Document incidences that have a negative affect upon you. The incidents have to be material to your safety, affect your job performance or provide substantial evidence of hostility. Incidents that make you uncomfortable will not live up to a test under law. Present this to your supervisor as a safety issue or a violation of your right to work in a hostile free work space. Second, if you have a “Work Place Violence” policy make sure you understand it and the protections it should offer to employees. You do have rights as well.

Did you have an interactive discussion with them about reasonable accommodation for your condition? It would have been wise on the organization’s part to have asked you about that under ADA-AA.

I want to thank you for sharing such a personal life touching experience with us. It is my hope that those who have become so “HRized” remember that though we do have responsibilities to our companies we more importantly have responsibility to people, humans with all of their imperfections. Some how we constantly make excuse for employees whose behavior is less than stellar even managers that get companies sued on a daily basis. Yet when it comes to human compassion for a person with a treatable condition we move away from them treating them as something to loathe in our actions if not, at times, our words. That is wrong and were it not for such actions by us, the profession that is supposed to have the greater knowledge of what a person’s rights are under the law, we would have no need for the constantly expanding role of the courts to make us do what we should have been doing in the first place.

I have been chastised before as an H/R professional that is not interested in the company way of doing things. I have been chastised for saying that I am an employment law advocate and whichever, the company or the employee, is right is who gets my support. That is the way we all should be. The law is there. We are responsible to see that it is administered without prejudice. That includes those that are less than what some of us that hold ourselves as the standard should be.

I don’t mean to be harsh but I do mean to be honest with my thoughts here. Thank you Linda for giving us something very real to think about.

I too know bi-polar people. They are effective workers, good friends who just happen to have a condition not unlike other medical conditions that other people suffer. Somehow it seems that so much emphasis is placed on the word ‘mental’ or ‘psychological’ that the greater point of ADAAA morphs into something that does not apply.

Allow me to give an example. You have an employee that gets arrested for drunk driving. They were belligerent, combative, and certainly unable to perform their essential job duties. You hear of it and terminate the employee with disgust feeling that the ee has disgraced himself and the company. Maybe the ee was driving a company vehicle. All of the elements could fit a person episodic of an active bi-polar event. Your mind is set. Now later on that day you find out that though all of the elements of the arrest were true EXCEPT the person was NOT drunk. They suffered a diabetic episode which mimics closely a drunken person in many instances. What happens to your thought process? Now it’s “Ohhhh. . . now I understand” why. . because you can feel comfortable with a focus on a physical ailment rather than mental. Diabetes is not curable but can be managed with medication. Other than the example turning the focus onto a physical condition what would the difference be if the condition was bi-polar with the same description? Still a condition that is not curable but can be managed with medication. Both have a limiting factor on major life functions. Sorry, I’m not hearing ADAAA has gone too far, I am hearing lack of knowledge about mental maladies and lack of acceptance of those that have them. One writer referenced diversity in their answer. I think that writer was correct.

I’m not chastising anyone but here is an opportunity for us all to take a second look of how we view things as opposed to how the ADAAA that we are responsible for administering, views the same thing.

I love my job. I care about my coworkers and because of that my production is well above that of other employees. I’m commended constantly about how great of a job I’m doing and how they’d not function properly without me. I’m carrying my entire department…

But every couple of months I stop careing. I soon hate my job, hate these ‘people’ and i hate myself. I dont want to feel this way, but I cant help it. My job preformance just has to suffer until i feel better. Then my boss starts to complain about how she knows my potential holds more but I’m not matching that. It makes everything that much worse.

Things will soon go back to normal, but I cant force it to come any faster… Should i loose my job because of the “down times?” I mean, I surely dont think so…