Working when you have ADHD

A post I read on Reddit recently reminded me that there was a part of managing ADHD as an adult, and that is managing others. By this, I am referring to your boss. Everybody knows that there are laws in place to stop an employer from discriminating so you would think that you would be safe to reveal that you have a disorder right?

Well no, you see even though the laws are there enforcing them is very difficult. If a potential employer does not hire you after you reveal that you have ADHD, then you would have to prove that it was because of that, which would be very difficult as they would simply say person B was more suitable. If you are already employed and they find out, then they will simply look for something, anything to terminate your employment.

This happened to me when I found out that I actually had ADHD. I was far too open about this and of course, let my employer at the time know all about it. Soon enough my work started to be reduced from project coordination to simply copy paste jobs, over and over, day after day. When I wasn't quitting the job they searched back through my emails for a 2-year span just to find something incriminating. With that, I was on a final warning so I quit, it was just no point dragging this out any further.

So why do employers have such a big issue with a person with a disorder? The reason is simply down to cost. You see disabilities mean having measures to allow the person to work, and that costs more on budget.  So, of course, it is far cheaper to just not employ people who cost extra.  Business is cold and once you have some experience of this, it is why more and more people with ADHD are going self-employed to avoid the hassle, but what if you haven't got the experience just yet?

Well, you simply need to ensure that you never mention anything and get what you can from them. Trust is something you should never give to someone who is paying you, as the business will always come above you. It isn't anything against you specifically if the business fails then nobody has a job.  So keep your ADHD close to you, they have no need to know if you are managing it yourself, so you do not need the extra hassle. If you are able to manage your day using Outlook and if you are using medications to control the symptoms then what they do not know never hurts.