New to Board Inattentive Type

[SullysMom]

Good Morning, I am new and am looking forward to reading posts and interaction from other people w/ADHD. For years I was a stay at home mom and am (in the last three years) am getting into the working world and am having a few struggles with it. I love working and making a little money and having interaction. At first I did retail and I didn't really have any complaints from my employer. I worked at a lovely store in our local mall. BUT I wanted more 8am-5pm hours because I still have one child that needs me during evenings/weekends. The job that I then was offered was in an insurance company. I absolutely loved it. I was always on time. I'm easy to get along with, etc. I started getting complaints basically that the quality of my work was not as high as they wanted but they did not say they were going to fire me, they just kept mentioning it. I was making more mistakes than they felt I should. This made me nervous and I looked into another job and was offered it. The new job was a medical receptionist job. Long story short I felt that I was doing really well-cheerful on the phone. I type crazy fast and doing what I felt like was expected of me. Out of nowhere a couple of days ago the doctor (who I sort of knew he is a family friend) called me into his office and basically fired me. He felt that I did not fit the position and that he needed to add more to my position and didn't feel I could handle it. I was shocked because I hadn't been warned and I felt like I could handle more work. The phone literally rang off the hook at his office and I answered all day completing every request getting messages to the nurses, etc. I don't feel that I made that many mistakes. But it is true that I am ADHD inattentive type. Naturally, I am spacey, forgetful and absent minded but as I've gotten older I've gotten better. I take a mild ADHD medication but my employer didn't know I was ADHD. SO, I'm just looking for tips on getting jobs, holding jobs, and ideas for jobs that I would be good at. I tend to gravitate towards office work but I'm getting complaints about the quality of my work I guess? I am taking a realtor licensing class in the next couple of weeks but then I worry about that-What if I am not detailed enough and am prone to make mistakes on the paper work while signing with a customer. So I could cancel that class? Anyway, I'd love to hear any feedback or thoughts you have on jobs and if this has happened to other ADHD people. Looking forward to reading posts.

[STEM_Dad]

Welcome to the forum!

Well, it sounds like you've got some of the best qualities for an office job: being friendly, typing fast, answering the phone, communicating with colleagues...

Are you genuinely interested in real estate? Is it an industry that you are curious about and can envision yourself doing for at least the next few years? It can be challenging, and a feast-or-famine type of work (meaning that there might be a lot of work at some times, while other times might be very hard to get clients.) I haven't worked in real estate, but for a while was friends with a real estate agent.

* Keep in mind that in that line of work, you will likely have to work evenings and weekends for showing properties. Hopefully you would reach a level of success that enables you to set your own schedule.

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I've done some office work, and I've interacted with lots of colleagues who were in office work positions.

One of my IT positions was at a hospital, which included a community clinic. I remember how busy the receptionists always were. Turnover was very high. The standards were difficult for the average worker; the ones who started on staff for more than a few months were the cream of the crop, but they also had developed a strong interdependent dynamic. But, they also complained about the constantly fast pace.

* It's a growing trend for doctors to want their office staff to wear many hats, instead of hiring people to fill different roles. It seems to be the state of the medical industry, in general.

I'm grateful that a few of my jobs have had good on-the-job training. Two were retail, and the third was my first job in Information Technology. Many jobs these days seem to expect new hires to already know everything that's required for the job...but that's really impossible, because so much of the work in each organization depends on insider knowledge of the organization. (I've been in my current position for three months, and this last week I still learned a few new things about the organization.)

Helpful things I've learned in the working world:

*Build good working relationships with your colleagues, so that you will be seen as part of their community.

* Keep notes of the processes and expectations.

* If possible, don't "reinvent the wheel". Use existing examples of the paperwork and documentation as a guide for your own.

(In the Computer Programming field, budding programmers are advised to "reuse code", by building new code from existing well-written code. I'm not a good coder, but I adopted the same mindset for my documentation for Help Desk tickets.)

* Take mistakes as lessons for continuous improvement. Take ownership of your work, good and bad. (A supervisor would rather have an employee they can trust who progressively get better, than one who is constantly apologizing, or one who never admits to their mistakes.)

[NYCmom2]

I’m sorry to hear about your struggle. Could an office that’s not as fast pace be a better fit? Could you meet with an ADHD coach to learn tools and strategies for supporting your executive functioning? Is part time an option?