Disability Narratives
Support from managers and department
Interview excerpt: Even though her manager had agreed to amend Charlotte’s role to desk-based work, her manager made her feel obliged to undertake other roles, resulting in Charlotte having to go on sick leave to recover.
© Disability Narratives
So I'd agreed with my director that I would do deskbound things. And literally within five minutes of coming out of that meeting with her, she essentially landed me with a group that was arriving from [abroad] and I had to go and meet them. I wasn't even dressed appropriately, you know, I'd [sigh]. It was very uncomfortable. I again felt I couldn't say no. And that day I felt so ill. And she just seemed completely [unaware]. And I said that to her when she came back after the event – luckily I didn't have to stay too long. And she sort of said "Oh, you know, you should have stayed Charlotte, you would have really enjoyed it." And I was like, "You know, I was trying not to throw up" [laughing]. And she sort of looked quite shocked. And I thought “how can you not understand this, we've just talked about this five minutes before you made me do this”. [At that point] I knew that I couldn't rely on my line manager to understand properly what I was going through or to really support and hear what I was saying, “I can't do certain things, can we cooperate on trying to find a workload that works for both sides?"