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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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.
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.
You’re right, no urinals. We could certainly try the “sitting only stalls” designation – I’ll suggest that! Thanks for the idea :-)
“Sitting only” might also help with the squatters/hoverers (people who don’t want to make contact with the seat so instead squat on the rim or just hover over the bowl).
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.
“We aim to please. You aim too, please.”
LMAO, that’s great!
If you sprinkle when you tinkle please be neat and wipe the seat.
Probably just as well as signs telling people to clean up after themselves in the shared kitchen.
That’s what I was thinking.
I worked for a while in a place with all manner of bathroom signs (also w/single use gender neutral restrooms) and the only change was that people put in joke signs in response.
I recently was in an elementary school bathroom and they had a very polite, very succinct sign about how to behave in a bathroom. I took a picture so I could duplicate it for the manufacturing plant where I work. We have had…issues…with the bathroom.
We had some folks in our office not cleaning up after themselves in the breakroom. Someone put up a sign saying, in essence, “Clean up after yourself, your mom doesn’t work here!” It was absolutely patronizing–but we’re a bunch of educated professionals, if you need to be told to not let your food get so moldy it can operate simple machinery you deserve to be talked to like a child. And it was effective.
The other thing I’ve seen work is a small decal or waterproof sticker of a fly in the bowl of the toilet. Not to put too fine a point on it, if you give men something to aim at, they’ll aim at it. I remember someone doing this (I think it was in Japan) and they had a huge reduction in these sorts of complaints.
In all seriousness, I think that sometime in the next ten years or so, there’ll be a bathroom cleaning robot on market. Which has the advantage of not requiring that you try and change human behaviour…
the solution is to stop screwing over 50% of the population (all women) to appease the 0.01% who wouldn’t use a single sex bathroom.
That is not the solution
No, it’s not. (Signed, a cis woman.)
I highly doubt trans people are the ones who are making the mess in the bathroom.
Or- and hear me out- we don’t let the people who are creeps in the bathroom (primarily cis men who are perverts) ruin it for everyone else and provide equity in bathrooms, actually making it better for everyone by having non-gendered bathrooms so in large public spaces, women have equal access to the same number of bathrooms that men do and we don’t have to wait in terminally long lines or have to commandeer mens’ bathrooms (though I do enjoy doing that- it’s fun to organize a bathroom brigade on the fly).
And I know it’s not the primary focus of the question or the push to have gender neutral bathrooms, but I’m really wondering what population of men is causing the issue. I’m a woman so no idea if there’s a “reason” (someone else mentioned having both toilets + urinals helps, though do these dudes pee on the floor at home too, have home urinals, or sit at home but not want to at work—the latter I could perhaps see, I guess?) the guys miss accidentally — still should clean it up — but my husband used to work somewhere that one dude would cover the floors in piss constantly (they pretty much narrowed it down because only a few people worked in their section and the bathroom was across from my husband’s office). My husband was very bothered by it, so it’s not like all men are okay with gross bathrooms and this wasn’t a problem before. Maybe they were just resigned, But why is it too much to ask people not pee on the floor?
That’s not even why a lot of places have single-user gender neutral restrooms.
My previous employer did it bc it was more cost effective.
This was before there was a big push for gender neutral restrooms and this was decidedly not a progressive employer.
And yeah, the men did make the situation extremely unpleasant, but money was at the root of it. Nothing else.
Or these “men” can act like adults. I get that things happen–stream splitting isn’t always predictable, for example–but if you’re in the working world you’re supposed to be an adult, and part of that means maintaining certain minimal levels of cleanliness and hygiene, both in your person and your work environment. It’s not that hard to clean up a spill! And conveniently bathrooms come pre-equipped with basic cleaning supplies and places to wash your hands after.
Seriously, we taught our sons this when they were five. I’d be genuinely mortified if I worked somewhere and they even suspected I was the reason a bathroom was unusable. Trying to make this a trans problem is absolutely ridiculous; the problem isn’t trans people, it’s allegedly adult men who are behaving like toddlers. And attempting to dodge personal responsibility by shifting the blame only makes you more childish; it’s the behavior of an ill-behaved brat, not a serious adult capable of handling any sort of responsibility.
Nah, your percentages are way off.
I think a meeting addressing everyone with a reminder they are not at home and that shared spaces especially bathrooms are expected to be kept clean. Keep a large supply of anti-bacteria wipes and tell every one that the expectation is that the seat be wiped down after flushing and the wipes deposited in the trash. Used sanitary hygiene products should be wrapped in tp and deposited in the trash.
That covers all messes that could be made by any gender. You can keep air freshener in all but 1 or 2 bathrooms and designate those “perfume free” for those who are sensitive to air freshener and other scented products.
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
That is too funny
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.
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.
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.
I think many more people hover over public toilets because they are concerned about germs on the seat.
or pee on the seats
I guess it might help, but young kids can genuinely not realize how much work cleaning is, or even that there *is* someone who comes and cleans the bathroom. Most adults either have figured out that they shouldn’t leave a mess for other people to deal with, or don’t care.
I also had this problem at uni. This was a set up where there were maybe eight of us sharing bathroom facilities, and I suspected I knew who it was. I just left a note up to the effect of ‘If you don’t have the ability to pee in the toilet like everyone else, at least clean up after yourself’ and that actually worked. I guess it was the shame aspect and the confirmation that yes, other people have noticed this (funnily enough).
Well done.
We thought we had a sprinkler in the women’s bathroom at my dorm. There were a small group of students who were up in arms about it, and tried for weeks to figure out who it was. Turned out that one of the toilets flushed so forcefully that small drops of water landed on the seat.
#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”
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.
It’s a group of 2 and Sarah has been there at least 7 years, I’m wondering how much day to day management Sarah needs. This may be an attempt to flatten things out and give Sarah some upward momentum. It stinks for LW, but with only one long term report I’d be looking to reorganize this structure too.
I also don’t understand why Sarah needs 2 managers, especially in what seems like a small org/company. If I have been working successfully under Manager A for 7 years, I would find the sudden change of reporting to Manager B in addition to Manager A confusing, and possibly overkill. I also would not consider it a promotion if I am not getting a salary increase/higher level duties.
I get flattening small teams. I would say LW should consider moving on when the market improves if not now because the company not backfilling so many roles and now boss moving to flatten suggests to me that this isn’t going anywhere but demotion / stagnation longer term for them both. I agree it’s a problem both in the current structure and in flattening in a way that feels like a demotion to LW or gives Sarah multiple managers. But I think there is a big issue here no matter what, and I sort of get giving Sarah some hope even at the expense of LW (who wouldn’t have a title issue and wouldn’t be hindered in their overall career by this-but if they’re not backfilling what happens if or when Sarah jumps?)
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.
Yeah, I do feel for Sarah wanting more upward movement/visibility, but I would *not* want to be a manager responsible for overseeing someone’s “day to day work” but not their actual management, particularly if their actual manager wouldn’t have much job knowledge.
#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.
I agree. This is so straightforward — a Dad who is terminally ill and seeing him through. No reason to be vague here at all.
I’m confused—why is a father dying not oversharing, but a wife with serious mental health problems is oversharing?
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.
It would be on its own, with compatible levels of brevity. It sounded like the candidate went into a lot of uncomfortable details.
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.
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).
A father dying is not oversharing because when a person dies it is public knowledge.
@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.
Also, forgot: The wife is still alive, a person with a life that, one would hope, is private and ongoing.
The phrase “WAY too much detail.”
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.
I agree with this–I can see how in an interview, “spinning things for positive” might seem icky when you’re considering parental death, but there is a lesson that the LW learned here–that attempting to do it all is not always feasible. I think acknowledging that would be to their benefit, because as you say, maybe they only have so many parental deaths that they’ll deal with, but how do they deal with problem in general? It’s possible that the larger pattern of “I try to handle too much and don’t involve my manager until it’s too late and my do-it-myself solo attitude could cost the company money or create issues” could be there. If they head that off–“I realize in retrospect that I should have taken FMLA/should have involved my manager/whatever, and I’ve learned to be a better judge of my limits” would really reassure me. (Of course, I recognize that we’re nice people, not robots wanting to hire robots, but.)
I think “I was let go after my dad died. In retrospect, I should have taken FMLA but I thought I could push through” is a very human statement and if I were the interviewer I would get it.
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.
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.
Yes, I agree. My spouse was fired about a month after my mother died. So, to answer the question about firing, he says : “Yes, a few weeks after my mother-in-law died”. It’s enough. So, to the OP, I would say answer the question with “Yes, a few weeks (months) after my dad died”. It’s short, it explains a lot. And, I’m sorry for your loss; may his memory be a blessing.
I think this is a great solution – you could even expand it just a tiny bit and say ‘Yes; my dad was terminally ill, and I was fired from that job a few weeks [months] after he died’. Sums up the situation very clearly without needing any further detail.
This might be me being bad enough at picking up hints that management is not for me, but I wouldn’t understand what you meant by that. To me, sounds looks like someone bizarrely decided to fire your husband because his mother-in-law died, rather than that he was obviously caring for her and/or you and so his performance suffered.
I agree with this take. As I have gotten older, I decided to be a bit more “human” in my interviews. Although its not the same as you LW (loosing a parent), I tend to let my interviewers know a little bit more about me. I want them to know I have kids and a family. I will be a dedicated employee at work, but after work I am a Mom. I will need time off for doc appts, school events and sick kids. I say it in a more professional tone. I judge their reaction. If I don’t like it I won’t continue the interview process. It’s worked out so far and I thankfully have worked at a few places that are very flexible.
I’m hiring and interviewing at the moment, and from that perpective, I totally agree. This version would give me no worries at all, whereas the “performance-related” one definitely would, and the vaguer one might. Honestly, interviewers are human too and caring for a terminally ill parent and letting work slip in the circumstances is very understandable and there’s no need to hide it – if you’re comfortable telling the truth, I think that’s the best way to go.
#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…
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.)
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.
“Are you a student at Local College?” would be a simple question.
If yes: Contact XYZ. Good luck.
If no: This program is only for students of Local College.
Yes, OP sounded pretty unhelpful.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I feel like I need to find an ADHD coach. My executive dysfunction mostly hits at home now, but also affects my continuing education, and having someone give me some help and not be “lol it’s easy” would be great.
They exist. I know several.
Yeah, I have a comment trapped in moderation talking about why this might not be working, but realistically this is exactly the sort of thing my coach and I would work on: OK, I want to do X (submit my expense reports on time, retain information from video-only meetings where I’m a passive attendant, avoid missing deadlines because I lost track of a task or started it too late, go to bed at a reasonable hour every day, etc.) and my ADHD is currently making it impossible. How can we work around that? And then we brainstorm and strategise. A lot of the deficits are stuff you really do need to figure out workarounds and strategies for yourself because it’s simply not reasonable to offload that work onto other people, either at work or privately.
The role of the manager here, IMO, is more about being flexible regarding possibly unusual work organisation approaches and tools – ex, I recently started a new job and am thinking about asking my manager if she’d be OK with me knitting in the office, because that’s the single best solution I’ve found to the “I cannot focus on video calls if I’m not an active participant” issue. There’s probably some potential for having specific tasks moved off you or having extra support with them if they’re not part of your core job duties and doing so wouldn’t be an undue burden (have always wondered if having someone help me with expense reports would be a reasonable thing to ask, because I need to fill one out maybe once or twice a year at most and they’ve proven a huge problem), but the bulk of the organisation you do have to figure out a way to do yourself in most jobs.
As someone with ADHD and a job that is all about vague assignments with external-facing deadlines, I would expect the coach they’re paying for to be able to suggest strategies for Nicole, and if she can’t it’s either a) an ineffective coach, b) a job that isn’t right for her, or c) both. If Nicole were the one writing in, I have things I would suggest to her, but that’s not the manager’s job to do, especially since there’s a company-paid coach involved.
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?
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.
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?
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.
They weren’t supposed to do anything; these things aren’t egalitarian, they’re based on who has the ability and opportunity and is chosen for both. The options aren’t “follow the rules” or “find a way to get around them,” they’re “follow the rules” or “don’t get the internship.”
I wouldn’t take the bet. My company had an internship program with the community college 2 miles away because its technical certification programs matched the training needs for our factory.
There’s no reason to suppose that. I worked for a company that got interns from a very tiny, obscure local college. Because it was local and asked to partner with us. No other reason.
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”.
typo: *what they’re doing
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.
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.
I think it’s more that the men in that specific company are worse than the women in the company and that the LW knows that because there were no problems in the women only bathrooms.
And I don’t think it’s about putting up signs saying “women only” is less of a burden, more that it’s more likely to be followed. Most people do not go into bathrooms that are designated as not being for them whereas signs like “please clean up after yourself” are vague enough that they don’t tend to have much effect. Most people aren’t thinking, “I’m a messy person who doesn’t clean up after myself.” I agree it’s more likely to be carelessness and I don’t think a sign will make people less likely to be careless.
Now I don’t really think the answer is to make some bathrooms women only because well, for one thing, it’s probably a small number of men at the company and the other men shouldn’t have to deal with gross bathrooms either and besides, it does seem to be a step back as regards inclusivity and somebody has pointed out below how things like this can become excuses as to why bathrooms should be segregated.
I don’t really have an answer. Given the reference to toilets being broken, I’m guessing it’s a small number of people in the company, who happen to be men, who are very careless or who don’t respect workplace property and while I guess it’s worth trying a sign asking people to be more careful, I wouldn’t be too optimistic.
I’ve taken malicious delight over the years in adding a small tarnish to a respected local businesswoman’s reputation by letting people know she doesn’t wash her hands in the bathroom. (She is also a monster to her staff and encourages toxicity in the workplace; strangely, people find washing your hands more compelling! I choose not to speculate on why.)
Basically, an awful lot of people you share bathrooms with either ARE sociopaths or so very self-absorbed they don’t care what other people witness. I would not assume for one second that signs of any kind will solve this problem.
#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.
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)_/¯
I am a man who would use the pink stall knowing it is clean.
I support this. (I also sit, because why make a mess?).
Genius.
Absolutely true.
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!
Um, no. Both my boys (under 12) sprinkle everywhere and are just fine with pink.
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!
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!
Yeah, let them do whatever they do, but make it a condition that the bathroom must stay as clean as it was before.
One of the best things I did during COVID was to teach my then-elementary-aged kids how to thoroughly scrub the bathroom. My son, who often didn’t bother to put up the toilet seat when he peed, suddenly remembered to do so every time. Keeping a box of Clorox wipes next to the toilet also helped to encourage a quick wipe of the seat, so that might be a practical suggestion for the work situation, too
The problem with wipes is that some people seem incapable of realising that they shouldn’t be flushed down the loo, so then you just end up with a plumbing problem.
Yup. Cleaning the restroom was my job as a kid. Until my brother’s aim became an issue – my mom decided this meant cleaning the restroom was now his job and that was an extremely effective fix.
Absolutely spot on. It’s disgraceful this happens.
Depends. I worked for Wizards of the Coast the year they figured out girls play roleplaying ganes (2008, in case any women reading this remember playing in the 90s – we don’t exist). To celebrate they created a promotional pink die … which male rpgers had no hesitation about taking because they were already not seen as super manly by their peers.
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.
Yeah, I’m a bit surprised that so many commenters are experiencing clean women’s restrooms, and that the LW had clean ones before they became gender neutral.
I have minimal experience with men’s bathrooms so maybe they’re even worse, but in my experience women’s bathrooms are always pretty gross. I guess I’m just unlucky? But it has been this way in pretty much every place I’ve worked and definitely public bathrooms at stores or restaurants.
My experience is that women’s bathrooms can be dirty, but men’s bathrooms stink in a way I’ve never experienced in women’s bathrooms— just a solid urine stench. That’s from going into them at things like venues where they’ve either recently or temporarily been made mixed-gender, and a few times when I was in food service jobs and responsible for cleaning bathrooms (which, uh, I often managed to get out of so I didn’t do it that many times!)
That said, I’ve only noticed it when it’s been an actual men’s bathroom with urinals, so it could be just the way that urinals work. I’ve never noticed mixed-gender bathrooms being worse than women’s, and if they are I am probably more likely to attribute it to “this needs cleaning more often” rather than “ew people are gross”.
Yes, the hovers are the WORST.
I’ve heard the same thing about women’s restrooms being dirtier/messier as well, but it seems to be one of those things where YMMV. The last office I worked in was an all female staff and all male attorneys (except for yours truly). The way the building was laid out, the staff used one bathroom, the attorneys used another, though technically they were both unisex. The bathroom used by the male attorneys was absolutely disgusting. These were educated, ADULT men who could not figure out how to wipe up pee, put paper towels in the bin, or change a TP roll. It looked like what I imagine an elementary school bathroom would look like. I often used the staff restroom as a result, because the cleaning company who came once a week could not keep up with the mess made by these men.
Yeah, I’ve heard the same from friends who were on janitorial staff or managed restaurants.
But… my own experiences are of male coworkers being horrible in restrooms in a way that the women just aren’t.
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.
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.
Interesting that it worked. I’ve seen many signs like that and they just get ignored.
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.
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.
I see your point. Either using the water soluble ones or putting a tiny wastebasket in stall could head off the issue. I just don’t believe that toilet
paper will actually clean things up, as opposed to drying them off.
Um, shouldn’t there already be a wastebasket in any stall that women use?
Now that I think about it, yes. However, I wouldn’t really know.
If you’re in most of the US, “flushable” is meaningless. Any product can legally say it.
The small subset of wipes that are technically capable of dissolving don’t behave like toilet paper. They require several hours of being exposed to the right mix of bacteria and enzymes to mostly dissolve. It’s a gamble whether your plumbing is going to have those conditions (or maintain them once people start flushing wipes).
Consumer Reports has a vivid article on it — link to follow.
In that case, wastebasket is the way to go.
I recall seeing an article about the results of a study carried out in Germany (I think?) about men peeing into regular toilet bowls from a standing position. Even when their central aim was fine (which was most of the time), there was a natural spread of smaller droplets that was much, much wider than they’d realized. The upshot was that if you wanted to avoid the surrounding are properly, you *had* to sit to pee — no matter how good your aim.
Yeah, I think this is much, much more of a problem than people being careless or having no manners. Because even a few drops add up over time.
#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.
I feel like a PIP would say “must meet deadlines.” Not set out multiple or specific deadlines or a detailed checklist. That’s what the employee should be identifying with the help of her ADHD coach.
About the mini deadlines, when I was in school I got those with no extra effort for on the prof.
The trick was to make an appointment with the tutoring center some days ahead if the real deadline.
This way, it would be embarrassing to have nothing done until the last minute – because I’d have nothing to show the tutor. It helped me get at least a chunk of the work done ahead of time (and the actual advice from the tutor sure didn’t hurt either!)
But sadly the point of a PIP is not to prove that the worker can do it under PIP conditions – it’s a warning before firing and a last chance, with the idea that the worker needs to be able to come off the PIP and continue to perform at the higher level. This employee and her coach need to create a structure for herself (that ironically might look like the best elements of a PIP) and make it a permanent way of managing the work going forward.
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’.
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.
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.)
Which is different from the meds needed for everything else how? This is why plans have OOP maximums….you pay $800, $1000, $1500, whatever the first few months until you hit the max then everything is free for the rest of the year.
Without knowing the specific meds needed by a particular employee- which can change at any time, as can the related coverage rules – there’s no way to check on coverage. Plans will generally cover some meds for X no matter what X is, but may not cover the specific med any particular patient needs for X, or may not cover it at the needed dosage, or may place limits on the total amount of the meds they’ll cover even if it’s less than the patient needs. Sometimes prior auth or insurance overrides can be used to overcome this and sometimes it can’t.
LW #3–I’m AFAB nonbinary. My first job was in a fast food restaurant and I had to clean both gendered bathrooms, and framing this as a men vs. women issue is sexist, too. The people using the women’s restroom are just as gross, the women’s room had equally as much of a dribble/sprinkle problem, and additionally I had to wipe blood off the seats, too. Don’t even get me started on people who didn’t bother to wrap up their used menstrual products, changing the women’s trash was way more of a nightmare than the men’s. The problem is just gross people vs. clean people and needs to be addressed as such–probably with a company-wide memo about common courtesy and with CDC materials about handwashing.
I’ve had people try to use the “men are gross” thing as a gotcha to resist having non-gendered toilets and I’m not here for it. The reasons gendered toilets ever became a thing in the first place absolutely reek with “fairer sex”/”delicate lady sensibilities” misogyny. Wanting to uphold that outdated custom is veering into terf/transphobe territory. This is just a thing where if you’re truly committed to inclusion, you simply cannot push back on this with a gender framework. Call out all gross people for being raised in a barn, don’t make it about men vs. women.
The ones who don’t wrap their menstrual products don’t at home either. From time to time I’ve been in the homes of women I didn’t know well – a friend of a friend or whatever – and seen that.
It’s nice that they’re so comfortable with their body functions, but ick.
In this particular case, the men are gross, at least some of them.
I’m fine with unisex bathrooms in principle, but if changing from women-only meant I had to deal with dirty bathrooms that didn’t happen before, then I’d be agitating to either return to at least 1 women-only in any set of loos – or to employee a full-time loo attendent in each (unlikely to be financially acceptable)
Unfortunately, just telling people to clean up after themselves doesn’t work any better for loos than it does for kitchens:
The dirty ones either don’t realise they are the problem, or don’t care.
Sarah already has a COACH. as well as other accommodations. what went on while she was on probation? Meet with the coach and see what’s happening. She should not expect the coach, or other staff to organize her work for her at this point.
Sounds like she’s making excuses. How many more accommodations will she want before she can do her job..or is she just expecting unending help? That’s how I’m interpreting this.
Or it gets to the point where someone else is practically doing the job for her.
“you sent your application in and crossed your fingers. ”
As we see here every day, that doesn’t always work very well. I have no problem with a student showing “gumption” or whatever as they try to navigate the world of job seeking.
It may not work in every case but I cut people alot of slack these days
#2 I’ve seen something similar happen and it was because a company review determined that people in certain positions needed a minimum and maximum number of direct reports. Min for equity across roll levels, and the max for reasonability. I wonder if it looked bad for both you and your boss to only have one direct report?
Thanks for including this.
Try signs “clean people only” for ½ the loos and “dirty buggers” in the others? :)
This rubs me the wrong way.
It’s fair to say “please follow the application guidelines on our website”, but if you’re going to tell them to email your boss, asking for your boss’s email is quite reasonable.
This didn’t even register for me reading the letter, but this is a good point. I get that maybe the LW was taken aback by the cold call, but this was a bad way to handle that interaction (unless maybe the boss has a long name or one that is easily misspelled, and it’s easier to simply get it directly from the website).
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.
I’ve been a tad flippant about this sort of thing in the past, but I can honestly say without a shred of irony or sarcasm that this is the single most offensive thing I’ve read outside a website designated by the ADL or the SPLC. The idea that someone thought it was acceptable to write such a thing (and that someone else thought it was acceptable to publish) is absolutely wild.
“I can honestly say without a shred of irony or sarcasm that this is the single most offensive thing I’ve read outside a website designated by the ADL or the SPLC.”
I don’t believe you can say this without a shred of irony or sarcasm, or you’ve been very sheltered in terms of what websites you’ve read. I’m a guy and this is not that offensive
When you have to use “that” as a modifier of offensiveness, it’s offensive.
Y, very sheltered indeed.
The comment about men is very strong, but the OP sounds totally exasperated and out of patience
You’re probably right (on both counts). I would just say that blatantly discriminatory, if not outright hateful, language is never excused by frustration or exasperation.
Do you really think that comment is hateful and discriminatory though? I thought it was conventional wisdom that men can be kind of disgusting with our bathroom habits. Sounds like an observation LW is making
Name any other group of people who could be described as feral on this site without condemnation. I’ll wait.
Anyone who’s doing something similar would deserve that label. I think you’re taking it a little too seriously
I do. I’ve encountered a great deal of menstrual blood smeared on toilet seats in my time. I have no problem describing the individual women responsible as “gross” or “feral”; however, I would utterly condemn and reject any suggestion that women as a group are “gross” or “feral” because of the behavior of an inconsiderate minority.
It’s also about a specific group of men, not every single man in the world. Some people are gross!
… I’d like to suggest that you look at ANY of the news in the last few months if that’s the most offensive thing you’ve ever read. Get some perspective about what it’s like out here for the rest of us, friend.
It is the single most offensive thing written about an entire group of people by someome belonging to another group of people on a mainstream website whose users regard it as a safe and inclusive space. Happy?
Nod. With the current environment being created by the sort of person who thinks women’s history month is discriminatung against men, complaining because one person didn’t put enough caveats in bathroom behavior descriptions really hits wrong.
#3 make sure new bathrooms include urinals (in a stall, if necessary) and then have them cleaned more often. Not sure why more frequent cleaning wasn’t even presented as an option!
Cleaning crews are frequently contracted to come through only at the end of the day. Even if management renegotiated the contract to include a midday bathroom cleaning, there’s still a good possibility that someone will make a mess first thing in the morning, or right after the cleaner has left.
My part of the building at work has two single occupant gendered bathrooms, but in practice if one is occupied, you use the other. I’m female. The men’s is always gross. There is always dribbled pee on the floor around the toilet and on the seat. You can tell when a man has used the women’s one as there is pee on the floor/seat. There are signs up in the men’s bathroom to clean your messes and wipes available, but they don’t bother. Cleaning crew is in twice a week.
And then there is the challenge from a previous job of sharing bathrooms from people outside the US who have different habits of handling TP after number two.
I’ve never seen an “ADHD Coach”. What do they do exactly?
When I saw one, we discussed my workload, broke it into chunks, and prioritized it. We checked in on longer term projects. And then we discussed how that job was an awful fit for me, and she encouraged me to move on.
Here to offer another perspective on letter #2 as something similar happened to me: there are companies (often large ones), where there’s a specific minimum span of control that managers have to have – a minimum of people that a single manager should manage. It might very well be that this is the case in OP’s company, and if so, there’s very little to be done, other than going the opposite way and adding more people to his team so that he meets the minimum.
#1: The important thing is to make sure there is sufficient toilet paper as well. Some people are so stingy about sharing.
OP1 – To start, I want to say that it seems like your business has been extremely understanding and already very accommodating. Also, I can see that it could be extraordinarily difficult to know what accommodations are necessary with a new, or newer, diagnosis. I don’t know exactly what’s happening with the coach, and what kind of support they’re providing Nicole, but it would be extremely helpful for Nicole to speak to the coach to get ideas for what could be a good accommodation request. It would also be helpful for Nicole to talk to the coach about the “organizing” issue.
There are limited jobs in which there is a perfect one size fits all way to organize work, and executive level roles are certainly not in that realm. Having someone else organize your work may lead to some success if that style of organization works for you. But that’s something you’ll still have to pick up and do yourself at some point too. But I could also see that if someone organized my work for me, it could be extremely discombobulating because it isn’t done in a way that works with my brain.
Be honest with Nicole. Let her know that her struggles are leading down a path toward separation. And suggest that she talk to her coach. They may not be the one who can provide the exact answers she needs, but they may be able to identify other resources so she can find that answer. But let her know she needs to do so quickly, because requesting that someone else organize her work isn’t an accommodation that is reasonable.
For #1, the reality is that accommodations have to be “reasonable”, it doesn’t mean she can’tbe fired for non performance. I think a PIP is actually the kinder option here to communicate the degree of severity of the problem.