Published on 12, July, 2020
I am totally devastated. I had a meeting planned today with my head teacher about how they could make reasonable adjustments for me at work. When I turned up it was the head and the deputy. I felt totally ganged up upon and it was as if they had planned before hand not to offer any help. They basically said that I am one of sixty staff all with their own needs and I am paid to be a teacher so I just need to get on with it.
The head kept grilling me with questions even when I had gone silent and started to cry.
I came out, drove home and had a complete meltdown. I eel awful and as if I am a great big inconvenience to the school.
It was just the worst.
This is thier nasty mind game and social convention... it is called -
I have to say that I have experienced this myself. In one job I had a few years ago, I had some stresses that were caused by certain conditions at the place of work and which could very easily have been remedied. My employers at the time even knew about my diagnosis and accepted me for the role, and I never gave them any reason to doubt that they had made a good choice in selecting me because I was good at the job. The stresses, though, were caused by taking on additional tasks that could easily have been given to someone else. When I brought up my objections I was more or less told that no one else had any problems and that I should just get on with the job and manage as best I could. I ended up becoming sick with depression and taking time off. I even saw an occupational health doctor who said that he thought my employers were not making enough accommodations for me. I wasn't in a union, unfortunately, and it wouldn't have been worth joining one then because they couldn't take any retrospective action in my behalf. I struggled to see any way out of things and by that time I didn't want to go back to the job anyway and found something else while I was off sick. I think they had decided that they wanted someone better qualified for the role I was in so had deliberately made things difficult for me, but I couldn't prove anything.