#workproblems

I am a certified Old (TM) with one of those office jerbs. I have a coworker who seems to be/has basically said he is ADHD.

This is proving a bit difficult on the “me having to relay and re-relay and re-re-relay information vital for him to Perform Task” front. I’ve tried writing things out, sitting and explaining in small chunks, breaking big problems into the smallest possible sub-problems, and combining it all.

We get to what I think is a good spot, he works on it and seems to indicate he’s 90% done and pledges to ask questions if he gets stuck. He inevitably disappears without a peep at some point, engrossed, not asking for help. I think all is good.

At The Last Minute, we are back to him panicking that he doesn’t understand it, he’s spent a bunch of time getting himself into trouble with said task and wants me to look over his shoulder.

I inevitably find he has taken the “stack three boxes” instructions and somehow turned them into attempting to hand fire bricks and build a gazebo with them. He has tried to make it as complicated as possible, gotten in over his head, used ChatGPT to produce stuff and wants me to troubleshoot it when he cannot describe to me in simple terms what he is even trying to accomplish beyond “I tried to put it all in one complicated thing rather than the ten very simple things I set out to do and agreed to do”.

So.. as someone who doesn’t think they’re that neurospicy, could some neurospicy folk offer me any advice, here?

I’m literally running out of nice ways to say “Buddy, I’m going to hold your hand while I ask this. How did you and ChatGPT turn my six five-line starter queries into forty-nine queries with eight outer joins apiece? And why am I having to re-explain how you can get 95% of this from ONE table for the sixth time when you insisted on pulling in ten? Two tables and right good, twelve tables and wrong not better. “