Unofficially fired, discrimination

[LoveTea]

I havn’t been on here in a while, but I basically got unofficially fired today. I work through my school, and my bosses reactions to my symptoms have varied wildly from day to day. They havn’t been responsive when I’ve tried to make an action plan as to how to deal with me and now I’m paying the price. Last week they SUPER overreacted to a minor symptom, without giving me a moment to deal with it (a friend of mine was there and agrees) and called campus safety. I tired to communicate with them and they wouldn’t listen.

Because of that, I had to go meet with my dean today, who bascially made it clear that I was not welcome back to my job. She said she would try to set up a meeting with them, but they may full well say no and that’s basically it. They get full control over the situation that I never had a say about in the first place. My whole life is my job. I don’t have any friends outside of my job, and the building is right next door to my dorm. I can see everything from my window.

I don’t have any faith that they will agree to talk. Even if they do, I don’t know if I can listen to them. I don’t know how to move on since my whole life will be rubbing salt in the wound. I really thought this time would be different. They were my friends. I trusted them.

 

[Friday]

and my bosses reactions to my symptoms have varied wildly from day to day. /// Last week they SUPER overreacted to a minor symptom, without giving me a moment to deal with it (a friend of mine was there and agrees) and called campus safety.

So it’s probably less the straw that broke the camels back, and more the long history of your symptoms interfering with your work?

They havn’t been responsive when I’ve tried to make an action plan as to how to deal with me

I may be misunderstanding what you’re saying here, so correct me if I’m wrong:

So that’s not usually how ADA accommodations work. Accommodations are usually set up in such a way that they don’t have to deal with you / it’s business as usual. To use a physical one, for example, moving someone to the front row to see the board = an accommodation. Ditto taking pictures of the board, or having a note taker attend class with you. Asking for them to write bigger so that you can see from the back row? Or to transcribe what they wrote down? (You don’t have to change, but they do) Dealing. Reasonable accommodations typically allow schools/businesses to operate exactly as they are, whilst you do something just a bit different.

If someone has epilepsy? The appropriate thing to do if they’re having a seizure is to call EMS.

If someone is having a panic attack, etc.? The appropriate thing to do is call security/EMS.

It’s not appropriate to train them in how to manage your seizures, or your PTSD symptoms. That’s for you & professionals.

So what it sounds like is that you’ve mixed up accommodations (what they need to do) with symptom management (what you need to do).

Am I reading this right?

 

[EveHarrington]

Hi, this is a bit vague to me. Can you explain a bit more about what happened? Thanks!

 

[LoveTea]

Yes and no on the straw that broke the camels back. I wasn’t technically working at the time, I was putting a few things away in the next room. I was not in their way and it wasn’t a panic attack or even close.

I don’t think I quite explained the situation properly. In the past, they have interviened with my symptoms. That obviously became a problem. So I’ve been trying to deal with them on my own. But, half the time they intervene and help and the other half they don’t and that is worse than doing nothing. What I mean as far as a plan is at what point the call is necessary. We made a deal in October that they could send me home if my symptoms got in the way and I couldn’t manage them on my own in 5 or so minutes. I wasn’t given that 5 minutes, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think at some point everyone needs a few minutes just to get it together.

I think I forgot to explain the discrimination bit. They have been cutting me out of my job to the point that I’ve only made $200 in the past 2 months. I have been getting better. My symptoms flare up less and they are much milder. They havn’t talked to me about the things for my job, and the students are the people keeping me informed as to what is going on, when it is their job to keep me informed.

@EveHarrington at the time or just in general? At the time, I started to hyperventilate a bit. It wasn’t a panic attack or anything. When I tried to take off my backpack and get my meds, the immediately said they were calling campus safety. At that point I became a bit hysterical and I understand that was an overreaction. But, I wasn’t given a warning or the 5 minutes to calm down on my own, so what would have probably would have been short lived became a 2 hr long ordeal because I went home and they sent campus safety after me.

 

[EveHarrington]

Can you explain what minor symptom you had and exactly how they overreacted?

I’m just curious because what may seem minor to us, those who have been dealing with ptsd for awhile, may seem bad to those around us.



Oops we cross posted. You just answered this.

 

[LoveTea]

The reason I see it as minor is because it was, and I know that I can’t expect everyone to necessarily know that. But they’ve also seen me much worse (and still didn’t call). I wasn’t inturrupting their work.

 

[EveHarrington]

It sounds like you’re dealing with people who don’t understand mental health issues. (Which to be fair, most of the world doesn’t understand.)

I’m confused about you needing a warning. Are you able to tell when these episodes are coming and tell people you need a break? I know my tell tale warning signs that mean I need an instant time out, so when these things start happening, I take a break so I can use my coping skills to calm down.

Or do things happen so fast that you don’t really get a warning?

 

[LoveTea]

@EveHarrington that’s the thing that doesn’t make sense to me. They do understand my mental health issues. In the past, one of them in particular was helping me deal with it on a regular basis (don’t get me wrong, I totally understand now why that was unhealthy). But that was a year ago, it has been quite a while since they’ve done anything more than hand me an ice pack so I can ground (and I said they didn’t have to be involved at all, but they needed to communicate that with me). Either way, they are the ones that made the plan to send me home if it was in the way/overwhelming/etc. and they didn’t follow through on that.

What I mean about the warning is that I needed warning from them about the call. From what I can figure out, it was 2 minutes from the start to when my boss said he would call. There seemed to be no warning from them that that was going to happen until it was too late for me to stop them. It felt like they were determined to do it regardless of how I was acting.

 

[EveHarrington]

We’re you unable to calm yourself when campus security was there?

I think they may use your heightened state as proof that calling security was necessary.

 

[LoveTea]

@EveHarrington I was able to calm myself when campus safety was there. My hall advisor confirmed that (and she doesn’t know me at all). She said I handled them pretty well considering they were unresponsive to what I had to say. She said that even when they riled me up, I was able to calm down on my own pretty quickly. It took so long for them to leave me alone and I don’t understand why. Even my dean, who is incompotent and hardly ever believes me said that I seemed to be handling it ok. But my bosses weren’t there to see that.

At the very least, I need them to talk to me to get some closure. Every relationship in my life has ended with someone suddenly disappearing without any warning. But unlike before, I have to live in it every day. I have to walk by the building to get basically anywhere and at somepoint, I am likely go run into one of them. I don’t have many friends, and all of them are connected to my bosses.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

I basically got unofficially fired today. I work through my school, and my bosses reactions to my symptoms have varied wildly from day to day. They havn’t been responsive when I’ve tried to make an action plan as to how to deal with me and now I’m paying the price. Last week they SUPER overreacted to a minor symptom, without giving me a moment to deal with it (a friend of mine was there and agrees) and called campus safety. I tired to communicate with them and they wouldn’t listen.

This does not sound like discrimination. You must be able to do your job without the apperance of symptoms or at least without those symptoms effecting your job preformance.. It's not anyone's job to deal with your symptoms but your own. Discrimination is firing you because you have PTSD but not showing any symptoms at work and doing your job correctly. Just the fact that you have a disability without any other cause is disctimination. This isn't from the discription.

 

[LoveTea]

@lostforgottensoul Don’t get me wrong, at one point they did affect my job performance and their ability to do their jobs. Back then, they would have been totally in the right for firing me. But, my symptoms have been getting a lot better. I have been trying to deal with them on my own and I have tried to make it clear that is what needs to happen. They have become way less severe and way less frequent before. I have always gotten my job done and I have never put myself or anyone in danger (it is a very physical job). I walk away when I need to and we made a deal that I am fully ok if they tell me I need to leave. In the past year, that has only happened once and I did what they said (and that was like 5 months ago).

However, now that I have been getting better, they have been increasingly cutting me out of my job. They don’t treat me with the same respect as everyone else around me. They don’t talk to me about the things I need to know to do my job, when that is their job to tell me that. Other peers have been the only ones keeping me in the loop. Beyond all that, most of the time they don’t even acknowledge when I walk in. I barely get a hello and then I stand there and watch them engaging with the other people on the shift. I kept trying to meet with them about these issue, but they havn’t responded to emails or when I asked in person, so I gave up.

I am not saying it is clear cut discrimination, I wouldn’t go after them in court or anything like that. And at one point, they were way too involved in my care and I became too dependent on that. That isn’t their fault, and that wasn’t healthy, I know they were trying. I am working on it though. I don’t feel like they are treating me equally as everyone else. The better I am getting, the less I get to do. A few times, they even put me in a back room or in a corner by myself or hours on end, when everyone else was in another room and there was no reason for me to be separated from them. At the very least, they needed to say something to me or email me saying they weren’t comfortable with me doing something. But they kept saying that I was good at my job and I was strong and they would give me the space to do what I needed to do. Then all of a sudden, I feel like I’ve been thrown off a cliff without warning.