My job is driving me insane

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and realize the corporate environment is phoney. that's kind of the beginning of zen wisdom

probably too late this time, but next time, be like Mr. Scott from Star Trek, slightly inflate admin time so you can later reduce it

the managers are in a difficult position of trying to manage the impossible. a little bit display Buddhist compassion, let them think they're achieving something, yes, it's going through the motions but it's better than out-and-out embarrassing them

I had to work with my supervisor today. I finally lost all patience and told him off. I didn't cuss him out or anything like that. Just said basically I cannot work like this anymore.

He kept trying to talk to me while I was doing stuff. It was really distracting. I can't work with someone yammering in my ear and looking over my shoulder the whole time. He did that while I was trying to enter in a contract and then had the nerve to laugh at me because I had entered something in wrong. Disrupted my entire conversation with the guy I was selling to.

Most of the time I work alone, and I have certain ways of doing things, like I do things in a certain order or a certain way so I can try to remember everything that needs to be done. They throw a lot at us and I don't always remember every little thing they want done, but I do my best.

When my supervisor is with me, he's always talking to me about different things other than what I'm doing in the moment, and it interrupts my thought processes and my routine. I feel like I'm getting totally random stuff thrown at me the whole time. I can't work that way. I get totally confused.

Then instead of backing off he just pushes harder to tell me what to do and how to do it. I figured out today, I think because I look confused he thinks that I need more direction. It's very patronizing. I've been doing this a long time, so I don't need to be told what to do and how to do it as if I'm new to the job. I know what I'm supposed to do, it's just hard to REMEMBER everything because they throw so much at us.

We only have these work withs a few times a year, but they are so horrible and traumatic that it just feels like a black cloud hanging over me all the time. Just knowing I have one coming up makes me sick with dread. I used to just try to "yes" my way through it just to get it over with. I feel like I just don't have it in me anymore.

I'm used to working by myself, then on a work with, all of a sudden I have someone literally shadowing me, following me and watching and commenting on my every move, continuously for 3-5 hours? It is suffocating.

He actually came and rapped on my car window today to tell me something, while I was sitting there trying to prepare to go in the next store. Like I can't even sit in my car for ONE f*****g minute and have a tiny bit of peace to actually think about what I'm doing???

I went to vocational rehab after it was over, like I did about this time last year after a horrible work with like this. This time I'm going to insist that they do something to intervene because I cannot take this anymore.

You took a bold step then. How has he reacted? When you say "instead of backing off he just pushes harder," do you mean after you told him off, or before?

He sounds like he's micro-managing on an industrial scale. It's a grievous fault. Don't know whether your diagnosis covers interruptability, but even if it doesn't, he sounds so extreme that even a neurotypical would have fair grounds to complain. Hope you're not feeling anxious about what you did. Sounds like you were assertive rather than aggressive.

He reacted very politely almost sympathetically but never really seemed to understand anything I was telling him.

I actually had two meltdowns. The first time, I just walked away, because I knew I was going to blow up and start yelling if I didn't. I just said I'm going to go home for the day. I went to my car and I had every intention of just coming home. Only thing is I was shaking so bad I couldn't possibly drive. After several minutes he walked out into the parking lot and I got back out of the car to talk with him. He offered to just cancel the work with and let me finish the day out by myself. I probably should have just taken him up on that. I didn't because I have already put him off once a couple of weeks ago because I couldn't handle working with him. It has to be done eventually so I wanted to just get it over with.

The second time was when I just lost all patience and told him off. He got very quiet after that. I went to the restroom and when I came back out he said he was leaving. He was still being very polite but at that point really sounded icy about it. He looked very offended.

Past supervisors have done similar things and I think it's just how they are trained, and they are so brainwashed by it that they can't even use a little common sense and know when to back off a little. I am far from being the only person who has a problem with it. Most of my coworkers complain about the same things. The last supervisor we had was actually a lot worse. I know one of my coworkers told that guy off and said he actually got up in his face to do it. When I heard about that, I thought, why am I trying so hard not to lose my temper? It seems like they have to be put in their place several times before they back off.

I am feeling really anxious about it, and I feel a little guilty too because I think he's basically a nice guy. I don't think he's just deliberately trying to be a jerk. Then again, maybe he IS...maybe he's being phony. I really can't tell. I get the feeling he's just trying too hard to assert his authority over me. Like the last one, he's a young manager, younger than everyone he is supervising.

As for being interrupted, I think that's common with a lot of people who have ADHD. In any case it's always been a huge problem for me. That, and the memory problems. I've told him I have ADHD, and an auditory processing problem, but I don't think he understands anything about what that means or how it affects me. I think I need someone to intervene and help explain things for me. We're just not communicating well at all.

I finally hit on the exact words for how I feel about it, I feel like the company's attitude and by extension the supervisor's attitude is that they own me, mind body and soul, it's not enough for me to just "do my job" for the allotted time I'm being paid for, it's like they want to go far beyond that, completely take over my mind and my way of thinking, take up as much space as they possibly can in my home with their worthless junk, and basically just use me like a puppet, like they have no recognition that I exist as a human being with my own thoughts and feelings outside of the job.

Yes, you're quite right, you're not being "given your head," not being trusted to do the job properly without constant interference, and many bosses try to act as if they own their staff. To my mind it's bullying, whether your boss is conscious of it or not.

Here's what I was about to post before you added your "I finally hit on the exact words" post - I think it's all still relevent.

I'd focus on the time that guy got aggressive with your boss, if you're feeling anxious. Especially if he got away with it. In any case, at least you're not the most aggressive rebel he's experienced, or the only one who has given him "tough love," which surely will mitigate any anger he feels about your stand. It's a crying shame that employees have to put themselves at risk in that way, though I the risk is often in the mind of the employee, unless you're dealing with a dangerous narcissist in a powerful position, which I think is comparatively rare, and doesn't seem to be the case here. It seems more like he just doesn't understand your disability - I had similar problems at work where most of the people I had to deal with had no clue about the details of how ASD impacts on things. It sounds to me like you've learned to confront such problems in an increasingly wise and controlled way, though it might not feel like it to you. Confrontation with authority figures is scary.

Your ADHD diagnosis looks like a strong card in your hand. I'd think that the main message to give to him, and / or to vocational rehab, is that you're being impeded from doing your job properly by too many sudden interruptions about a whole plethora of matters that are not related to the task you're trying to perform, and that it's causing you serious anxiety that also threatens your effectiveness. You have specific examples of how that's happened. As you put it yourself, you can't work under those conditions.

Well my co-worker got aggressive with the last supervisor, not this one. But that was more than a year ago so yeah, it made me think, if my coworker got pushed that far - and he's about the last person I would have expected to blow up like that - then why am I trying so hard to hold things in and not lose my cool?

I think this supervisor is just clueless more than anything. I don't think he is deliberately trying to jerk me around. But it is having a really negative impact on me nonetheless.

I don't know...the more I think about it, I think he was doing some of it on purpose to wind me up.

Do you think he could have ADHD too?

No, I don't think so Waterfalls.

Could be any of a number of reasons. I guess at the time you would have been trying hard to stay focussed on your task and to juggle all the extra balls that were unexpectedly being thrown at you, and felt you needed to keep your temper in order to achieve the required results, because that's normally what working is about. The need to tackle your boss about what he was doing wrong then added to the overload. And I think most people find it difficult to challenge others, and in particular they don't like to challenge or contradict their bosses, especially when they're already occupied with the actual work. Recipe for a perfect storm, and he was its cook.

I don't know if he did it deliberately or not. It could have been disguised aggression on his part, or he might just be useless with people and have no idea of the strain he puts them under. In my experience, bosses sometimes try to drive employees harder and harder, ignoring any notion of limits, and leave the onus on the employee to say when enough is enough. That way, they capitalise on the worker's good nature and their fear of turning awkward, they hope that any stress and strain never gets mentioned, and the boss doesn't superficially look like a cruel slave driver, because it's all couched in seemingly friendly terms, the employee is the one who has to get stroppy and it looks like they're the one causing discord. But if you don't complain, they just load you up with more work. But my view could be over-cynical. He might very well be oblivious to how it feels to work for him. And he might have a boss himself who expects too much of him, though that shouldn't become your problem.

Yeah, you described this perfectly, especially the juggling metaphor.

I talked to someone in HR today. I explained what has been going on and how badly communication has broken down. They pretty much kept throwing the responsibility back on me to bring up all my concerns with my manager, to find the right location out in the field for us to have an actual conversation, how should I let him know in detail what style of coaching I need, etc. I said that is just putting even more stress and pressure on me if they expect all of that. And for god's sake, this is just a part time job. I feel like it's their job to arrange the time and space to talk with their employees, NOT the employee's responsibility to set up those meetings.

I also said that no respect is being given for my experience in the position...so why would I want to seek out a conversation with someone who doesn't value me? WHY?

At that point she said that she would set up a meeting for me with my supervisor and his supervisor. This is probably going to be the ultimate turning point, if things have any chance of getting better or else this is the beginning of the end.

If I thought I was the only one feeling this way about it, I'd probably try to suck it up, smooth things over and just get on with things. They always like to spin things so you feel like you're the only one. But I know very well I'm not.




It really could be any or all of the above. But what it comes down to, is he's basically just doing things exactly the way they trained him to. The HR lady said as much, and I mean sounded like she basically put her stamp of approval on it that he's doing what he's supposed to be doing. But she also said she could see that the situation is not working for either of us.

I don't even feel like fighting to keep this job...I feel like I'm fighting for something else, like my own mind and soul, and the right to think for myself and have some peace of mind without having their bizarre "ideas" running through my mind constantly. Maybe I have to lose the job to win my mind back. It won't be easy, but I've pretty much accepted if it comes to that, so be it. I've had enough.

I really appreciate all your responses ToughDiamond.

It seems very common for bureacrats to fob off what should be their job onto the person who is seeking their help. I'm not sure how it relates to your particular diagnosis, but certainly for an ASDer like me it's a horrible thing when that happens. I have great trouble proactively self-advocating like that, particularly if it means approaching authority figures. The other big problem is that I'm very slow to work out what's going on, so if I'd had such a meeting with HR, I probably wouldn't have realised what they'd done until hours afterwards, then I'd have been kicking myself for not rejecting their suggestion and explaining why it was a non-starter in terms of basic ASD theory.


Her response is pathetic. You basically explained that you can't be expected to challenge a boss who isn't going to want to know, so she "solves" it by telling you to take on both your boss and his boss. Now whose side is his boss going to be on? If you're lucky, his boss will have more people skills and will see that your boss has been inept, but I wouldn't depend on that. It's at least as likely that his boss sees it as his job to put pressure on your boss to screw more work out of his underlings. I think if there's any hope for a good outcome from this meeting, it lies in convincing his boss (and him) that your boss's methods of "helping you to work more effectively" are flawed and having the opposite effect, and that a different approach is needed in your case. I would also bring disability into the debate. Really I think your boss is behaving in a way that would de-motivate anybody, but to act like that towards a cognitively-disabled employee is really daft.


Yes they do like to do that. You could do worse than to tactfully mention the fact that your boss's style has been criticised before.


Hopefully by that she means that it's his job to keep worker productivity high but that his specific methods aren't working in your case. Again, the fact that you're not the only one who's had to challenge him is a strong card to play, to keep it from looking like his methods are fine and it's just you who's letting the side down. But even if they ignore that, you've still got disability as a reason to be treated more carefully.


Well, if you don't absolutely need to keep the job, you don't have a great deal to lose by standing your ground and getting fired for it. I think if it were me, I'd do my best to make my points as tactfully as I knew how, and to stand my ground at that meeting and make sure they didn't get away with ignoring them. But whether my best would be good enough, I have my doubts. Even when I knew it was fairly safe to quit my job, with no need for references, I was surprised how hard it was to be as assertive as I really wanted to be. And I also have that "slow on the uptake" thing going on - there's so much reading between the lines to be done in these realtime discussions with bosses and bureaucrats, and like I say, I'm too slow to keep up, I don't even realise that I've made a point that they've ignored until afterwards, and even when I do realise, authority figures still scare me and I often feel too inhibited to follow through. If these things could be conducted by emails and letters, I'd be much firmer.


No problem. Problems with bosses are a matter close to my heart, and it's always useful to me to see what goes on for other employees, to deepen my understanding of what's really going on out there in the world of work, and to try to give a bit of advice to even the score a bit.

Yeah, I know...it's ridiculous. She also told me that I need to come up with some solutions before I talk to them, so that shows that I'm trying to solve the problem not just complain. It's one of their policies, that you're not supposed to talk about a problem unless you already have a solution for it. See how crazy this company is?!



I think he probably does see it, but that doesn't mean that he would actually call him out on it. In any case, he tends to say things very tactfully and diplomatically. I don't think he would want to give me a hard time. I don't necessarily want him to take my side, just hear me out and understand where I'm coming from, since my supervisor apparently doesn't.

The HR lady seemed to understand pretty well, but on the other hand she doesn't know me either, I've never met her and that's only the second time we've ever spoken on the phone. So she can't really put things into context, like in the sense that I'm normally a very polite person and it takes a lot for me to get to the frustration level that I'm at now.




It shouldn't be too difficult to convey that...I mean I think it's pretty obvious even to my supervisor that it's not working. It's going to harder though to get them to understand why and what could be done differently.

I'm hoping that the HR person will explain some things to them on my behalf before we even have this meeting. I told her that I feel like I need someone to advocate for me and that sometimes I get overwhelmed to the point that I feel like I can't speak anymore.




I agree. I know one of my coworkers feels the same way as I do about it. What I think is weird is that even after I had the first meltdown and was obviously upset he still didn't change his approach at all. It does make me feel kind of like he's doing it on purpose to upset me.

I don't think he has a clue about what it means to have a cognitive disability. I've mentioned that I have ADHD and he didn't seem inclined to want to know more. I wouldn't be surprised if he either thinks I am making it up, or else something like that it's not a real disorder. It seems like he's never been trained on how to deal with anything like a disability. It doesn't seem like the company has a good policy in place for it.

I always have to be careful not to assume people are doing things intending to upset me, it often seems like it when in reality they are simply, and often stubbornly, failing to stop doing things that are upsetting to me.

My experience has been that bad bosses expect you to try to make them happy, period. Good bosses try to make me happy and expect that I will try to make them happy. There are a lot of bad bosses out there, but mostly, I don't think they intend to upset, just to get things their way.

I call it lazy of them as well, assuming it's their job to help with personnel problems. Instead of that, they're just sitting there telling you to fix it yourself. Admittedly it's good practice to propose a solution of your own, but it really shouldn't be mandatory. Anyway, the upside is that at least they haven't simply imposed a bad solution. I guess the obvious solution to propose is that your boss lets you get on with your job and talks to you when you're not busy. They'd probably balk at the idea of doing that all the time, but a reduction in the interruptions would clearly be helpful, so that the work can be done efficiently.



If he's diplomatic, that ought to help. I'd be tempted to present the issue as a "just want to make sure we understand each other, don't want any hard feelings after that problem the other day" kind of thing. Basically you've already told your boss what the problem is, and if you couch it as a clarification exercise, you won't be threatening his dignity so much, which might help. You said before that he looked offended, so raising the matter in the way I've suggested might get construed as a very mature thing to do.


That's annoying, but hopefully her views won't be important. It might be good to point out at the meeting that you're not normally one to complain. Your boss can hardly deny that, he has no examples.





Well, the way I see it, you've already done the groundwork when you gave your boss criticism, which you seem to have done in a fairly controlled way. If I were you I'd rehearse a couple of key phrases - something like "too many sudden interruptions are making it very hard for me to stay focussed on the job I'm trying to do" (the problem). "if other matters could be raised when I'm not so busy, that would be very helpful" (the solution).

If they ask why, well it's fairly normal for people to have trouble splitting their mind in too many different directions, your cognitive disability make it an even bigger problem for you, and then there's the stress factor that sends you into a vicious circle.

If they try to claim your solution can't be done, it's up to them to explain why not, and if you can't knock any plausible holes in their excuses, just say that you're not expecting it to be absolute, but you do need some improvement. It should be hard for them to deny such a reasonable, measured request like that, but if they do, maybe ask them if they have a better plan.


In a halfway decent world, providing an advocate would be standard practice, but I've never seen it except from trade union reps, and what I have seen makes me wonder whose side they're on. The last one who "helped" me actually hugged the supervisor (!) just before the meeting, and then forgot to write up the agreement we thrashed out of him. If you want a job doing right............. I'm very familiar with the selective mutism thing. Hope you find your voice. Rehearsal might help there.



He could be. It's a shame he hasn't already seen the point. But I think you're doing the right thing about it. Playing the "white man" and remaining polite yet not letting the matter go is a good tactic I think. You've already softened him up by criticising his behaviour when he was doing his stupid thing. If the meeting goes at all well, it'll be hard for him to continue as if nothing was ever said.


I've experienced it a lot myself with my ASD, and seen it happen to others. You tell them, it goes in one ear and out of the other. It's difficult stuff for a lot of people to understand, but you'd think they'd at least try. Hopefully the law gives you some protection, though I wouldn't overtly threaten them with that just yet. The tiniest hint would probably be a wise way to start off, if it ever looked like a favourable gambit and if it ever became necessary. But I think the matter is a long way from the courts so far.