We’re pleased to share this piece from Jamie Gordon, a neurodiversity advocate, workshop facilitator and Employment Advisor within NHS Talking Therapies. Alongside founding the Reading ADHD Group, Jamie has spent years working across hospitality, retail and large-scale events.

Those experiences have given him first-hand insight into the pressures within frontline roles. In this article, he reflects on how inclusion often looks different outside office settings, where pace, targets and precarious contracts shape everyday realities.

Why frontline inclusion needs its own lens

 

Much of the public conversation about workplace inclusion is shaped by office-based roles. It often assumes access to private space, flexible hours, remote work and formal HR processes, conditions that rarely exist in frontline environments.

In hospitality, retail, factory work and similar frontline roles, those options are rarely available and performance is often measured through speed, output and consistency, with little room to step away or rework a task quietly.

I have worked in hospitality and retail, as a fruit picker, and as a catering assistant in hospitals. This reflection draws on those experiences. It is not a universal account, but a perspective shaped by working in environments where pressure is constant and margins are tight.

Where things start to go wrong

 

One recurring issue I noticed was colleagues and managers holding everyone to their own internal standard. “Common sense” was often treated as universal rather than learned. Instructions could be brief or implied. When clarification was needed, frustration sometimes followed instead of adjustment.

Over time, this created a pattern. I would hesitate to ask questions because previous attempts had been met with irritation. I would complete a task based on partial understanding. A mistake would follow. The mistake would be visible and, at times, met with aggression. I would feel less confident the next time.

In environments where service is public and time is tight, mistakes are rarely neutral. They are visible, immediate and disruptive.

Many frontline roles are low paid, high pressure and precarious. When I worked as a fruit picker, we were paid on a piece rate system, meaning our income depended on collective output.

In hospitality, general managers were often expected to work long hours under intense scrutiny. Zero-hour contracts meant shifts were closely tied to perceived commitment. In retail, while contracts were sometimes more stable, targets and deadlines still left little margin for error.

When pressure flows down through an organisation, tolerance narrows. Under those conditions, differences in communication, processing speed or sensory tolerance can quickly be interpreted as performance problems.

When pressure is misread as personal failure

 

In high demand environments, mistakes disrupt workflow. If one person is seen as slowing the team down, tension can build. Support becomes harder to offer when everyone feels stretched.

What might be a request for clarity can be read as lack of initiative.
What might be cognitive overload can be read as poor attitude.
What might be a communication mismatch can be read as incompetence.

These interpretations do not usually begin as hostility. They often emerge in systems designed around uniform pace and output rather than variation in how people work.

The impact, however, can accumulate. Repeated misinterpretation can begin to shape how someone sees themselves at work.

Experiences like this can make the idea of formal workplace support feel distant from everyday reality.

One year I was managing a pop-up bar at a Christmas fair. The hours were long, the work was outside, and the pressure was constant. My manager valued process as much as output, and it wasn’t long before I began to feel scrutinised.

To try and manage that scrutiny, I started asking for clarity before acting. On one occasion I walked them through how I planned to set up the bar. They gave me a look and said, “just do it.” When it wasn’t right, I wasn’t offered any constructive feedback, even after I asked.

Tasks began overlapping. Redo this, finish that, start something new. I began to feel very micromanaged. Eventually I said quite directly that I was being pulled in too many directions, but what I meant as an observation was received as a confrontation.

In their eyes, asking for clarity meant I lacked common sense. The reality was that we had very different ways of communicating. That experience stayed with me. It took time afterwards to separate their perception of me from my own.

Rights in theory, constraints in practice

 

Legally, a formal diagnosis is not required to request reasonable adjustments or to be protected under the Equality Act. In practice, navigating Access to Work or negotiating adjustments can be complex, particularly in frontline roles.

Many commonly suggested adjustments for ADHD, such as flexible hours, remote work or quiet workspaces, do not easily translate to a busy kitchen, shop floor or production line. Advice that works in an office can feel disconnected from environments where you cannot leave the counter, pause a production line, or step into a private room.

Even identifying what might be realistic to ask for can be difficult.

In some workplaces, speaking up can feel risky, especially where contracts are insecure and income is tight. Pursuing formal routes such as tribunal requires time and stability that not everyone has. For some, leaving and finding another job feels more achievable than challenging a system.

One of the first places I disclosed my ADHD was a cocktail bar I worked in not long after my diagnosis. I was working full-time hours but never actually received a contract, which unfortunately is not unusual in parts of the hospitality sector. This was towards the tail end of the lockdown era, when the whole team was under significant pressure and the bar was extremely busy.

I followed the rules closely. I asked customers to wear masks when moving around the venue, cleaned door handles regularly, and often stayed longer at the end of shifts to make sure everything was done properly. Over time I developed a reputation for being strict about the rules, and I could sense that it was creating friction with some colleagues.

Between the tense atmosphere and the hustle of the busy bar, I could feel my executive dysfunction getting the better of me. I was prone to making mistakes, dropping things, forgetting orders, and sometimes making the same order twice.

I asked the team informally to help with a small adjustment. For example, I asked them to discard the drinks order slip once they collected the drink. This helped prevent me from accidentally making the same order twice.

This was a stressful time for me. I had recently started CBT and when I spoke to my counsellor about the situation, they suggested a workplace assessment and explained that my employer would be legally required to consider reasonable adjustments.

They weren’t wrong. But it was difficult to imagine that a workplace which struggled with basic contracts and regulations would meaningfully engage with something like Access to Work.

Not long after, I was removed from their WhatsApp group and never offered shifts again.

A small adjustment that changed the dynamic

 

Not all experiences were negative.

In one family restaurant where I worked, any mistake on the till required a manager override. This is common practice. Orders change frequently. Each correction meant pausing service and seeking permission.

In other workplaces, too many overrides could trigger scrutiny. The result was slower service, visible mistakes and increased tension.

In this restaurant, after building rapport with the owner, I was given manager permissions on the till. I could override my own errors.

Service became smoother. Queues reduced. Customer frustration eased. I made fewer mistakes overall. I also felt trusted.

The adjustment did not remove pressure from the role, but it altered how I experienced it. Instead of being publicly corrected, I was trusted to correct myself.

In previous roles, similar policies had created friction. In this case, one adjustment altered the dynamic.

Confidence, competence and context

 

Repeated exposure to high pressure environments where neurodivergence is misunderstood can erode confidence. It becomes harder to separate personal capability from contextual constraint.

Looking back, I can see that some of the roles I struggled in were structurally intense and unforgiving. Without that perspective, it would have been easy to conclude that I was simply not suited to work.

Meaningful employment matters. So does recognising when a workplace context is amplifying difficulty rather than reflecting ability.

Recognising that difference can help people separate their identity from environments that were never designed to support them.

I eventually began working through hospitality agencies, which is what introduced me to event work. This suited me because I didn’t need to return to environments that weren’t a good fit.

I never disclosed my neurodivergence, but in a way I didn’t need to.

A few years later, I started a support group for people with ADHD and then created a resource that aims to help people who work in frontline teams. Connecting with others who had similar experiences helped me see that I wasn’t alone. There’s also something empowering about supporting others who have had similar experiences.

Small adjustments do not resolve systemic pressures. They can, however, create moments of trust and competence that shift how someone understands themselves.

This reflection aims to broaden the conversation about inclusion beyond office-based narratives, and to highlight the realities of roles where flexibility is limited but pressure is high.

Jamie has been one of the few voices consistently highlighting how neurodiversity and inclusion play out in frontline roles, where pace, targets and limited flexibility shape everyday work. That perspective is why we reached out to him to contribute this piece.

If you would like to learn more about Jamie’s work, including the Reading ADHD Group and his writing on inclusion in frontline teams, you can find further details on his LinkedIn page.