We want to thank all of you who took the time to participate in our 2023 ADHD Job Survey. The 63 responses provided a wealth of insight into your experiences in the workplace. Overall, the results show that while work can pose many challenges for adults with ADHD, many of you have found fulfilling jobs and developed solutions that allow you to thrive no matter what you’re dealing with on the job itself.
Work can clearly be challenging for folks with ADHD, and yet many of you have found jobs you enjoy and developed strategies to cope. Your experiences demonstrate the diverse talents, interests, and perseverance of that makes this community shine. Thank you for sharing your stories—they inspire and help others navigate similar paths. Keep talking about your lives; we’re listening!
Episode Transcript
Brought to you by The ADHD Podcast Community on Patreon
Pete Wright:
Hello everybody, and welcome to Taking Control, the ADHD podcast on Truth Story FM. I’m Pete Wright, and right there is Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Oh, hi. So it’s just you and me today.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
And a report.
Nikki Kinzer:
Lots of statistics.
Pete Wright:
Oh my gosh, so much. So much data. So much data to talk about.
Nikki Kinzer:
Data.
Pete Wright:
This is the result of, and we just have to say quite kindly thank you to everyone in our member community who agreed to fill out this job survey that we started when we started our job series [inaudible 00:00:44] many weeks ago, because we have the results. The survey’s closed, we’ve looked at all the results, and we’re really excited to talk about some of the interesting things that came out of your submissions and see how this aligns to you, fair listener, with your experience at work, and can we suss out any trends that that might help us to think broadly about ADHD at work.
Before we dig in, please head over to takecontroladhd.com to get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list, and we’ll send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest at Take Control ADHD. And don’t forget the community, you all. We live on Discord, takecontroladhd.com/discord will take you to the invitation and login page for our general community. And if this show has ever touched you or changed your life with ADHD for the better, we hope you’ll consider supporting the show directly through Patreon. Patreon is listener supported podcasting. With a few dollars a month, you can help guarantee that we continue to grow the show and add new features and invest more heavily in our community.
One of the ways we do that is with the Placeholder Podcast that we do just for our members. And the next episode that we are recording is with you, Nikki. Oh my goodness.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh my gosh.
Pete Wright:
I know, you’ve never really been on Placeholder.
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
And so it will be both your first time on the show and our very first unboxing. We’re going to first dust off and then unbox your years old Apple Pencil and talk through some ways you might be able to use it and get a little bit more out of your device. Are you excited?
Nikki Kinzer:
Does the Apple Pencil … I am. Does the Apple Pencil, is it like the iPhone where I’m like at the very, my edition that I have is so old that it’s not going to work anymore?
Pete Wright:
It is, I believe you have the same edition of the Apple Pencil, but we should probably check that. I don’t think I ever asked. It hasn’t been updated in a while. There are two versions of the Apple Pencil and I think the one you have is the one we need to talk about.
Nikki Kinzer:
I sure hope so.
Pete Wright:
Me too. Okay, taking that offline for later. Anyhow, patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to get access to that, live streams. If you’re a member, you can come and listen to the show as it is produced live and of course get access to all of the super, super secret community channels in our Discord server, patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. Thank you so much. We have no news, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
No news. Pretty quiet right now.
Pete Wright:
All right. It’s time for stats.
All right, everybody, we did this job series and we asked you to fill out a survey to find more about your work habits, and the results are in. So we’re going to explore your answers to our questions. Before we dive in, we want to say a big thank you to everyone who participated in the ADHD jobs survey. We had an overwhelming number of responses for us, and we so appreciate those who offered their time and attention to complete the survey itself. But we know it wasn’t a non-ask. It’s not easy to sit down and think and reflect the way you did.
In total, we had 63 people who completed the survey anonymously. None of the questions required an answer, so some questions received less data overall, as you fair respondents skipped, usually when the question being asked did not pertain to the person taking the survey. We get it. The survey was made up of a total of 20 questions. Seven of those questions were multiple choice and the remainder of the questions asked for explanation. So we’re not going to read everything on the show today because-
Nikki Kinzer:
That would be a long show.
Pete Wright:
We’re humans, and that’s ridiculous and this will take forever. So we’re going to highlight the responses that we received, and I’m really excited, Nikki, now that you’ve had a chance to digest this, as a coach, I want to hear what you find most interesting, the patterns that you see that are consistent across the responses. So here we are. Where would you like to start?
Nikki Kinzer:
Let’s go for it. Well, let’s start with the first one.
Pete Wright:
Current employment.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Are you currently employed?
Pete Wright:
Okay. Out of 63 responses, 60% said you were currently employed by a company. 14.3% are self-employed, 9.5% are unemployed. And we also had those who are retired, full-time students, stay-at-home caregivers, living with a disability, or some combination of those answers. What do you see in this response?
Nikki Kinzer:
I’m a little surprised that the 14% are self-employed. I thought it would’ve been higher.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, that’s definitely one for me. I think there are two actually, for me. That one is one. The other one is of our respondents, the number of people who are unemployed, because it is certainly higher than the national unemployment rate.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s a good point. Right.
Pete Wright:
Right now, the national unemployment rate is 3.7%, as of May 2023. So there are jobs out there, in spite of all of the hue and cry about the tech sector fleecing jobs. There are jobs out there apparently. And so I guess it’s not a surprise in so far as understanding the way we work to find work that fits the ADHD brain is a huge challenge, and we’ve heard so many stories over this series of people who really struggle with those red flags and the way they integrate.
And to the conversation we had with [inaudible 00:06:41] last week, this whole idea of being out of sync, our brains being out of sync with the artificial structures of work and meetings, and those struggles are real. And I think that’s manifest here in this high unemployment rate of our survey. Of course, it’s a small sample size.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is.
Pete Wright:
Measuring in our community, but it’s interesting to me.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is interesting, and I’m glad you bring that point because I think it’s pretty common. If we were to look at a broader scale or statistic, it probably stands true that more ADHDers are going to be unemployed. And I think that part of that, too, from a coaching standpoint is all of the steps and all of the details and actions that it takes to get a job is really hard and overwhelming, especially if you’re coming from a place of panic. You weren’t expecting to be let go or you weren’t expecting to be laid off. There’s always that underlying, even if you have a savings or some severance, there’s that underlying panic. And when ADHDers feel overwhelmed, they shut down. And so it may take longer to find a job as well. So it fits. I mean, it makes sense.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, to me too. The next question, though, for those who are currently unemployed, what is your current job? And we got a bunch of job titles-
Nikki Kinzer:
For those currently employed.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, for those currently employed. Right. And those job titles generally fall into four broad categories. I think these are interesting. Upper management, a leader of people, healthcare workers and medical professionals, therapists and social workers, retail and customer service. I don’t know if we calculated the percentage of those, percentage of responses in those fields. Maybe it’s too small to count. But I do think that is interesting and actually does reflect what would be in my head as the characteristics of work for people who live with ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, absolutely. And I don’t know what the order is as far as what the majority is. I know that in our community we have a lot of healthcare workers, a lot of medical professionals, and so that doesn’t surprise me at all, that that came up.
Pete Wright:
It absolutely fits. Particularly just this idea that people who are in our community tend to be I think more introspective about the way they integrate with the world in general, and they’re curious about it and they want to hear others’ experiences, and they like helping others with their experiences. It just feels like it fits to me, especially that healthcare and social work and therapy and customer service. These are the helping, service helping jobs.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
How long have you been at your most recent job? Out of 59 respondents, the answers are fairly evenly split across the board here. 22%, more than 10 years, 20.3%, one to two years, 18.6%, three to five years, 16.9%, five to 10 years. Interesting thing to me is that when you look at the national average, I believe the national average has fallen to four years at a job. So that 20 plus 18, 38, so 39%, nearly 40% of respondents are in that one to five year range, which is high.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is.
Pete Wright:
The [inaudible 00:10:21] seem to be the folks who are in that over 10 year job. You’re very I think lucky to be in that job, unless you’re Malcolm Gladwell, who now is saying that we do our brains good by jumping around a little bit in our careers, changing careers throughout our lives. That notwithstanding, there’s new research apparently talking about that, but it just, boy, it’s curious to me to see how our community reflects that national average as generational differences start to apply to career longevity.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. Yeah, the 22%, more than 10 years, that was a little surprising. That was pretty high. That’s high. I think it’s high for anyone, but I think it’s really high for ADHDers because it’s so easy to get bored or to want to do something different, that you’re driven to move. But I don’t think it has the same, like as you’re saying, there’s not the same stigma as it used to be years, years ago, where you had to be at a company for your whole life and retire from there. That’s not really-
Pete Wright:
Shopping for a pension kind of thing anymore.
Okay. What made you apply for your current job? Now this gets to some of our conversations earlier in this series, talking about red flags and things like that. So our general categories, many folks were looking for something new after losing a previous position, going back into the workforce after a period of time off, or for big changes like moving, changing states, that kind of a thing. We had folks mention data storytelling in the job description, and they had a cool and friendly vibe that seemed authentic instead of forced.
Nikki Kinzer:
I like that. So there’s something, that description, so it sounds like this person wasn’t necessarily looking for any job, but they found this and thought, oh, this looks interesting, which is cool. I mean, that is a nice way of describing something.
Pete Wright:
For sure. And it gets to this next one. This person said, “I created a nonprofit to operate as I wanted, instead of always trying to change things from within. I also have a consulting firm which I created to work on projects that interest me with people that interest me.” That is absolutely what I would’ve expected every single response to be in the ADHD community, like aspirationally.
And I feel like that mirrors what you and I have done. Just this idea of, yeah, and it strikes me as we’re talking about this, that I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years too. I fit in that, and I enjoy the work so much that I never really consider how many years are passing.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Yes, I know. Me, too.
Pete Wright:
They do keep passing.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hell, they do.
Pete Wright:
Do you like your current job? We’re asking folks how satisfied they are. Very few people answered just yes or no. Most people had certain aspects of their job they liked and some that they don’t, except for this person. Quote, “Love my job for the first time in my 35 year professional life.” 35 years it took of runway to find a job that works. Well done.
Those who didn’t like their job were asked if they had plans to leave. We had 44 responses. 80% said they had no current plans to leave the job they don’t like. I wonder what that’s about. What do you think?
Nikki Kinzer:
That was the first comment or bullet point here that really caught my attention. I thought that was really interesting. 80% said they had no current plans to leave the job they don’t like. I don’t know what to think about that. There’s a part of me that’s just really sad about that because we spend so much time at work, it’s important that we enjoy it. It’s important.
I mean, I understand the very first comment that you said. Every job has good and bad things, and that’s just part of anything. But yeah, it did surprise me that it was so low and I don’t know, I can make assumptions of you’re comfortable, so the thought of moving is a little scary.
Pete Wright:
I actually, I would say probably not comfortable and the thought of moving is scary.
Nikki Kinzer:
Is scary, yeah.
Pete Wright:
The whole, this idea of confronting the fear of change, that you know what, I have a job right now, and I might hate the job, I might really despise the job, but the idea of trying to find a job that I feel like I can get in an uncertain job market is too paralyzing for me to make a leap. I relate to that so deeply, so deeply from past jobs.
Nikki Kinzer:
Which makes me wish that there were more coaches like Shell, that we interviewed a couple weeks ago, where she works with career choice and what-
Pete Wright:
Specifically with ADHD people, is Shell-
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Because it also tells me that there’s support that is needed. And that’s why I bring that up, is that it’s really difficult to do it on your own. So what kind of support or resources do you have to help you? Because it makes me sad. We don’t want to stay in a job that we don’t like. So how do we that? And that’s the question, right? That’s probably the stumbling block.
Pete Wright:
Say again what your mom said to you about jobs.
Nikki Kinzer:
My mom.
Pete Wright:
Love your mom.
Nikki Kinzer:
Bless her heart. Yes. When I had graduated from college and I was choosing between two different jobs, and basically she said, “Your job is just a job. If you don’t like it, you can always get a new one.” And that’s kind of what she was trying to say, is that it really doesn’t, I mean, choose one, but if you don’t like it, you can leave.
Pete Wright:
You can leave. And there’s a lot of fear in leaving, and there’s a lot of work to be done to get a new job generally. Getting a new job is a job, and you have to treat it like that every day, constantly, to figure that out. But there is some truth to that. And I don’t say that with any subtextual smugness. It’s just a real thing. And I just want to shout from the rooftops. There’s always some sort of opportunity, there’s some sort of opportunity out there. I believe it, and I have to believe it.
Nikki Kinzer:
You have to because if you don’t, then the choice goes away. And when we don’t have a choice, then we really are stuck and we don’t want our choices. I absolutely get what you’re saying here. You have to believe that.
Pete Wright:
Spotify laid off 200 people in their podcasting infrastructure, just as we’re recording this. The news is just breaking. And they’ve integrated a couple of businesses that they acquired, Gimlet and Parcast, they’re all being merged into Spotify Studios. And it’s really generally bad for the good and talented people who were acquired into Spotify and are now laid off.
But I started reading some of the comments of people who have been laid off, and they all go something like this. We love our work and we love doing what we’re doing, and this place is on fire. And I was just holding my breath until I was laid off and could get some sort of severance out of it. I am trapped here. I don’t feel like I have any choices. And I know the end is coming, so I’m going to just ride it out.
There is so much. On one hand, I absolutely understand the idea that you need to accept this fate. You read the tea leaves, you know about the big company that you’re working for. You can keep up with the news if you choose to. And I feel like maybe it’s easier if you have a high degree of confidence, that ultimate end is coming, to just numb your brain a little bit and do the job until it’s over.
But I don’t want to let that vibe go without saying that is emotional entrapment. This is why wild land firefighters, I think they can only work 14 straight days without a break because it’s incredibly traumatic to actually do that work, that hazardous work. You have to give yourself a break. And so not that I want to compare wild land firefighting to podcasting, there is no comparison to those things, and I regret any implication that there is, but I think it’s important to just note, to be able to think about the damage you might be doing to your body and to yourself by sitting in someplace that is in a state of trauma.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. Well, and I just think of the people that I’ve talked to over the course of many years with coaching about their mental health and being burnt out, and this pressure of having to work after hours and on the weekend and catching up. And it’s like at some point, as one of our favorite guests, Casey Dixon, says, something has to change. Something has to change. And at some point you have to decide, is it worth it to stay or is it better to walk away? Which is not easy, because like we’ve said, there’s a lot of pieces to that.
Pete Wright:
Right. Transitioning now to past jobs, we asked this question, number of jobs you’ve had in the last 10 years. We had 63 responses out of all of our respondents. We had 20.6% of the people who said they had two jobs. And then a three-way tie at just about 16%, one, three, and four in the last 10 years. One job, three jobs. We know who the one job people are, 22% of them, three jobs, and four jobs. Everybody else responded between five and 10 jobs in the last 10 years. Five and 10 jobs.
And I wonder, I’m actually curious about this, the impact on jumping around jobs, knowing that the general tenure of how long we’re at jobs is shrinking. Is there a negative impact on the bottom end, like finding that you’re jumping too quickly? Because there is another side to this, to sitting in trauma. And the other side is like, am I doing everything I need to do to adapt to a workplace that I might have too high expectations for? And if I were able to adapt myself a little bit, I might actually find some joy here.
And I look at, okay, I look at some of my kids’ friends who are like, they’re just starting out and their expectations of jobs are so high. They’re so high. My first job was terrible. I had a terrible job. But it was fantastic. I have some incredible memories about some of my earliest jobs, and yet they were also terrible, objectively bad. I don’t know, I think maybe I’m just old, but I feel like those are the jobs that you start with. You just learn to work by starting with junky jobs. I don’t know. What’s your sense of that? Does that make any sense?
Nikki Kinzer:
It does. It does. And I think that’s a fair point. I read something and it really, I’m going to mess this up, but it said something like, don’t compare yourself to somebody that’s been in their job for 10 years, or something like that. And I looked at it as being entrepreneurs, like don’t compare yourself to another person if they’ve been in the business for 10 years and you’re just starting out. You’re not going to be right where they are. There’s a lot of lessons still to be learned. And you have to learn those on your own and figure out what those are.
So yeah, but I think as we were saying, so many people are contractors and they do have different jobs and they do move around. It’s just a little bit more of what you see now. I liked what some of their favorite past jobs were.
Pete Wright:
I wanted to ask you first, before we jump in there, do you have any favorite past jobs that were particularly noteworthy?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, my first job was at Mrs. Fields’ Cookies.
Pete Wright:
That’s pretty cool.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I loved the cookies.
Pete Wright:
And Mrs. Fields was always like catty-corner from Cinnabon. There’s always something, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
There’s always some, and there was always so much, I hate to say this, hopefully they’ve changed it. I don’t even know if they’re even still in business. But there was always a lot of waste. And the people that I worked with, we didn’t let that go to waste. We brought it home. We took it to our families and our friends.
But no, that was my very first job as a job job. But I haven’t had a whole lot of jobs. I tended to stay, like I stayed in the same job all through college as a part-time person. So I haven’t had a lot of experiences like what we’ve seen here. What about you?
Pete Wright:
I had two, about two weeks as a busboy at an Italian restaurant that looked like a train. That was a terrible experience. And I actually don’t think I ever quit. I may still work there. I think I just stopped going.
Nikki Kinzer:
Really? You’re still on payroll?
Pete Wright:
I think I just stopped going. It was not a good environment and I did not like that work at all. And I think I just ADHDed my way right out of there. You’re rationalized-
Nikki Kinzer:
You know what’s so funny? I just have to interrupt you for a second.
Pete Wright:
Please.
Nikki Kinzer:
So my daughter’s looking for a summer job, and she was a barista for a couple of years and she wants to be a hostess or a waitress. And I said, well, what about retail? Because I always wanted to go into retail and I knew she can get a job in retail easily, but she’s like, oh no, I don’t want to work retail.
But it’s so funny to me how I didn’t want to work in the food service. I really only wanted to work in retail. And she’s so opposite. She does not want anything to do with people and their clothes, but is happy to serve them with food and work in food. So I don’t know. It’s weird.
Pete Wright:
I want to tell you something.
Nikki Kinzer:
We all have our own-
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I need to tell you something you don’t know about me. I fold a mean shirt.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, I believe that actually.
Pete Wright:
Crisp. Crisp folds. After my illustrious busboy career, I got to work at the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway, and I started in the parking lot, parking cars. And then I moved into the ticket office, selling tickets, and then I sold some hot dogs. And then eventually I got on the trains and I was a conductor in the shop. And that was my, I mean, to this day, maybe my favorite job I’ve ever had. Not sustainable. Totally seasonal. But I got to be on stage, and I was the guy holding the mic in the middle of the train, giving the tours. On your two seat side, you have this. On your three seat side, you might see a marmot. I gave the history of the train and I loved it so much.
The downside of that job was the vomit. There was so much vomit because at the top of the mountain, people would ride for three hours and 10 minutes to the top of this mountain and they would get, they’d get donuts, these fried donuts at the Pikes Peak gift shop on the top at 14,000 feet. And they would just jam donuts down their gullet. And then they’d get on a train and descend from 14,000 feet to about 7,000 feet. And invariably, once we hit tree line, they’d throw up. And we had this stuff called [inaudible 00:27:11]. And I know I’m triggering somebody out there who has worked in travel, who knows [inaudible 00:27:17], which has a particularly acerbic scent, but you pour it on vomit and it turns the vomit to powder that you can just sweep up on the floors.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, interesting.
Pete Wright:
And it is the worst. It is the worst. Kids, all over themselves. That is my most horrible job that I have ever, ever done. But I loved it. I loved it so much. I mean, I learned how to work on Cummins diesel engines.
Nikki Kinzer:
And where was this at?
Pete Wright:
In Manitou Springs, Colorado.
Nikki Kinzer:
In Colorado, okay.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Wow. That’s crazy.
Pete Wright:
It was so [inaudible 00:27:49]. It was that thing. It was like Empire Records. You’re with a bunch of people who are your age, and the engineers who are just a little bit older than you, and you are just having a blast in beautiful weather and you just enjoy it. And it’s not a great job and it didn’t pay well. And you have to ingratiate yourself in front of enormously privileged people. And yet, it was a fantastic experience for me. So I loved it. I was there for several years before I got into TV.
So anyway, so we have some equally fantastic responses of first jobs. Here are some of our favorites. One terrible season at a Halloween store. I imagine that’s Spirit Halloween. Are there any others besides Spirit Halloween?
Nikki Kinzer:
I don’t know of any. No.
Pete Wright:
Here’s one. The child protective investigator. I can imagine both having no idea how to get into that job and also how do you get out of that job? I just feel like it’s a very complicated emotional bag [inaudible 00:28:50].
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, for sure. And this is-
Pete Wright:
That’s hard.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay, so I just want to make sure, favorite of your past jobs, not first job.
Pete Wright:
Right. Favorite of past jobs.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. I was going to say that can’t be a first job.
Pete Wright:
No, no, no, no.
Nikki Kinzer:
You have to have had-
Pete Wright:
Well, especially like this, a Juujitsu instructor. I imagine that being enormously satisfying and difficult as a first job.
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly.
Pete Wright:
Unless you grew up in a Tibetan monastery or something.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s right.
Pete Wright:
Dog walker.
Nikki Kinzer:
That would be fun.
Pete Wright:
I can imagine that one being really satisfying, too. Director of technical services for a megachurch. Wow.
Nikki Kinzer:
Cool.
Pete Wright:
Such a, like as a nerd, I can imagine that being really satisfying too. Because you have a built-in audience to test all this new technology every single week.
Nikki Kinzer:
All the sound.
Pete Wright:
All the time.
Nikki Kinzer:
And lights and whatever you’re doing. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Gas jockey. What do you think makes a gas jockey a favorite past job?
Nikki Kinzer:
I’m not sure I know what it is. What is a gas jockey?
Pete Wright:
I thought it was somebody, like in the state of Oregon, we can’t fill our own gas tanks. And so I thought it was that person.
Nikki Kinzer:
Like a gas attendant?
Pete Wright:
Like a gas attendant. That’s what’s in my head.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, let’s Google this. What is a gas-
Pete Wright:
We’re doing some realtime research every day.
Nikki Kinzer:
Jockey.
Pete Wright:
Please stand by. I’m not taking this out of-
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh yeah, a filling station attendant or gas station attendant.
Pete Wright:
Filling station attendant. My mother still says filling station.
Nikki Kinzer:
That is so funny. Is a worker at a full service filling station who performs services other than accepting payment.
Pete Wright:
I imagine that’s not dissimilar from my experience at the Cog Railway. I imagine that is just, you end up with a vibe of a bunch of people who-
Nikki Kinzer:
A lot of different people. Yeah, going on vacation or stressed because they’re late because they have to go get gas. That’s me.
Pete Wright:
This one is one that I don’t know. This one I legitimately don’t understand. The fish room manager.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, it sounds interesting, though, right?
Pete Wright:
I know.
Nikki Kinzer:
What is a fish room manager? I’m thinking, you know when you go to Petco and you see all those fish in all of those aquariums, I’m thinking that that person, they’re in charge of that.
Pete Wright:
Interesting.
Nikki Kinzer:
Is my guess.
Pete Wright:
Did you ask Google?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. But the first thing that comes up is a fish room manager aquarium service tech. And I don’t think that’s the same thing.
Pete Wright:
I asked ChatGPT. And what I get is, a fish room manager is a professional responsible for overseeing and managing the daily operations of an aquarium or a fish room facility. This role may be found in various settings, such as public aquariums, research institutions, or commercial aquarium businesses. The fish room manager’s key responsibilities typically include fish care and husbandry, aquarium maintenance, staff management, record keeping, public education, regulatory clients, and budget management.
Okay, that’s amazing. If that is even remotely close to what the fish room manager is here, I would do it. I am so glad what was not included in that list is anything to do with food service, because I like the idea of taking care of fish.
Nikki Kinzer:
Not eating it.
Pete Wright:
Not eating them.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, you can imagine all your friends that you would have, all your little fish friends.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, totally.
Nikki Kinzer:
I think it would be fun.
Pete Wright:
That is amazing.
Nikki Kinzer:
I think that would be a good job. That would definitely be a good job.
Pete Wright:
Oh, so good. And this last person who worked at so many fun and interesting jobs, so we are going to put them all in there. We’re just going to read it.
Nikki Kinzer:
And this is one person.
Pete Wright:
One person, one person.
Nikki Kinzer:
I want to talk to this person.
Pete Wright:
I know. Bread baker, biotech and fisheries, research clerk for Washington state government, city parks and rec field maintenance, student recreation center employee, assistant camp director, camp naturalist, trip coordinator, camp counselor, barista, college janitorial crew, Christmas tree stacker, shipping clerk for mining company, cafeteria dish washer, cafe worker, Godfather’s Pizza, aquarium volunteer, McDonald’s, newspaper delivery. That is awesome.
Nikki Kinzer:
That is a broad-
Pete Wright:
I think I know who that person is.
Nikki Kinzer:
You do?
Pete Wright:
I think I do. And I’m so jealous over many of these. And I love that this person was so specific to include Godfather’s Pizza, because there’s a real vibe there too. Godfather’s has a special niche.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s great.
Pete Wright:
Fantastic. Next question. Oh, we’ve been talking about this too long. Here, likes and dislikes of previous jobs. Okay. Most common likes, coworkers. It’s the people, people. Working with and helping people, learning opportunities. So development, professional development. Most common dislikes, working with the public and customer service,
Nikki Kinzer:
Which is funny, right? Because it’s also what people like. But I totally get that. If you’ve ever been in customer service, you understand that. A love-hate relationship.
Pete Wright:
Toxic work culture. Yeah, I don’t like that.
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
High pressure, high stress environment. Yeah. I don’t like that, either.
Nikki Kinzer:
No. Now, some people can thrive in it, because if you look at all of our first responders, they’re in a high pressure, high stress environment. And I bet if we were to do a survey, many of them probably have ADHD.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I bet. I bet. Have you ever been fired from a job? 63 responses. This surprised me a lot. I don’t know. Could you count my days as a … I was never technically fired, but I think I would’ve been, had I ever gone back to my restaurateuring.
Nikki Kinzer:
They didn’t fire you. You quit.
Pete Wright:
All right. 58.7% of respondents said no, they’ve never been fired. And 41.3 said yes. Right. Is that interesting?
Nikki Kinzer:
What surprises you about that?
Pete Wright:
I would’ve thought it’d be reversed.
Nikki Kinzer:
Flipped?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. You know what doesn’t surprise me about it is because I think, and this is an assumption, I’m putting it out there, this is just an assumption, is that in a lot of situations, people think where they are status wise is worse than they really are. So I think that people feel like their job is in jeopardy when they’re not on any kind of plan. Remember those PIP plans we talked about?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
But they’re kind of just thinking that things are really unraveling. And so I’m wondering if that’s not some of that a little bit.
Pete Wright:
Fascinating. Yeah. Well, and follow on to that, if you were fired, what happened? The most common response is unable to keep up, always late or too many call offs, emotional dysregulation. I just would’ve imagined, I think that’s the pair, is that more people who are struggling with ADHD would’ve had the ADHD impact their tenure at a particular job or function than is in our set of respondents. I think that is a reason for great optimism.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. For sure.
Pete Wright:
That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful.
Okay. So at work, have you ever asked for accommodations at work? 63 responses. 66.7% said no. 33.3% said yes. I hope we can change that a little bit. I hope people at work are less afraid to ask for accommodations that they need. But as [inaudible 00:36:25] said last week, asking for accommodations doesn’t mean outing yourself with ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly.
Pete Wright:
You don’t have to tell ADHD, you just have to ask for what you need at work. And I think it’s okay to do that.
Nikki Kinzer:
So that’s a really good point. If you reframe that, it’s not that you’re saying, have you disclosed your ADHD? Have you asked for accommodations without labeling the reason why? Yeah, I think that makes a difference. And hopefully that would go up, if that’s how we’re looking at it for sure.
Pete Wright:
Types of those accommodations, most common response is flexible schedule, outstanding, headphones or quiet working environment, regularly scheduled check-ins with supervisors. Those three. So asking, I mean, actually speaking of asking what you need, getting something to give you the right work environment and getting more feedback, I love that that’s the most common.
Because that is another thing I might not have expected, this idea that once you’re feeling not great about a job, that you’re unwilling or afraid to ask for the kind of feedback that would help steer you in the right direction. It is enormously satisfying to see one of the most popular answers be, I want more check-ins with my supervisors. I want more guidance. And I think we can learn from that.
Nikki Kinzer:
I agree.
Pete Wright:
Here’s the specific question, though. 63 responses to have you ever disclosed your ADHD in the workplace? 52.4 said yes. 25.4 said no. Many others said no, but qualified this was because they have only recently been diagnosed with ADHD. So we have another essentially 20 some odd percent of people who didn’t disclose, but it’s because they have new diagnoses. Maybe they haven’t disclosed yet. I think that split is kind of unknown. So that’s interesting. Any insights there? Any thoughts? I feel like after our conversations about disclosing ADHD, we’ve talked about that a bunch.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, and I think it just agrees to the next question. Would you recommend that others disclose their ADHD in their place of work? And out of 60 responses, 63% said maybe. Many agreed that this should be assessed on a personal case by case basis. And I think that’s very true. I mean, really, there is no right answer to this.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I think that’s a really fair assessment. And before this series, I might have been more on the side of the yeses. Just get it out there because it’s a part of our identity and let’s own that. And that’s because that’s my bias. And I work in a place of privilege, of being able to call my own shots with my own company. And I think that my opinion has been changed. I’m very firmly in the maybe.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Yes.
Pete Wright:
It has to be assessed personally. And it’s interesting to me that we had such a low number of respondents either on the no or the yes category. We had 11.7% said you should not disclose your ADHD. And 8.3% said yes, disclose your ADHD. And both of those numbers are smaller than I would’ve expected.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, I agree. I agree. I was a little surprised to see the maybe so high.
Pete Wright:
For sure. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? All right, Nikki, first, quick, you. Retail?
Nikki Kinzer:
Veterinarian.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hands down. I wanted to be a veterinarian until I figured out what that really meant. You don’t just work with animals, you have to help fix the animals. And then that means that the animals are sad and they’re hurt. And that would make me sad. And then I thought, no.
Pete Wright:
I think my son, I had this conversation with my son when he was very small, and he also for a brief time wanted to be a veterinarian, but decided against it when he realized he didn’t just get to work with cats because I think he thought he was a caterinarian, and turns out that he has more, because you have horses and frogs and all kinds of things you have to work with.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Rabbits.
Pete Wright:
For me, it was a paleontologist for sure. I was just a complete bozo for dinosaurs.
Nikki Kinzer:
Isn’t that what Ross is?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
On Friends.
Pete Wright:
I don’t know what you’re saying right now.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, I just think that’s funny because that’s the only reason why I knew what that was.
Pete Wright:
That was totally me, and my bedroom was adorned with those wooden, those balsa wood puzzles that you pull out and you build the skeletal structure of a dinosaur. I had all of them hanging.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s funny.
Pete Wright:
I had them everywhere. And then I wanted to be a Starfleet captain for a while.
Nikki Kinzer:
Of course. Who wouldn’t?
Pete Wright:
That was fun. We have most common responses, artist, dancer, actor, veterinarian, zoologist, entomologist, or writer.
Nikki Kinzer:
What’s an entomologist?
Pete Wright:
Bugs.
Nikki Kinzer:
Bugs. All right. That makes sense, kind of.
Pete Wright:
Some of our favorite responses. A dog, a jeweler-
Nikki Kinzer:
A dog. They wanted to be a dog. I love that. I want to be a dog too.
Pete Wright:
Me too. A jeweler. I wanted to be an arson investigator. I got a gender related ultimatum. No daughter of mine, and disowning was threatened, so I stopped pursuing it, Melissa editorializes in our notes here. This one made me sad, but I also thought it sounded so cool. What an awesome kid they must have been. I raise my glass to that comment. Absolutely true.
Deep sea diver, nun, pilot, stunt woman, actor, veterinarian. I have been none of those things, but going freelance gave me the head space to be a standup comedy poet and start my own comedy acapella band. My God, I feel like I just met my spiritual sister. Oh, wow. All of those things.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and what does Melissa say about this?
Pete Wright:
Melissa says, I don’t know who this is since these were all anonymous, but I want to know more about this person and ask them to be my friend.
Nikki Kinzer:
I think whoever this person is, you guys, whoever you are, you already have two best friends in Pete and Melissa.
Pete Wright:
A hundred percent.
Nikki Kinzer:
Immediately. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Oh my goodness. One of my favorite movies as a kid was Hooper, with Bert Reynolds and what’s his name? A pilot. He was a pilot on Airwolf, Jan-Michael Vincent. And it was about stunt people. And it was my favorite movie ever. I think I also, I’m going to throw in after paleontologist, I must have wanted to be a stunt person because it was all about driving, like stunt drivers.
And it was an extraordinary cool, nobody has heard of this movie, and even in my circle of movie nerds, nobody knows about this movie. And yet I hold it in such high esteem because it captured all of the vibe that I needed in my life at that time. So I absolutely relate, and indeed, I say acapella. Yeah, I’m that, a hundred percent [inaudible 00:43:16].
Hey, everybody, this was so much fun. Any closing thoughts, Nikki? Anything you gleaned from this?
Nikki Kinzer:
No, I was so curious about all of these things, and I just really appreciate, everyone, that you took the time to fill it out, like you said earlier, at the very beginning. And I know we’ll do more stuff on jobs because it’s just such a huge part of our lives, and it’s been a great series. I know next week we are going to end it with a guest that’s going to talk about resilience, which I think is a really nice tie to ending everything.
Pete Wright:
Well, and that is her job. She is a resilience coach.
Nikki Kinzer:
Love it.
Pete Wright:
She’s a resilience coach, like someone who really specializes in figuring out how to build that strength to come back from other stuff and from from hardship. And really like her. And so I’m excited to invite her to the show. And that will wrap up our season 26. And then we’ll be on our summer break.
Nikki Kinzer:
That’s right.
Pete Wright:
So look forward to that. Thank you, everybody, for downloading and listening for the show. We sure appreciate your time and your attention. Don’t forget, if you have something to contribute to the conversation, we’re heading over to the show talk channel in our Discord server. And you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I’m Pete Wright, and we’ll see you right back here next week on Taking Control, the ADHD podcast.
