Employer changing the boundaries

Thanks for your reply. Even though the situation is resolved 'for now', I'm going to try to pick up the points you mentioned about expectations, etc, in my next 1-to-1 meeting with my manager.

I would arrange for a meeting to discuss your concerns and added key points regarding reliability, accountability and negotiations. I don't mind renegotiating but it's difficult for anyone to do a good job if the company is going to create a disabling situation and do it on little notice. Are they changing the standard of operation/expectation? 

They can't have it both ways. You may need to bring up analogies such as, "can you do your job in a child care facility? Could you do it in the middle of a building site? On a dance floor? Whatever you could do well in these situations, that's what you can expect from me." Explain that you're happy to show up for camaraderie. But not for a focused day delivering product.

Yes I find this is what happens in my workplace. This is why we sadly need to remind employers that we are covered under the Equality Act, even if we do so in less direct words. It's annoying having to remind people of our needs/weaknesses/deficits (take your pick) to get the right adjustments though. I'd rather an employer looked at it as our strengths - "Michelle will work better on this at home so I'll see if she would prefer to work there for this piece of work" - without the need for a conversation about how difficult we find the office environment.

Thanks for your reply - my work set up sounds quite similar to yours. I have got an HR department, but hopefully I won’t need to go through them now. I gently reminded my boss about our pre-agreed “reasonable adjustments” - I.e. the flexibility to work on high focus jobs from home - and he completely changed his tune, saying, “where possible, please try to come into the office at least one day”.

Probably something similar is going on at my work, but rather than an actual shortage, it’s more about keeping up appearances in the office. Following the recent fuel crisis, a lot of staff have been using it as an excuse not to come into the office.

What kind of organisation do you work for? Does it have a HR department? 

Perhaps you need to consider what you need to be able to do your job well and put forward a case for a plan being set in stone as "reasonable adjustments". I think many people see us as functioning well amongst non-autistic peers and don't see the internal struggle we face to meet expectations. 

When I started my new job in April, I had to change my usual lunch time from 12 because this team plan meetings at that time (why would anyone plan meetings at lunch time?!). I think a normal person would just accept lunch is no longer going to be at 12pm and move it to a different time but my internal emotional response to this change was really quite intense considering it is ONLY lunch time. I can rationalise this, I just can't easily adjust to it regardless! 

Like you I would love a set day of the week in the office. I also only have one day as I'm a 3 day worker, but every week my day in changes. This bothered me less than the lunch hour because my previous pandemic-time job was entirely wfh so I didnt have a set routine anyway, but I still would like the predictability of a certain day being my day in. 

its likely to cover shortage of workers.

my employer rang me up on saturday out of the blue and probably wanted me to go in right there and then, i didnt answer, missed his call lol but i could tell on friday theyd be short on saturday shift anyway as 2 people were off that was doing saturday and were not gonna go in saturday too. employers shuffle people around to cover gaps, take people from days they have enough and put them on days they desperately need more.

When you say ”he knows about my diagnosis” is this in writing anywhere, on your personnel records or in an email? If not you need to get it documented. That’s your protection.