r/AmIOverreacting • u/MeanderingDragon • Mar 06 '26

💼work/career AIO about this text I got from HR?

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So to preface, I'm Type 1 diabetic, which means I have to take multiple daily insulin injections to live. I typically take 5-8 shots per day, and while it isn't fun, it is routine and necessary.

I was at work this morning and they had a small amount of food out for some sort of 'employee appreciation' which reminded me I hadn't had any insulin yet and my glucose levels were getting too high. I took a shot of insulin, got some breakfast, and went to my desk. A few minutes later, this text arrives.

I can understand that shots make some people uncomfortable. Trust me, I'm one of those people. But I have to take them anyway. Am I overreacting to think that if you don't want to see me talking a shot, you can turn your head? Should I have to go to the bathroom which only gets cleaned twice a week, and take my shots in secret like it's a drug addiction? Perhaps it is just me, but I feel that not everything in life that makes us a little uncomfortable is something that has to be pushed out of sight. Sometimes we would benefit more from understanding, acceptance, and perhaps acclimation.

Also for the record, while they say they "mentioned this several times", our HR manager scolded me once maybe two or three years ago publicly during lunch in our cafeteria. I ignored it that time, because friends sitting around me supported me after HR walked off.

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u/BxBae133 Mar 06 '26

Do not go to them! Put it in writing and get your response in writing!

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u/munkyluv08 Mar 06 '26

Thisssss! Always create a paper trail.

I want to add I think it’s wild others being uncomfortable was used as the reason. I’ve been in healthcare 16 years and it’s been ingrained that any biohazard tasks or product immediately are handled separate from regular garbage and tasks- so people’s feelings is such a weak reason.

This is your life and daily normal, you’ve no choice and no one understands unless they are also living with this medical need . While asking you to take care of your medical needs that do include the possibility of bleeding and of course injecting medication outside of the communal lunch space is an appropriate request, they need to offer a solution and absolutely not the bathroom as was stated many times in the thread.

You deserve to have a clean space that offers access to a sink. You’re not alone and won’t be the last employee needing the space so it’s worth the investment. We know how employee needs go in the corporate world though.

I hope they meet your needs so you can take care of yourself while working, without any more trouble from anyone.

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u/Hefty_Phase6279 Mar 06 '26

That's not always possible, and sometimes in-person meetings work better. But, there are ways to still 'get it in on record'.

I had a contentious issue at my last job. I live in Canada, which is single consent, so I recorded all meetings I had with HR, my boss, etc. (which I didn't tell them about). Also, I took handwritten notes at every meeting (which I was very obvious about) and, on work time, typed summaries of every meeting on who said what, what was agreed to, what was left to be decided, actions items, etc. I then emailed it to all of the relevant people and said 'this is what the meeting on this date and time with these people was about'. People could then respond or not, but where I live in this context 'silence is consent' so no response is taken as agreement. I stuck to the facts and was as objective as possible so mostly I got 'that sounds right' responses with occasional, very small tweaks noted on particular details - if I agreed with the tweaks I responded to say the update was made, if not, I responded to say that I disagreed with the tweak (because silence would be consent on my part too).

Of course, I saved everything on jump drives and also kept them in a non-work cloud that my employer had no access to as well as having it on the work servers.

So, I had everything on record in ways where I was in control of the record and I had access to it all in the event that I needed it after my employment with them ended.

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u/GigglesBlaze Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26

Written evidence is just more clear cut to a juror. You don't have to get every interaction in writing but if you can at least get someone admitting to something in writing you can use it to build a much stronger and concise case.

An email from your boss saying they are complacent in the problem is going to hold just as much weight as all those voice memos. You have to make your case concise and easy to understand, no juror is going to be happy about going through pages and pages of evidence.

Also silence is not consent in the eyes of the law/a jury. That's crazy talk.

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u/Heykurat Mar 06 '26

Written evidence is actual evidence. A verbal exchange cannot be proven to have occurred.

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u/nerdthatlift Mar 07 '26

You can do both.

After the talk, write a follow up e-mail and I would also cc'd anyone else who would be involved. "Per our conversation earlier, ...recap..."

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u/BxBae133 Mar 06 '26

It is ALWAYS possible to write it! OP got a text! Respond in email or text!

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u/Turdulator Mar 06 '26

Any company with even the most half assed DLP policies will have USB drives and personal cloud storage blocked.

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u/deadlight___01 Mar 06 '26

I've worked in dozens of high level corporate companies and have only had USB drives blocked in one.

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u/Simba7 Mar 06 '26

I mean you can just email your notes to yourself, or BCC your personal email on the exchanges.

The method of saving the notes isn't important, it's that they are saved outside of the company so you can access them later if needed.

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u/Physical-Choice-2090 Mar 06 '26

I'm also in Canada and have never worked anywhere with USB drives and personal cloud storage blocked. I know you can block websites of course, but I didn't even know it was possible to block USB drives.

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u/Impressive-Crab2251 Mar 06 '26

Plugging in a usb drive on my company laptop would automatically get flagged.

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u/Beane_the_RD Mar 06 '26

Granted I’m south of the border, but down here The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (aka: HIPAA) of 1996 reigns supreme in any healthcare setting & any information copied over to an external/USB drive is automatically assigned a long-ass 24 alphabetical & numerical code to protect whatever was transferred over from work computer to USB drive… whether it was Private Health Information (PHI) or not!

So yeah… in healthcare, it’s definitely a thing if your employer is worth a grain of salt (especially with the hacking & random ware attacks from China, Korea, Russia, any number of countries on the continent in Africa, India, etc)!

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u/Physical-Choice-2090 Mar 06 '26

We were told not to use personal USBs. If we needed to put something on an USB it was supposed to be an official USB that was encrypted. But I know there were coworkers that didn't know those rules and used their own USB for transfer non-patient related information (like a work project or research paper) and there were no related alphanumeric codes assigned. It's been a few years, but I doubt it's changed.

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u/Turdulator Mar 06 '26

How does your company stop core IP or critical protected data from leaving the network if they don’t block personal cloud sites or USB drives?

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u/sarcatholicscribe Mar 06 '26

I think you overestimate the number of companies that care.

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u/Turdulator Mar 07 '26

The last 6 I’ve worked for across multiple industries have cared a lot, of course I can’t speak for every company on the planet.

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u/LiteHedded Mar 06 '26

That’s not really true

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u/Turdulator Mar 06 '26

Why would any company allowed unmitigated access to either of those things? That’s how critical IP or PII gets leaked.

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u/LiteHedded Mar 06 '26

USB access is needed for a lot of things. in healthcare, for instance it's very common for it to be allowed

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u/Turdulator Mar 07 '26

Yeah I’ve worked in health care, users can apply for exception to specific machines after providing a specific justification of the business purpose its need for. Using it for any other purpose (while possible after getting an exception) is strictly forbidden. Especially when HIPAA PII is involved.

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u/LiteHedded Mar 07 '26

CISSP and CCSP here with 20 years healthcare IT experience. I have a fairly decent handle on PHI and the implications there

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u/Clenzor Mar 06 '26

How would they go about doing that on a personal cell phone or even just a tape recorder?

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u/Turdulator Mar 06 '26

The cloud stuff is easy to block from WiFi, but if the phone isn’t on WiFi then it’s never on the company network in the first place, so the company can’t do shit about it. That’s definitely a viable solution.

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u/Clenzor Mar 06 '26

I feel like you were poking holes without thinking through what OP was talking about. Like you were poking holes in their email paper trail when that was always out in the open.

OP surreptitiously recording every conversation on a personal device isn’t gonna be able to be blocked unless it’s illegal to record without consent, or if someone is dumb enough to do it on a managed device, which even that, someone would have to be suspicious enough to actually listen to the recordings.

Idk what the point of me calling you out is, so I guess I’ll just leave it at sometimes people actually are telling the truth on the internet.

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u/Turdulator Mar 07 '26

I only brought it up because the person I responded to very specifically and explicitly brought up USB drives and personal cloud storage.

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u/deadlight___01 Mar 06 '26

It's always possible to submit something in writing and demand a written answer.

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u/kinokits Mar 06 '26

Yes absolutely go to HR, but do as much as you can via email and in writing. Emails are time stamped and when they refuse you have it in their own words. In the cases where you do need to take notes, use an app that timestamps your notes for you. That digital timestamp can count for a lot of you need to pursue things. I’m on the tail end of a 4 year situation around disability accommodations. The other thing I learned the hard way is to keep any emails, documents etc saved with the date and name/s of the people the communication was with. Forward all emails regarding accommodations and disability discrimination to your personal email and save them to a set folder. You never know when emails will mysteriously disappear, and it can be an absolute nightmare to get IT to retrieve them, if they can at all. But the more you have written by the other person, the more solid a case you can build. My personal favourite email is the one where a particularly problematic ex boss admitted in writing to interfering with my pay and tried to get me to quit so she didn’t have to work out adjustments. Never under estimate what someone will write in an email when they think they’re right.

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u/Outrageous_Machine93 Mar 06 '26

I fired an employee exactly like you.

It is not as we do anything wrong, it was the employee's mindset which was destructive and offensive made me fire him. Also I was sick of reading whole meeting summaries just to make sure he wouldn't add something that was inaccurate which could be used against me at some point. No regrets.

Her replacement is now a sweet sweet lady who is working for us now over 10 years.

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u/PipsqueakPilot Mar 06 '26

HR is where you get the form to put it in writing. The request process for an ADA accommodation is a written one. But since the forms are usually company specific, you kind of have to do it through HR.

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u/EnoughConfection8110 Mar 06 '26

You can also get your Endocrinologist to send an email (electronic trail) or a written letter.

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u/theotherkeith Mar 13 '26

Both. You need to get the HR paperwork AND typically, those require a document signed by a medical professional to be included when they are submitted. 

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u/upwardblinds Mar 06 '26

Talk first in person with HR, then email a highlight of the conversation to HR and bcc your personal email for your records. This is the way.

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u/Disney_World_Native Mar 06 '26

And just to underscore this, use BCC, do NOT forward an email.

When you BCC a message, you have the original message headers as well as proof of the original text. If you forward after the fact, those original headers are gone and you can’t prove that the body wasn’t modified. Plus with the message id, it can be validated against their mail system

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u/PeanutButterPants19 Mar 06 '26

You could always record them if you’re in a one party consent state

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u/EnoughConfection8110 Mar 06 '26

Yes, always have a paper or electronic trail. HR CANNOT fire you for ADA, again, I know this because I am a Type 1 and work in HR. If they do, HR already knows what is coming their way. Hire an attorney immediately.

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u/sockalicious Mar 06 '26

Thank you for your willingness to engage me on this topic.

As insulin is medically necessary for me, a type I diabetic, I would like to request in response to your notice that <employer name> provide an ADA accommodation. Please specify a quiet, clean space where I am able to inject my insulin as needed away from other co-workers who might be disturbed. Please also note that as injections require sterile technique and a bathroom is a place where fecal material may reasonably be expected to contaminate surfaces, a bathroom is not appropriate for this task.

I look forward to the courtesy of a written response from you.

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u/knittymess Mar 06 '26

And BCC your private email.

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u/BygoneNeutrino Mar 06 '26

They can still fire you in they want to.  Proceed with caution.  Don't piss them off if you smoke weed or ever show up late.  If they think you might sue them, it's in their self-interest to fire you by the book.  Don't make the implied threat unless you can actually afford a lawyer.  

It's a massive investment that will take years to pay off; don't operate under the assumption that Erin Brockavitch will show up to work pro-bono.

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u/minimamaz00m Mar 06 '26

Yes! And this place needs a sharps container!