well for me because everything finally aligned — my role, my title, and my compensation. I feel this change would be a step backward functionally instead of forward. What advice would you give me?

You have a lot of good reasons to push back on the change. Talk to your manager and share them, as calmly and objectively as you can. In particular, emphasize that you’re concerned that you’ll still be responsible for a significant portion of Sarah’s management but without the title, and that the change feels like a demotion even though you’ll still be doing much of the same work.

It would be one thing if your actual function were changing, but it sounds like your responsibilities aren’t significantly changing, and it’s fair to ask that your title continue to reflect the work you’re doing.

3. Men are gross in our non-gendered bathrooms

My organization has slowly been moving towards non-gendered toilets. When building or upgrading facilities, toilets are now individual rooms and marked as all-gender. This is great! It’s progressive, inclusive, and by and large we’re all here for it.

Except … the men are gross! The biggest change my female colleagues and I have noticed is that non-gendered toilets are far more likely to be dirty, broken, and seats are constantly left up. We want the toilets to be welcoming to everyone, not just yet another place where we have to put up with how feral men can be.

One of our admin staff tried to combat this in a recently refurbished block of half a dozen toilets by attempting to label two of them as “women only.” This was swiftly shut down since it comes across as exclusionary and not what we’re about, although her intent was just for women to not have to visit somewhere a dude has just liberally shaken himself around like a sprinkler.

I don’t know who raised these grommets, but do you have any advice for combatting this? I don’t like the idea of attempting to remind everyone of what amounts to basic bathroom etiquette (and embedding mothering stereotypes in the process).

Consider a mix of single-sex and non-gendered bathrooms. That’s all I’ve got, given this particular set of facts, although it still leaves the non-gross men stuck with gross bathrooms.

If only it were practical to have full-time bathroom attendants like at a fancy restaurant.

4. How do I tell interviewers I was fired from my last job but it was because my dad was sick?

I was at a job I truly loved for about 18 months and was ultimately fired for “performance Issues: not meeting job standards.” This was because six months prior to my termination, I had found out my father was dying and only had a few months to live. I thought I could handle working full-time and handling my dad three hours away, but ultimately, he died and my job performance did suffer and 30 days after he died, I was fired. (Hindsight being 20/20 here, I wish I had just taken FMLA but let’s not debate that now. I also really don’t want to get into whether my company should have fired someone 30 days after their dad died. I think what they did was total crap, but I also admit I wasn’t performing at 100% either. I’ve accepted the termination and have moved on.)

I am now searching for a job. I actually got an amazing offer, but when I filled out the initial application, I selected “no” for the “Have you ever been terminated from a job before?” question. Once the company found out that wasn’t true, the offer was rescinded. So now I am being honest and telling people the truth. But here is the issue — I’ll be in the middle of a phone interview and will be asked if I’ve ever been terminated from a job. I’ll say yes and explain it was performance-related (because I don’t want them to think I did something illegal) and it was because I had a dying parent I was struggling to take care of, who ultimately passed away. Inevitably, there is an awkward silence, an apology for the loss of my dad, and then a few days later I’ll get a “thanks but we’re moving in another direction” email.

How do I stay honest about my job history without making it awkward but also ensuring hiring managers understand that had there not been this horrible life event happening, I probably wouldn’t have lost my job?

I think where you’re going wrong is saying that the firing was performance-related. It was performance-related, but it’s not that you couldn’t do the job — it’s that you were juggling a horrible situation outside of work. The performance framing is making it sound like you couldn’t cut it, when that’s not really what happened. You said you’re worried that they’d otherwise think you did something illegal — but that wouldn’t be a typical leap for them to make!

Instead, you should say, “In my last job, I was doing well until there was a very serious health situation in my family. It was very difficult to juggle that at the same time as my job, and ultimately I couldn’t do both and they let me go. That situation has since been resolved, and I don’t expect it to come up as an issue again.” (I want to be clear that I’m not referring to your dad’s death as a “situation being resolved” but rather to your focus at work being so divided.) If your old manager would be willing to attest that you were doing well until your dad got sick, you could add, “My manager at that job would confirm I was performing well until that happened.”

I’m sorry about your dad.

5. Cold-calling for internships

Someone cold-called me today and asked if we do internships. I said yes, but you have to be a student of a particular college that we have a relationship with. They then asked, “So what do I do to apply?” Um … be a student at the college I mentioned? I am not management so can’t interview potential interns, so I told them to please email my boss. They proceeded to push for his email and I calmly said, “It’s on our website.”

When I was looking for jobs in my field (media), I was told Absolutely Do Not Cold Call. “No phone calls” was included in every job listing. You sent your application in and crossed your fingers. Have things changed or are the rules for internships different? In 2025, it seems weird and pushy that a young person would call rather than emailing. I’d love to read your thoughts on this.

Things haven’t changed. Some people have always called even when they shouldn’t — because they see it as attractive gumption, or they think it’s the only way to stand out, or they figure the rules don’t apply to them, or they just got bad advice somewhere along the line. It has always been so, and so it shall remain.

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  1. Ask a Manager* Post author

    A reminder: We’ve had a recent increase in trolling here, and you can help me by NOT RESPONDING to it. If you engage, you are ensuring that troll will reappear. Instead, please flag the comment for me (just reply with a link, which will send your comment to moderation so I’ll see it).

    A change to previous requests: please don’t reply “reported,” either. Do not engage at all. Thank you.

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  2. ZucchiniBikini*

    For OP#3, I don’t have helpful suggestions but just wanted to state that we have also come up against this issue in a (non-work, club-like) facility with which I am associated. Making all the stalled bathrooms All Gender sounds like a great solution, but it has definitely resulted in them being much dirtier, and especially, with more … ahem … visible sprinklage, than the Women’s used to be when it was gender-separated. So much so that a good proportion of women will leave the facility and walk 10 minutes to use a shopping mall bathroom rather than put up with the grossness. We haven’t found a good solution yet.

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    1. AcademiaNut*

      Would it be possible to designate some stalls “sitting only” but not specifying gender? That would hopefully reduce the amount of stray urine festooning the area.

      Also – I’m guessing the converted washrooms don’t have urinals. A lot of single washrooms where I live, like in small restaurants, have a toilet, urinal and sink. Would it be possible in future renovations to provide a urinal as well, so that men are less likely to pee on the seat.

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      1. ZucchiniBikini*

        You’re right, no urinals. We could certainly try the “sitting only stalls” designation – I’ll suggest that! Thanks for the idea :-)

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    2. BadMitten*

      My workplace has men’s restrooms, women’s restrooms, and then a single stall all gender restroom. It works pretty well, but even our gender nonconforming folks tend to use the women’s restroom tbh.

      I wonder if signs might help—like “please leave the seat down” or “please clean up after yourselves, the janitors work hard” or if that would be too patronizing.

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  3. Clean seats please*

    The all-gender bathrooms in my college dorm had a habitual seat sprinkler one year. We eventually figured out who the culprit was – and then we called his mom. It’s amazing how fast the problem stopped, though tragically you probably can’t get away with that in the workplace

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    2. nnn*

      The all-gender bathroom in my college dorm had designated “seat down” stalls and designated “seat up” stalls. The stated rule was when you exit the stall the seat has to be in the designated position, and what you do in there is your business.

      I don’t know the specifics of what anyone else did in their stalls, but I don’t remember any seat sprinkler issues.

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    3. BadMitten*

      Someone on social media (tumblr I think) mentioned how as a kid, after they had messed up the bathroom their teachers had them meet with the janitors who explained how they cleaned and how the kids made things harder for them (throwing tp everywhere, etc). Anyway it was very impactful, and I think we should have every school and business do something similar.

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      1. allathian*

        Every school, yes. Every business? Not really. The vast majority of people regardless of gender don’t leave a mess in public restrooms.

        That said, lots of signs in public restrooms here about people being expected to sit on the toilet seat rather than squat over it. Some immigrant groups and tourists come from areas where squat toilets (holes in the floor) are common.

        My son’s fastidious for a teen, and he prefers to sit down to pee (my dad’s the same way, I wonder if it runs in the family?). So sprinkles have never been an issue at our house.

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  4. Have I used this name before?*

    #2. It sounds like Sarah might not be the only person sensitive to hierarchy. Would it be terrible if Sarah viewed this restructuring as a promotion? Would it be terrible if, after 7 years, she got a promotion or an opportunity to report to a higher up?

    Also it sound like your position title isn’t changing, nor is your pay, just the official responsibility of supervising Sarah. Or am I misunderstanding?

    I would try to get a stronger sense of why your boss thinks this is important move and what would be, in their eyes, the operational benefits of new reporting structure. You’re obviously welcome to (and well positioned to) push back on this, but depending on your boss’s motivations, you may need a stronger argument than “it would hurt my feelings and another boss took advantage of me in the past”

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    1. Arrietty*

      For Sarah, it would feel like a promotion. For LW, it would feel like a demotion. LW would still be responsible for managing Sarah, but without any of the power or the positive parts. There’s no way this wouldn’t go badly.

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    2. Myrin*

      Would it be terrible if Sarah viewed this restructuring as a promotion?

      I mean, “terrible” is probably too strong a word but it wouldn’t be good because it is, in fact, not a promotion.
      Also, OP doesn’t just mention Sarah’s feeling like this might be a promotion but also “that [OP is] no longer her boss” when, de facto if not on paper, OP would still be at least a quasi-boss to Sarah (even still handling her performance reviews, albeit together with her own boss).

      This sounds like the beginning of those situations we hear about here regularly regarding “team leads”, where someone has to manage someone else but doesn’t have hiring/firing power or even just the power to discipline, enforce expectations, etc.

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  5. RCB*

    #4, I am going to stray from Alison just slightly, and stray from conventional wisdom a bit, and preface this with the caveat of IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH IT, but: I think you should say specifically what the family health issue was, I really think it changes the calculus in the interviewer’s head, and it’s not too personal for an interview. “A serious health situation in my family that has since been resolved” is SO open-ended that I am naturally going to wonder if it can happen again? It’s resolved, but can it recur? And who is the family member, was it a spouse or child that absolutely requires your full attention if it recurs, or is it an aunt or grandparent that will upset you but not require your full attention? I have lots of questions.

    If I know “I was doing great in my position until my father got sick and I was not able to handle everything that went along with dealing with taking care of him and my job, nor the mourning process after he passed to keep my performance up, so I was let go.” (even if this isn’t exactly true (maybe you weren’t his caretaker but they won’t know, and it doesn’t matter). Now as the interviewer I have some concrete information, and I know that the situation really is resolved, and I’m human, I totally understand what it’s like to go through that, with me personally you’ll absolutely not need to say anything more about why you left your job, it’s now a non-issue. (I lost my dad 22 years ago and it’s still tough, I give anyone a pass). It’s also vague enough that you aren’t oversharing, which is where people get uncomfortable bringing this kind of stuff into the workplace and especially interviews. Everyone has a dad (whether you know them or have a relationship with them), and everyone dies, so you didn’t share anything shocking to anyone.

    I interviewed someone a few years ago and he said that this job would allow him to be home more and spend time with his wife because she’s been going through some mental health struggles and she had been in and out of hospitals, and and he just gave us WAY too much detail about his wife’s medical condition. We absolutely felt sympathy for him, and felt horrible thinking less of him for it (of his professionalism for bringing it up, not less of him for his wife’s issues), but it was the reality, and it wasn’t quite the deciding factor between him and another candidate but it certainly did him no favors. This is an overshare. Keeping it simply “Dad was sick, then he died”, is fine, and I think it only helps you.

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    1. Artemesia*

      I agree. This is so straightforward — a Dad who is terminally ill and seeing him through. No reason to be vague here at all.

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    2. Peregrine*

      I’m confused—why is a father dying not oversharing, but a wife with serious mental health problems is oversharing?

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      1. Testing*

        In general, the health issues of living people are more of a privacy concern than the fact that someone died. Both because the dead person isn’t around anymore and because we’ll all die eventually.

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      2. Asml*

        It would be on its own, with compatible levels of brevity. It sounded like the candidate went into a lot of uncomfortable details.

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      3. NeedAName*

        Instinctively, two reasons. 1) Everyone dies eventually, so while devastating and life-upheaving for the LW it’s not sharing anything personal about their relative. 2) RCB specifically mentions their candidate talking about hospital visits and additional details far beyond the one sentence “my father passed” they recommend.

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      4. Myrin*

        It’s not, and presumably it wouldn’t have been a problem if RCB’s candidate had said just that and no more, but RCB says the candidate went into way too much detail (which is possible to do regarding your parent’s death, too, but simply saying “my dad was terminally ill and my performance suffered because of that” isn’t that).

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      6. glt on wry*

        @Peregrine: Because some people still get uncomfortable if they have to talk about the idea of ‘mental health’ and associate it with a person in their sphere. It’s acceptable as an idea, but it should just be a tv movie of the week, not something real.

        I think as a society we’re getting better about it, but, unfortunately, it still resonates as ‘crazy’, and it’s not yet part of regular social conversation.

        Personally, I wouldn’t want my husband illustrating how my mental health impacted his life, just at an interview, FFS. That would be a question of integrity for me. But that’s different question.

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        1. glt on wry*

          Also, forgot: The wife is still alive, a person with a life that, one would hope, is private and ongoing.

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    3. Metal Gru*

      Yes, I think a straightforward brief explanation is best.

      I wonder if you could touch on “in retrospect, I should have…” (taken FMLA, spoken to management etc)? The reason I say this is if an interviewee said to me that they were fired because of this situation etc I’d be wondering if this speaks to how they handle situations in general – will they just press on trying to keep it afloat without communicating or asking for help? I wouldn’t directly probe about that in response to the death story but I would make sure to ask questions later about dealing with situations etc. Just a thought.

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    4. nnn*

      I agree with this take, and I might even nudge the wording a bit further away from “my father got sick” and more towards “my father was dying” – use a phrase like “terminally ill” or “end of life” or whatever works for you. That emphasizes both the severity of the situation and the rareness of the situation.

      I’m sorry about your Dad.

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    5. Jules the First*

      Just a gentle aside – most people have a dad, but not everyone. My son has one parent and a sperm donor. His friends at preschool have two moms. Your point was that everyone understands what it would be like to lose a parent, but I’m bringing this up because you specifically caveated it by saying whether you know them or have a relationship, so I wanted to remind you that not everyone does.

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  6. Freelance Bass*

    #5 My first job was at a company that had a lot of interns, and even the info and application were online, we got calls all. The. Time. Not to mention people who wandered in off the street. It was a mix of inexperience and cluelessness, but I think there’s a lot about entering the job market that’s not obvious until you learn better.

    I also cringe to think about my younger self applying and interviewing for internships. Young Bass had a lot to learn…

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  7. nnn*

    In the situation described in #5, it would be useful if whoever normally interfaced with the college (maybe that’s OP’s boss?) knew what the internship application process looked like for the students of that college, so if this situation ever arises again they can say something like “Go to the Internship Coordination Office’s website and fill out the Internship Application Form” (or whatever the actual answer actually is, I don’t know how it works).

    And maybe, in parallel, they could talk to their contact at the college and sort of informally ask about it, or informally mention that someone out there is giving students bad advice.

    (I realize OP is not the person in this role, but the person who is in this role is better placed to help head this off.)

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    1. Spencer Hastings*

      Yeah. And unless interns are chosen by lottery from the entire student body of Local College, “be a student at Local College” is definitely not the right answer to “how do I apply for an internship”. They seem to be asking, like, “is there an online application form” or something.

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  8. Skippy*

    OP #1 I haven’t heard of an ADHD coach (or a company paying for one) before, but doesn’t this seem like the kind of thing that they would do? The coach can’t be responsible for Nicole’s performance, but I wonder what they’re taking OP’s company’s money to do if it’s not advising her on how to navigate the workplace with her diagnosis.

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    1. Artemesia*

      People with serious executive function issues may not be able to ‘navigate the workplace’ or do the particular job. There may be roles they CAN do but it sounds like this isn’t one of them.

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    2. Metal Gru*

      I have a colleague with ADHD and the company has engaged a coach like this to help them. It mainly seems to be about identifying areas they struggle with, developing and practicing strategies to assist with those things.

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    3. Mid*

      Actually that’s exactly what an ADHD coach can do! Coaches can range in specific qualifications, from self-taught to LSW to Doctorates, but their general focus is helping people, often adults, with ADHD develop skills to support them at work and life in general. It’s not really therapy in the talk-therapy sense, it’s mostly focused on skill building and sometimes accountability (telling your coach you’ll work on XYZ this week and checking in later in the week to see if you’ve made progress on XYZ.) It’s more like brain PT, I guess. It’s about working on exercises and skills to make your ADHD manageable and to find your strengths and use those to support your weaknesses. (Personal example, I’m amazing in a crisis, and I’m terrible at remembering anything ever. So I’m great in roles with tight deadlines and lots of quick responses, and I need to make sure I take notes about everything at all times because no matter how obvious something feels in the moment, my sieve of a brain will likely not be able to recall it 2 hours later. I worked with a coach to figure out how to utilize my skills and support my deficits in a way that keeps me employed and happy.)

      So in Nicole’s case, going to the coach and saying “I’m really struggling with executive dysfunction at work, it’s showing up in my lack of ability to prioritize tasks and meet deadlines in particular, what skills and strategies can we work on to help me with this deficit?” would be the perfect use for a coach. It’s absolutely not a job for her manager to do, since many jobs have a requirement to figure out how to prioritize tasks and how to meet deadlines. The coach might have suggestions like blocking off regular chunks of time for each type of task (mornings 8-9 is Email, 9-11 is Llama grooming spreadsheet updates and data validation, 11-12 is returning customer calls, 12-1 is lunch and a walk, 1-4 is wrangling time, 4-5 is checking to do list, misc tasks, check email, prep priorities for tomorrow, for example), or making a priority ranking chart (task type A, anything related to escape llama finding, is always immediately done, task type B, food logging, is done daily, task type C, outreach and llama petting, is done as time allows and needs at least an hour a week), or figuring out if Nicole is an “eat the frog” kind of person (do the bad task first, save the fun/easy tasks for later) or a “warm up to it” kind of person (start with easy/smaller tasks first and then end with the harder tasks), or whatever other strategies she needs to implement at work.

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      1. WS*

        My partner has ADHD and was fantastic at the urgent and immediate parts of her medical job (including very difficult tasks) but not great at the endless admin that went with it. This is exactly what an ADHD coach helped with. This is why being specific and documenting with Nicole may help, because she can take it to the ADHD coach and they can problem solve.

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  9. Pumpkin cat*

    For #5, wanna bet that the “particular college” is quite an elite one? In this specific case, the person wanting the internship has no viable way to apply for it, so what else was she/he supposed to do?

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    1. Looper*

      I would not bet it was “an elite one”. I would bet it is one geographically close to the employer that has an approved curriculum which the internship duties align with. Internships aren’t jobs, they are essentially classes.

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    2. Indolent Libertine*

      They were supposed to do… what everyone else from this college who has previously had an internship at this company did? Which apparently didn’t include cold calling since LW sounds like they haven’t encountered this before?

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      1. Science KK*

        That’s the shocking part to me, you went through the trouble to hunt down a phone number but couldn’t be bothered to Google the application requirements?

        I guess someone could have hyped them up to call & ask if they could apply without attending that school but then they lost their nerve when it happened.

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  10. Looper*

    LW3- Why is putting up signs designating some stalls as ‘women only’ less of a burden than putting up signs that say ‘this restroom is shared by all coworkers- please clean up after yourself’? Unless your coworkers are true sociopaths, I think this is a case of people being too careless to pay attention to what you’re doing. Also, in my experience, women can be MUCH worse about urinating all over toilet seats because many insist on using the “hover method”.

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    2. Annie*

      On one hand, putting up a sign is putting up a sign, but on the other hand, if a change preceded something undesirable happening, it makes sense to reverse whatever change preceded the undesirable thing to stop the undesirable thing.

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    3. Kella*

      I don’t think the “women only” stalls is a good idea but I think the difference is there is much more social stigma around men around going into a women’s-only designated place, than there is for men to ignore requests to clean up after themselves. It’s honestly a socially expected behavior that women will complain that there’s a mess and men will ignore it. It’s also easier to socially enforce a gendered stall than leaving your stall clean.

      I don’t know if this is the best way but I think my method would be social shaming. The second I get out of the bathroom and am in earshot of people I think are contributing to the problem, I would find someone to loudly complain to. “Ew, the bathroom is so gross! It’s like someone is taking a pee sprinkler in there, it’s disgusting!” And ideally the person you’re complaining to will respond in kind. This won’t curb the worst, most shameless offenders but it might be a wake up call to some of the problem employees.

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  11. Student*

    #3: Have you tried painting a couple of the stalls pink, while leaving the rest painted some other color?

    It works surprisingly well to deter men from stealing tools. It might also deter them from being tools.

    I suspect that the Venn diagram of “men who think the color pink will give them cooties” and “men who think they are too imprortant to aim their own piss” is probably a circle.

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    1. Common sense toilet control*

      Or, hear me out, maybe it’s a visual cue that the pink is not intended for the men and they abide by that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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    3. bamcheeks*

      Oh I love this. I used to live in a student accommodation in Germany where we had a •schöne Bad” (the pretty bathroom) and a basic Bad. The only difference was that the schöne Bad had brightly coloured shower curtains, a fluffy toilet seat cover and a fluffy bathmat. Overwhelmingly, the women used the schöne Bad and kept it schön, and if the men did use it (which was totally fine and normal!) they tried to keep it schön.

      I wonder you could socially-engineer this just by making one of the bathroom feel more pretty— hand lotion, pot pourri, paint, whatever! Just give the sense that this is not the place you go to be gross!

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      1. bamcheeks*

        Right, but they’re under 12. Hopefully they’re not going to grow up into the kind of fully grown men who don’t clean up after themselves!

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      2. allathian*

        Make them clean up after themselves at least once, and it may help.

        In my son’s case, he decided that he’ll sit down to pee from then on. I don’t care, problem solved!

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        1. KateM*

          Yeah, let them do whatever they do, but make it a condition that the bathroom must stay as clean as it was before.

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  12. Free Meerkats*

    In a long-ago previous job, I was the nighttime dispatcher/janitor at an FBO (the place to go if you want to learn to fly, rent a plane, take a charter, or end up on an air amblulance.) The office people were mainly women, the mechanics mainly men, and a decent split for the pilots, though that leaned about 70/30 male. The womens’ restroom was always dirtier than the mens’. Always. Yeah, the men sprinkle, but the women who hover are much worse.

    I talked with some of the folks who maintained the private pilot terminal and they said it was the same over there.

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  13. Name*

    LW 3 – I worked at a place where two of women’s restroom by my office started having sprinkles left on the seat or toilets not flushed. It was still gendered bathrooms so it was women doing this. My office (HR) got annoyed because we really liked the clean restrooms. We couldn’t figure out who was doing it as other restrooms were under construction. We put up very elementary school-like signs saying “if you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie & wipe the seatie”. I was skeptical but it worked.

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    1. Nice cup of tea*

      I was going to say I’d seen a sign saying
      “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be sweet and wipe the seat”

      Personally I didn’t like it, but then I wouldn’t dream of leaving a shared facility covered in any kind of bodily fluids.

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  14. Saw Palmetto*

    For the shared bathroom issue – I would recommend leaving some cleaning wet wipes in each stall, with a sign saying “Please clean floor and seat after usage.”
    Unfortunately, about half of men have some form of prostate issue (it can start in your twenties) and that makes the problem worse. So people may THINK “oh, it’s fine, I aimed” and just walk away, when…it isn’t.

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    1. rudster*

      Only problem is that those wet wipes are 100% going to straight into the toilet after use and cause more trouble for the plumbing than they are going to resolve in terms of cleanliness.

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  15. Anonwithknees*

    #1 I was diagnosed with ADHD just four years ago, as an adult, and I have experience of what can and can’t be accommodated for both in school and at work.

    Two things that I wanted accommodations for and weren’t given: at work, I wanted an extra hour to review training materials and keep up with my emails. I was told that this was not feasible for a variety of reasons, including a problem with manager-union regulations. At school, I wanted my professor to work with me to create mini deadlines so that I could have more accountability and not put things off at the last minute. Of course, this would have put extra burden on her, and I was rightfully denied that request.

    When you’re new to the diagnosis of ADHD, everything looks different. Suddenly a lot of things in your life make more sense, and paradoxically the world may seem like a scarier place because you now have a label that makes you “other”. The stigmas that still exist around the diagnosis don’t help.

    In this case, a PIP might actually help the best, because you would be setting out the clear expectations and hard deadlines that those of us with ADHD need. You may think you have already given those, and perhaps you have in a way that makes sense to most people. But with ADHD, we have a lot going on in our heads and no filter to sort out the important from the chaff. Something like a pip, with written and clear guidelines (almost like a checklist) breaks through that fog and gives us direction in an explicit way.

    So you may find that ends up working really well for your employee. At the very least, you’ll be showing her the clear boundaries of what is and is not possible for her in this job, and she can decide if she wants to accommodate herself or if she needs to find another job.

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  16. March*

    I have ADHD, and most jobs I’ve had have been hard to do. My current job is unbelievably accommodating, and still there are times when I struggle (being a 40yr old cis woman doesn’t help either: turns out hormones sometimes just cancel out the medication!) and there have been many times when I despaired of ever being able to hold a “normal job” with a living wage and all that.
    Point is: for ADHDers, it’s essential to know our limits. which is HARD! but it makes the difference between being burnt out (or bored out or both) by every job and holding sustainable employment.
    Also, if Nicole isn’t already on medication, and the ADHD coach has standing to recommend it, that could be beneficial. for me, the meds make the difference between ‘able to do my job adequately to well’ and ‘failing at reality in all its forms’.

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    1. Anonwithknees*

      Oh the hormones! I can relate so hard.

      I don’t think I would recommend that lw #1 suggest medication to her employee though. That sounds like a major overstep into personal health territory. I agree that medication helps to quiet the flurry, but that’s on the ADHD coach and her doctors to suggest, not her manager.

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      1. Mid*

        Though maybe the workplace could check to make sure ADHD meds are covered under their health insurance for a reasonable price? Not to tell that information to Nicole, but to make sure they’re supporting all employees who might need those medications now or in the future. (A lot of ADHD meds are very expensive or not covered by US insurers. Mine, as a generic, with pretty good insurance, is around $600/month. Pre-generic, it was $900/month. Without insurance, it’s over $1200/month.)

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