ADHD

it sounds like the manager, regardless of any overt compliance with accommodation & equality regulations, has an underlying mindset that the required tasks should only be done in the way that it was originally designed. in other words, they may be a normativity bully at heart. at least, many that's how many avg IQ neurotypical managers sometimes behave.

i admit, this is only one possibility, and heavily influenced by my traumatic interactions with managers.

anyway I'm sure you're already aware of this type of people. keep doing what you're doing. 👍

In your position, I wouldn't even present the tool to management at all. Just use it to automate my task, and enjoy the extra free time.

*look at them + long pause, then sigh*

I was able to build the tool thanks to my in depth knowledge and understanding of the task and the process.

The manager's position is fallacious: you built the tool, so if you lost access to it because requirements changed or whatever... you could just build another tool

Arguably, your script is a disability aid. You've already demonstrated that if you don't have access to the tool you struggle to follow the process. They've documented this and put you on a PIP, and you're trying to address it with a change in process to suit your disability. You're doing HR's job for them even if they don't see it that way

Extreme parallel: if a person can't get around without a wheelchair, then would the manager be concerned that they wouldn't be able to do their job if they lost access to their chair? And if they are, what are they doing taking away somebody's wheelchair for?

There's a good chance you'll never be able to reason with that kind of person - management seems to select that way. But if you could, I'd point out that it's a process improvement that costs zero dollars, it's more ergonomic, and it mitigates the effect of your disability which your employer is legally mandated to accommodate.

Then again if I was quitting next week, I'd be just as likely to call the manager an idiot and go on with my day. This never helps, but if you don't mind burning bridges it's pretty cathartic

In your case thats annoying because you clearly know what youre doing. But this is a great question I feel like 0 managers are asking now that their teams are brainslugged by chatbots. Once that token cost skyrockets and they lose access youre gonna have some atrophied brains to re train.

Not worth it. If you’re on a PIP, they’re just gathering evidence to let you go. No amount of good on your part will change that. The fact that you’re resigning is a good thing. Just take the experience and move on.

Why don’t you just answer the question. Yes, I would, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to automate it in the first place. It’s just faster and more accurate this way.

Edit: I hope this doesn’t come across as callous, but I don’t think that talking about your brain in this context is productive or even relevant. You were hired to do that job, so you need to do it well enough. If you need accommodation to be able to do it well, then you should request it and they should provide it. But to put the manager’s concerns to rest, you will eventually need to show good performance. At the meeting, if you can, first show evidence that your results improved, the tool you used to get there is secondary (unless it’s only discussed as a future plan).

Commiseration, not advice. This tool strikes me as being more of a universally useful tool than a disability aid. The manager’s failure to recognize that is their own fault. They should have recognized that it could help everyone who does this job instead of focusing on your disability. What they also don’t understand is that building the tool tickled the dopamine so it probably works well.

Commuting 5 hours a day is no way to live; I wish you all the luck in finding employment that works for you. PIP suck the confidence out of a person.

If you've got the skills, might be better of looking for a company that needs people to automate such things. Sounds like it could be a better fitting role for you.

"Well I did build it, so I could easily build it again if I lost it somehow."

Of course, they were probably just going for an easy gotcha question to see if they could build their case to dismiss you. I hate PIPs, I believe well-liked employees tend not to get put on them, and it's just a legalistic process for dumping people without repercussions.

You will still need to mask a lot unfortunately. Please understand that your relationship with your employer is contradictory on a fundamental level. They want to extract the most labor from you for the lowest cost and you want to maximize the price of your time for the company while minimizing the amount of power you have to put into doing a given job. I want to emphasize that I don't mean this in an "as lazily as possible" way, but in an "as efficient as possible" way. Mental energy is a resource and of course you want to manage it responsibly. People generally are willing to spend an extra amount at work every now and again because they want to do a good job, but not constantly.

Now a neurotypical person doesn't need to put in so much effort to do the same job, putting you at a competitive disadvantage. Which is why those protections exist, but at the end of the day the company doesn't care. The individuals at a company might, don't get me wrong, but overall the system is putting pressure on the managers to get the most amount of labor from their underlings for the least amount of resources. Plus your manager has the same contradiction with the company, they want to minimize the effort while maintaining an adequate quality of work. They most likely are also willing to expend more energy than they normally expect to spend at their work, in order to get you what you need, just because they're a nice person and helping others is a nice thing to do, but they also don't want to do this constantly and how much they're willing to spend is at their discretion.

All to say that you probably will have to pick your battles. If you need a specific accommodation that very clearly is necessary for someone with ADHD‌ (so obvious even a neurotypical can see it) or something that is already accepted common practice then they will likely approve it with no problems because they know about those protections. If they hire a paraplegic person they understand they need to make the workplace wheelchair accessible. Like, obviously.

But if you ask for something more unorthodox (and I'd argue your autohotkey script falls under that category) and it's not a big deal the managers might give it just because they want you to have it. I mean they are people to, they want to be nice and helpful (generally speaking) just because it's nice to be nice. But they are neurotypicals. They do not understand that you might need need whatever it is you're asking for but they think of it more as something to aid you because of "your condition". So if you ask for things that they don't think are appropriate or if you keep asking for a lot of accommodations then they might be less inclined to help you and just default to "well they are going to have to spend more of their energy because I don't want to spend more of mine (anymore)".

So what to do when you're denied? You can drop it entirely (giving the impression it actually wasn't necessary after all), drop it and raise it every now and again whenever you feel like you have earned some good-will, look for alternatives or try to bolster your case on why you need it and how it relates to your ADHD in a provable manner. You will want to talk to a lawyer before going that route though, lawyers can give you advice not just on how to fight a lawsuit but on what kind of documentation is generally accepted or how to best present your case to your workplace. You will need to be diplomatic though, you need to convey that you need this, that you believe you are entitled to this but at the same time you probably don't want to openly threaten them with the law and that you will make life difficult for them because you still have to work with them. However you also need to be resolute enough that they don't think you are a pushover. It's really fucking hard, I explored this option once (not relative to my AuDHD but something else worker-rights related) and decided to not pursue it because I was quitting soon anyway and had too much other stuff on my plate.

Tl;dr: Just because the law demanding equality exists doesn't mean you automatically have equality. You still have to balance how much you need something with how accomodating your workplace is and how much you're willing to fight for it (and deal with the side-effects of having fought them).

I presented it to my manager (first time manager, woo.) today during the weekly review, and this was what they said: “My concern is, would you be able to follow the process and do the task if you were to lose access to this tool you have built?”

I think they're literally just concerned for you to be not becoming dependent on a tool. People might reasonably see it as an AI assist tool, which we know is bad for people's focus and problem solving.

They might be thinking "i don't want an employee who can't focus for filling out a form" but this isn't out of dislike of you, it is because of concern, also.

I will be resigning before the final check next week anyway, but just want some advice on how to respond to that question in the future.

If your manager makes a small suggestion like that you need to demonstrate amicability to test their proposal, unless you can give a really good reason for not doing so. So you should have gone "Okay I'll go one day jaybe two days without using the tool, to show you that I can. I just thought it could improve my efficiency." Then if you're confident that you need it, tell them you did their proposal and are going with your own original suggestion instead - the assistive tool.

The important take away is that they're not trying to get at you, it just looks and sounds dodgy to someone who doesn't understand it. Perhaps your manager is less tech literate, thinks of the forms you're going through as delicate paperwork that should be read through before signing off?