Dear Prudence: Badly Titled Work Question

[minoanmiss]

"Help! I’m Really Tired of Following “Reasonable” ADA Guidelines for My Co-Worker."

Q. Reasonable accommodations: I am one of two people in my department at work. The other person on my team has ADHD, and also suffers from anxiety and depression. Due to these challenges, our office does its best to provide reasonable accommodations, per the guidelines of the ADA.

The problem: Their version of “reasonable” means expecting me to do all of his work, as well as my own, most of the time. At this point, people from other departments, as well as our higher-ups, copy both of us on every email, knowing that he will most likely never respond, and that I will complete whatever tasks need doing. It was already the case that I did two-thirds of the work before COVID, but over the course of the pandemic, that has gotten closer to 90 percent. I’m now working up to 75 hours a week, including late nights and weekends.

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Any attempts at talking with him or my higher-ups about more evenly distributing the work have gone nowhere. And when I tried talking to my HR department, they reiterated the ADA guidelines and reminded me that the company has a zero-tolerance policy for ableism. I don’t know how much longer I can handle this. I have nightmares about work and break down in tears at least once a week. I wish I could just quit my job, but I’m the primary breadwinner for my household, as my husband’s job is currently on furlough. Is there anything I can do?

A: There’s a vast difference between “This company must accommodate X employee’s needs according to the ADA” and “The only way this company can comply with the ADA is if Y employee works two jobs.” It’s the company’s responsibility to reasonably accommodate your colleague, not yours, and that should be your go-to line when speaking again to your own boss and HR. “I’m not able to work 75 hours a week anymore, and I cannot keep managing XY projects at this rate” is what you want to negotiate with them; they want to distract you from advocating for yourself by blaming your colleague, which does you both a disservice. Don’t allow them to cover for their exploitation of you by claiming the ADA requires such exploitation. It doesn’t. You may also want to contact an employment lawyer, if management continues in this line. They should not be doing this to you, and you have rights that are worth protecting.

Comments

[cereta]

Gah, that is a bad title. A very bad title.

I have a little sympathy for LW, as (a) as an educator, I've had to clarify what "reasonable accommodations" are for my classes*, and (b) spouse has been dealing with this with an employee who was specifically hired to take on some of his (substantial) workload, but simply has not been getting it done. So I get that the line between reasonable accommodations and putting the work burden on others can often be blurry.

I think what LW absolutely has to do is separate the issues of "my employer is expecting me to shoulder and unreasonable work load" from "my colleague is not doing X share of that work." Even if there is a causal link, bringing it up at all, much less focusing on it, is just going to get the same response. LW needs to discuss, in as specific a way as possible, what they can and cannot do. Theoretically, anyway, it then becomes boss/HR's problem to figure out how to fill the gap. I say "theoretically," because in the days of at-will employment, there's nothing to prevent them from just saying "too bad; it needs to get done." OTOH, LW should not underestimate the employer's current situation: in the midst of a pandemic, finding and training someone to replace one of their most productive employees isn't going to be easy.

*Which basically come down to, "I will provide and/or help you arrange whatever help you need to complete the work, but the work will be evaluated the same as anyone else's."

[shirou]

I think what LW absolutely has to do is separate the issues of "my employer is expecting me to shoulder and unreasonable work load" from "my colleague is not doing X share of that work."

I agree in principle, but part of the problem is that LW and their colleague do not have a well-defined division of responsibilities. People in the company send tasks to both of them, and LW takes responsibility for the lion's share. This is a problem their manager needs to address by clearly outlining their respective responsibilities, and LW cannot raise it without introducing their colleague into the conversation. LW needs to be able to respond to emails addressed to both by saying, "Thanks for your email; this task is colleague's responsibility, and they will get back to you soonest" and cc their manager.

[lemonsharks]

Yeeeahh, this is the kind of place I’d go to an employment lawyer before going to HR. Someone also needs to remind them that even if they’re salaried, there’s a threshold in most states where they *still get paid overtime*.

[azurelunatic]

Yeah, wow, I have all three of these and that's not a situation that can last for long. Without knowing what the work is, there's no way to figure out how it could be re-juggled, but the ADHD employee might be able to take over some of the less time-sensitive things on the overworked person's plate? Or perhaps it was a three-person job to start with.

[jadelennox]

The answer says the right thing but I think it needs to say it more clearly. (Although I agree LW needs to talk to a lawyer post-haste.)

First, what he says: "It’s the company’s responsibility to reasonably accommodate your colleague, not yours"

Then, the employee's next line: "I agree, we should have a zero tolerance for ableism. I have no problems with whatever accommodations the company and Coworker negotiate; they are none of my business. In fact, involving me in those accommodations as if I were Coworker's aide is a massive invasion of Coworker's privacy. Coworker's job is Coworker's, and how he negotiates his deadlines and workloads is between him and you.

I'm here talking about my workload, which has nothing to do with Coworker."

All of this is something Danny said but IMO the LW really needs to spell out in tiny single-syllable words that the meeting has 0 to do with Coworker.

[melannen]

Oh nooo

Well, we're all agreed that the employer has failed at "providing reasonable accommodation", right? "We'll let someone else do your job" isn't providing reasonable accommodation - and even if that's not what they are intentionally doing, letting it happen is still fail.

And also that LW is pretty ableist, and that if HR's only response was "we don't tolerate ableism", their complaint was probably more *ableist rant about coworker* than "I am working 75-hour weeks, constantly doing work that was not assigned to me, and breaking down", and that move one is to repeat the complaint, but make it about *your* workload, not your coworker's?

Two things though:

1. Congrats, LW! If you are having nightmares and crying about work and not sure how long you can do this, you too probably have anxiety and/or depression! You might not have before this job, but I bet you do now! And you're actually lucky, because you know for sure that your employer makes lots of allowances for someone with that kind of disability! Go to your EAP - if you have one - and tell them about the nightmares and the crying and the long hours wearing you down, and that you think you need at least temporary disability accommodation. If you don't have an EAP, try your GP. The problem here isn't less that your coworker is getting accomodated, more that you aren't.

Getting your own ADA to wave around won't magically solve everything, but hopefully it would help refocus management on the actual problem, and also you should probably talk to someone who can help with the stress and anxiety anyway. :/

2. I do have to wonder - as someone who is probably more like the coworker than the LW - if LW is suffering from what I privately call "Somebody has to do it" disorder. Somebody might have to do it, LW, but it doesn't have to be you, and it's not your job to figure out who does have to do it. Leave it to them.

I am thinking particularly that one common pattern with ADHD brain is needing deadline pressure to get things done. I can see a scenario where coworker *would* be getting the work done - if he had the deadline pressure - but LW doesn't let it get there. Coworker might be thinking "OK, hard deadline is noon tomorrow, I know that I'm ready to do it, and if I get up tomorrow and work straight through, that should be enough time" and meanwhile LW is not ADHD and is thinking "OH NO it's due tomorrow and they haven't started" and coworker gets up in the morning ready to do it, and discovers that LW has stayed up until 1 AM and finished it without consulting with them, or has even actively ignored them saying they're on it and don't need help.

(Have I had coworkers who would do that? Yes. Did it make it extremely hard to get work done? Yes. Not only does it make it impossible to use deadline pressure, or a sense of ownership in the work, or other extrinsic motivations, also the fact that my coworkers might just jump in and do stuff that's on my to-do list and isn't their job also makes time/brain management strategies like "create a routine", "set priorities", "divide things into smaller steps" and "plan tasks in advance" nearly impossible to implement. If I was going to spend 10-11 doing a certain task, and I get there and found you have done it for me, you have now thrown off my ability to get anything done the entire rest of the day.)

Specific example from the letter - a common issue with anxiety is having more trouble with some types of communication than others. An actual *reasonable* accommodation if they have trouble with email is "Please use chat or teleconferencing if you need a prompt reply from me." Coworker may have been trying to tell people this for months. The people in question have realized that it's easier to just email LW than use the accommodation, thus completely circumventing coworker's attempts to do the job in ways that work for them.

This isn't on LW either - your supervisors should have noticed this was a problem and spoken to you about it well before it got to this point, and also it seems like part of what *should* be a reasonable accommodation for something like ADHD is educating supervisors and teammates about how to work well with their workflows. But short of your management suddenly no longer sucking, the solution is pretty much the same - stop doing all of his work for him. If your manager doesn't specifically request that you do this specific task that is meant to be his, just stop thinking about it. The correct response to those emails is a cheerful broken-record reply of "This is one of coworker's, so I'll let him handle it!" and then getting it out of your inbox. IF there's something you can't finish because you have to work with him, tell your supervisor you're waiting on his input and table it. Etc.

[sara]

Having been the woman in the office who gets expected to pick up the slack for male employees who do not do their share, I wonder if that isn't part of the dynamic here as well.

[melannen]

I do suspect there's a gender element. Part of it is that women are more likely to be socialized to pick up the slack (even if not explicitly asked to), partly that men are socialized to be more likely to let them (even if not explicitly asking them to), and partly that a man is way, way more likely to have been used to getting adhd accomodations (many of which probably *were* just 'lowered expectations') since childhood than a woman with adhd. Though iirc we don't have LW's pronouns so I don't want to assume - that dynamic can definitely happen between same-gender teammates too.

[minoanmiss]

You're a lot less sympathetic to LW than I was -- which is a useful reminder to me. I thought I had considered LW's coworker's needs in my reaction, but I may well not have nearly as much as I should have.

That said, though, you also have much more faith in HR than I do.

and that if HR's only response was "we don't tolerate ableism", their complaint was probably more ableist rant about coworker than "I am working 75-hour weeks, constantly doing work that was not assigned to me, and breaking down", and that move one is to repeat the complaint, but make it about your workload, not your coworker's?

Because I can just as readily see HR deciding "LW is doing the undone work, problem fixed" and using whatever they can to keep LW from trying to change the situation. . Especially if LW is female, I wouldn't trust that HR coming through for one worker would mean they would at all come through for another. After all, HR is generally on the side of the company, its owners and higher-ups, and only on the side of the workers when those interests might align.

But THAT said what actually inspired me to write this comment was your description of 'deadline pressure' and how LW may be taking on all this work unnecessarily, jumping the gun again and again, as it were. I wonder if HR, or LW's manager, or anyone involved in the situation can bring that concept up, so that LW and LW's coworker can discuss how Coworker uses it to strategize and how LW can rest assured that Coworker will do X amount of work. I really think it might be a good idea to toss the idea to Prudence to get to this LW, as it might change the entire situation.

Meanwhile I'm going to go learn more about it myself. Thank you for introoducing me to this concept.

[melannen]

Yeah, I mean, a lot of times this is what reddit would call an NAH situation - no assholes here. Management and HR could be trying hard to accommodate for a complex disability they probably don't have any training or support or experience to understand; coworker could be trying his best to work around his disability and make it as easy as possibly to seamlessly accommodate him (given how rarely people take the risk of making management aware of things like ADHD and depression at all, I suspect he is having really serious difficulty and trying very hard to make it work); LW could be drowning under work without any guidance at all on how to deal with any of this.

But if HR did respond to "I am putting in 75 hour workweeks" with nothing but "Don't be ableist" then the actual solution is that LW needs to find a new job. And I think the headline made me a little bit harsher with LW than I really should have been. But I do suspect they toploaded their HR chat with a lot of "Why does lazy coworker not have do do his work just because of his disability?" even if they did follow up with actual descriptions of their workload. (And I doubt they did mention exactly how badly off *they* were stresswise - see above about how risky it is to mention mental health problems at work at all.)

But a situation where Coworker A is doing more than their share of Coworker B's work is really easy to get just with clashing work styles and poor communications on both sides, and a management that doesn't know how to mitigate that. A thinks they are being forced into doing extra work and stops trying to work with B at all; B thinks their attempts to work in a way that works for them are being steamrolled, and stops trying to work at all.