This is not a academic exercise. My shop-mate has ADHD. It is a diagnosed problem for which she takes medication (and boy howdy you can tell when it wear off or she forgets to take it!). It is driving me crazy. Sometimes I want to grab her by the shoulders, shake hard, and scream FOCUS, DAMMIT!
Yesterday I tried to ask her a simple question. A customer had called about a repair, or so her note said, but no further details. What did he want to know about? This provoke a verbal salad regarding the customers calling, the broken drivebelt on the sewing machine (which was irrelevant to a repair concerning heels, no sewing involved) the heat wave, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the shop computer regaining internet, the drought, traffic on I-65, the price of apples at Meijer, the color fuschia… I had to drag her back to the initial question several times before I got the answer (he wanted to know why it was taking more than one week to get the job done).
Holy crap, some days you just can NOT have a conversation with her!
She’s not like that all the time, but enough to really be annoying. Her work is like that, too - often she can start and complete something but she is so damn easily distracted. My first day in the shop during the week I invariably find several repairs started but not completed.
The crazy thing is that she IS capable of organization - she’s cleaned reorganized the entire shop and for the most part it’s an improvement (once I straightened her out that just because she won’t get on the ladder doesn’t mean the rest of us won’t, and we need access to it. In other words, no, it’s not being stored behind a machine that takes two people to move, that’s too out of the way).
I realize this is not her fault - she does have a problem that isn’t under her control and her coping mechanisms/medication aren’t going to work all of the time. I’m just trying to find a way to keep it from driving me around the bend.
As I had to say to a co-worker who constantly used his as a crutch to explain away his incompetence and flakiness:
“It isn’t up to everyone else to make allowances for your inability to act like an adult professional and do your job. It’s up to you to make allowances for your own difficulties and either overcome them or work out how to compensate for them. I had to do that with my own issues, you’re going to have to do it with yours. Otherwise you’re going to end up either a very angry person (as I did at one time), or a total loser fuckup who can’t keep even a minimum wage job. Consider that for a while and decide where and how you want to end up.”
Of course, it helped that I was twice his age and had the experience and scars to show for it.
Whether or not it will help him in the long run, I cannot say. It’s been a couple of years and he’s well on his way to that loserdom fate.
A question: Do you have any sort of authority over your coworker? I ask this because I’ve come across many ADD/ADHD people in my line of work, both as a supervisor and as a fellow coworker. Your approach will differ, depending on the authority question.
Re what Chimera said: Yes, ultimately it’s up to her to decide how to handle herself. She knows she has the issue. She’s an adult, and one would think she knows how to handle herself…
If her ADHD is as bad as you describe, she may fall within the ADA’s definition of a “disabled worker”. So I’d deal with her as I would any other worker with a disability- in a non-discriminatory manner.
If she’s unable to complete assigned tasks in a timely fashion or communicate properly with coworkers (*especially *if it’s because she isn’t taking the medication she’s been prescribed), report it to her supervisor. If you’re her supervisor, talk to your supervisor about your options. Someone with a condition that interferes with their job either needs to be accommodated (if she goes through the channels to get her disability accommodated) or needs to be doing another job–one with fewer responsibilities.
If you actually use this machine gun approach to gather information, I’m not sure your coworker is the one with the issue.
This line of questioning would be maddening to anyone trying to recall something that is only vaguely important to them let alone one with an attention deficit disorder.
For starters, before you make any request to an ADHD person, you have to ensure you have their undivided attention. Most ADD’ers are not particularly adept at multi-tasking.
Then rather than handing the message and saying, “What was this about?” you have to guide them along the lines of, “Clara, you took this message for me while I was out to lunch.” Pause to make sure that registers. “Do you remember who it was that called and what it was about?” Longer pause. If she zones out, you should NOT offer random ideas such as the one you facetiously suggested nor should you snap your fingers in her face or use “Earth to Clara, come in Clara” or words to that effect. If the person gets distracted or cannot recall, you have to guide them back. Say, “It was probably about 12:30, you were watching the desk. I said I’d be out for about 45 minutes.” You have to imagine the experience is frustrating for them as well.
Also you need to try some preventative techniques like reminding her to provide more specificity when taking phone messages. You’ll have to be persistent and patient in this regard as lots of ADD’ers take several takes to get just about any routine down.
She’s 50 years old working a minimum wage job. I think we know where she ended up.
We’re trying. She’s trying. She has a number health problems on top of everything else so yes, in a sense she’s disabled although the status is not official. It could be, though. Everyone wants this to work out, but some days are more difficult than others.
The bosses’ know about it. We’ve discussed it. She doesn’t normally skip her meds but sometimes she gets distracted. There is no job in the company with fewer responsibilities. MOST days she’s OK (not great, OK) but once in awhile you just want to… well, shake her and yell FOCUS! though, of course, that is not the way to achieve the goal we’re all aiming for.
Yep. I kept repeating “What did Mr. M want when he called about his shoes?” The scatter-shot subjects were all coming from her.
Because I’ve been struggling with an upper respiratory infection + my asthma (including meds that make me short tempered, thank Og I only need them until my lungs settle down again) this has been an especially trying week. I just don’t have the patience I normaly do.
If it makes you feel any better, 99% of all people who have lived or worked with someone with ADD for any length of time have had the exact same urge at some point. The other 1% are liars. Being frustrated by things we don’t understand is a normal human reaction, and not being able to filter out irrelevant stimuli/thoughts is something most of us just plain don’t understand. Even if we understand it on an intellectual level, we still don’t really get it.
Nah, that’s not crazy at all. Lots of people with ADD are really quite good at organizing things. It’s keeping things organized they tend to suck at. Creating a system and maintaining one are two completely different skill sets.
There’s no One Right Answer on that one, unfortunately. Everyone with ADD has their own manifestations and coping mechanisms, and everyone dealing with someone with ADD has their own hot buttons, so you really have to just work with and around each other’s issues on a case-by-case basis. The best thing I can tell you to do is to just talk to the woman about what her coping mechanisms are, what specific behaviors are making you nuttiest when those mechanisms fail, and what you’re each okay with to address these issues. I mean, some folks you can just look at them and say very quietly, “Please get to the point.” Other people would respond really poorly to that.
Whatever you guys work out between yourselves, though, there will be times when you just have to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and remind yourself that you do stuff that drives people nuts, too.
I second what minlokwat said. Don’t just repeat the same question over and over, try to guide her into remembering what happened. Beyond that, she has a disability, and your and her superiors know about it, so if she requests accommodations you are obligated to provide them. Before it gets to that point, are there other ways she could take notes? If she had a voice recorder would she provide more complete messages? Etc.
p.s. – Beyond the note taking thing – Does she have trouble following a complex set of tasks? Does she forget to finish a job, etc.? Writing up and posting a checklist at her workstation is the kind of thing that would help. If the steps to be followed are documented simply, in a way that’s easy to refer to and follow, that often helps people to follow through on a task.
For example, with the note taking – Maybe if you got a pad of those “While you were out” notes where she would fill in who called, date and time, reason for call, etc. That would help her get organized taking calls.
A voice recorder is not going to help with the job ticket problem. We have to have the written tickets attached to the footwear they related to. Having a 20-30 minute recording of notes/information on 20-30 pairs of shoes stacked in the corner isn’t going to work out from a work standpoint, and we just don’t have the means to have someone else transcribe her dictation to paper tickets. That is also assuming she would be able to dictate the information in an organized and useful manner which, based on how she leaves voice-mails, I have strong doubts she could do.
She isn’t requesting accommodations - maybe she should. But I’m not sure converting the paper tags to a recording is going to work. It would also call for retooling the main work process for an entire company for one person. Would that be reasonable? ADA calls for reasonable accommodations, not any an all accommodations.
Yes? The ADD’ers are here to stay. If the employee’s message taking skills are below the level of expectations of the job for which she is being paid and her continued employment hinges on this, then fire her for cause. No problem there.
However in the specific situation cited in the OP where the employee has enough positive contributions to provide some sort of counterbalance then yes, you are going to have to make some accommodations.
Rare is the work staff where every single member is 100% qualified for her or his job, gets along superbly with everyone and performs every task error-free.
I’d still search for some preventative technique such as the more specific phone message pads but if her overall performance is enough to keep her employed, yes I think it’s a reasonable technique.
I held a $50,000/year job for 20+ years before my skillset became obsolete and I had to start over in another career. I am no longer earning minimum wage but have received two raises in the past six months. In other words, it was a temporary situation for me, as opposed to my coworker who has apparently never held anything BUT a minimum wage job.
But I don’t expect you to understand the difference. (Feel free to surprise me, though.)