Need Support

[Birdlover226]

I just recently lost my job after getting a raise and a new job position. They told me I wasn’t “catching on”. I don’t know what to do. Maybe office work isn’t my thing? I also have a processing/language learning disability. My son also has severe ADHD and the same processing/ language disability. I am always getting him help, support, but nothing for me. Is there support/help groups for adults? I feel like a failure, but I don’t think that about my son.

[STEM_Dad]

Welcome to the forum and the community here.

That's a rough situation to be in, but you aren't a failure.

Being aware that jobs come and go. Sometimes the reasons why are confusing.

I'm sure that you've heard that one problem that comes up in a lot of personal relationships is "unexpressed (or unrealistic) expectations". Well, I think that the same goes for the employer-employee relationship.

Too often, employers have unrealistic expectations of their employees. A lot of the time, even if they have somewhat reasonable expectations,they don't even clearly relate what their expectations are to their employees.

How is a person supposed to "catch on" when they don't know what they are supposed to be catching-on to?

Since you are aware of your own ADHD and your language learning processing differences, I'm sure that you make extra efforts to accommodate for these differences.

Do not accept responsibility for someone else's failure to communicate.

~~~~~

A similar thing happened to me, getting a raise and a new position where I'd already been working for 9 years at that point. The job seemed to be like what I thought I wanted, but I didn't have the training necessary to do the job well. By the time the training was available (10 months into the job), my employer decided not to renew my contract.

(They didn't hire a replacement...instead, they pushed off the work of someone else. After the organization played games with people's jobs like that, a lot more people left before it could happen to them... Then the VP started lamenting on LinkedIn that "it's so hard to keep good people.")

In every organization that I've been a part of, there seem to be difficulties with communication. In most of them, there also seemed to be unrealistic expectations.

Creating a new position and hiring someone into it doesn't fix a problem, unless the person is given the opportunity to acclimate and make it their own. Average time for this acclimation to occur is about 18 months (this figure is based on an observation that a manager said to me, and confirmed by my own experience).

[Birdlover226 in reply to STEM_Dad]

I totally agree! They hired me to assist the office manager, which was scheduling clients, which I did. Then the owner had me help him with certain jobs that he needed help with and I helped our other techs, within the company, with safety inspections for medical equipment. I was “laid off” because I wasn’t catching on to my job and relied too much on the office manager. Well how am I supposed to “catch on” when I’m out on the road and not in the office?

[Mamamichl]

I’m curious about this too. It’s like society thinks we grow out of it still.