L Williams

Disability Shame

I'm not the first, nor will I be the last, to be terminated from a job for my disability...a disability disclosed prior to still being offered the position. To be excited to be working with a woman-owned minority company on a Federal Government contract was exciting when I started. Especially, with the company being an African-American woman-owned company (as it's very rare to come across one of those), it was truly a new venture for me. Things were going well, my performance reviews were always between the 96-100 percentage, and on a daily basis I was averaging 45-70 emails on any given day (as the company's contract with DHHS was strictly for email support - the main reason why I applied for the position, and accepted the position after informing during my interview of my anxiety disability and being unable to provide any form of phone support). It was great to finally be accepted at a company and not have to be embarrassed of not feeling like a real employee because of my anxiety disability!