Disciplinary while Pregnant / ADHD. What next?
(Cross-posted from legal advice UK)
I'll Try to keep this brief. I (30F) started a job on 1st June for a small company owned by a husband and wife duo. The wife is my line manager.
I found out that I was pregnant over the weekend of 13th June. It was very dramatic, there was a risk of an ectopic pregnancy and I was whisked in for a scan. We saw baby's heartbeat and while it was a shock, my partner and I were very happy. I was given a maternity appointment for the following Tuesday (16th June) so decided to disclose the pregnancy to my manager, J (40s, F).
J had a very bizarre reaction. She didn't seem to care that I ultimately said I was happy and was very offended that none of the nurses asked me if I wanted to be pregnant. She pulled a disgusted face, touched her hand to her chest and said "that's my worse nightmare" in relation to BC failing.
The week before she also proudly admitted to ousting another shareholder that she didn't get along with - J was only supposed to be employed for a year, and said she would resign due to their differences, but knew that her husband, M, another shareholder would also leave. The other lady eventually left and sold her shares. J said this in front of other colleagues and it made me feel very uneasy. I told my partner that I thought she would invent a performance issue soon in order to give me the boot.
At the end of June, I was invited to a "check-in" with about half an hours notice. I was blindsided by questions about why there was a backlog of emails (we have a large client that has their own dedicated inbox, and the oldest emails were queries that I hadn't been trained on) and a few other queries that I explained away. I genuinely felt like J had been searching for an issue and was trying to have a "gotcha" moment. She said that because I was behind in my work, she couldn't handover other things and "this can't continue". I explained I was no longer behind in my work and was ready for new tasks. She sent a summary of the conversation to me that felt a bit one sided - she had noted her questions in detail and then marked my responses with one or two words, but there wasn't really any follow up.
At the start of August, J and M went on annual leave for two weeks. One of my colleagues, K, usually works remotely but came in much more often to unlock the office. J and M were gone from 03.08 to 14.08.
Monday (16.08) I had annual leave booked, so yesterday I came into work and saw J for the first time since the end of July. She handed me an envelope (around 8am) and said it was an invite for a catchup at 8:30am. I was checking up on my emails so initially only skim-read the letter. It was an invite for a review based on the fact that my probation is due to end soon. There was a line about how we were going to address some "concerns raised in early august" and bullet points of issues.
I went into the meeting and it was a shitshow. The previous Thursday (13.08) I'd had a maternity appointment in the morning and decided to worked from home in the afternoon as it was 35 degrees out and my basement flat is cold. K also was blaring a radio, whistling along, turned all the overhead fluorescent lights on and would have really strong smelling lunches, so I also wanted to work from home where I could control my surroundings.
J folded her arms and announced that I hadn't done any work on Thursday or Friday - she had logged onto our accounting system and I had only posted items sporadically throughout the day. She had also logged into my emails and seen that I "hadn't sent many". I panicked and it took me a while to be able to even speak. she demanded to know what I'd done all day. I said that as far as I was aware, I was really busy and productive. On Thursday I had connectivity issues but stayed on top of the client inbox. Friday I'd mainly focused on filing paperwork - matching invoices to delivery notes and filing old payment runs - stuff that was time consuming but a genuine reason to not have much of a digital footprint.
I said that it's possible that my perception was warped because my ADHD had been acting up last week, I was jumping from one task to another and had problems focusing because of the noise and lights in the office.
She then pointed out that I used headphones despite asking me to only use one. I reiterated that I have an auditory processing disorder, and that it was an aid for focusing because my brain cannot "tune out" noises, I hear them all at the same volume and get overwhelmed.
J then said that K, (was not in the office Friday) had reported that I ignored her whatsapp texts and calls. I explained that I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and when she phoned the office - 10 minutes before closing on Friday - and asked me to action her emails before I left, that I got 1 done, took my laptop home and logged off after completing 3/6 of the tasks.
She asked why I hadn't actioned the emails sooner as they came in on Wednesday / Thursday and I said that none of them were straightforward and even though I knew there were lots, I got overwhelmed looking at them and chose simpler tasks instead. She pulled a face, started writing and said "so there were so many emails that you decided to do none of them?" I said that yes, that was a recognised part of ADHD, Task avoidance and Executive Dysfunction. Normally I have a handle on it but with the change to routine and with the pregnancy hormones it was worse the last fortnight. J sighed, said okay, and ended the meeting.
It was only when I got upstairs that I saw the second page of the letter, that I may receive a formal warning, have my probation extended, or even be terminated as an outcome for this meeting. The outcome was never discussed. J went home for a personal errand Tues Morning and then worked from home the rest of the day.
She has also been downstairs for the majority of today (Wed) and has now gone on lunch, so I have not had the opportunity to talk to her.
I’m really worried now that my job is on the line, and as always have thought of some more contextual relevance after the fact - can she discipline me for headphones; would they not fall under a reasonable adjustment? Any advice would be helpful!