Good Morning Folks
I am a male in my mid 4s and have a physical ‘disability’. The reason why I put the word disability in inverted commas is because the doctors have said it is not severe enough for me to be registered as disabled.
I am now in my late 40s and for the majority of my life I have coped well with these physical ‘disabilities’ – I can’t work straight (usually in a zig zag), closely resembling perhaps a drunk person trying to walk! On top of that, I have hand coordination problems although I don’t think that has affected my ability to do office work, which I have always done.
However, after being made redundant from my office job (we got taken over and the new owners decided to let go of some of the recent staff), about 6 years ago, I have not had a permanent job. I have done a few temporary contracts which have lasted a few weeks or months, but never offered a permanent job. I have various qualifications (I have a degree, I’m a certified bookkeeper, and I have an AAT qualification in accountancy).
Most of the problems arise from the fact that once I’m in a job and the staff realise that I have these ‘disabilities’, they have found excuses to get rid of me. This has happened to me on numerous occasions, and let’s face it, in the real working world, there is still discrimination against disabled individuals. Of course, it could be that indeed my work performance in each of my roles was not up to standard, and so rightly the employer had to let me go. However, this has happened on so many occasions, I am beginning to have my doubts. I am a hard working individual and put in extra effort in order to keep the employer happy and not give him/her any reason to terminate my contract.
Do you think I am just being paranoid? And if you were in my situation, how would you go about dealing with the problem?
Thanks in advance for your responses.
Hi There,
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I think that there may be some amount of thruth in what you say, I think some employers don't look at discability as they should and could try and find ways to remove from employment anyone who has one. But I don't think that as a rule there is as much of an issue with this as maybe there once was. I do think that an employee has an obligation to disclose any discibility when applying for a role, I know that most application forms for jobs will ask if you have any that could effect your work. For me I think even if you don't feel it would effect your work you should mention it so that the employer knows before hand. It shouldn't be needed, but maybe some employers feel that as they weren't aware before hand they feel it was hidden.
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I think tha as you have mentioned before about being self employed then maybe an option for you would be to look at selfemployment as a book keeper/accountant for some small businesses, you could build up your own client base, I know many people can run a business and carry out the work involved but get lost when it comes to the paper work involved with book keeping ect.
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GTTS
Thanks GTTS