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The story
An ABEMA TIMES article about a man working while hiding his developmental disorder became a talking point on 5ch. The thread saw a wave of real workplace stories — “you get found out eventually, no matter how well you hide it,” “I had a coworker who caused trouble after getting hired” — alongside comments pointing out how welfare and disability-pension support systems fail to reach the people who actually need them.
Hiding a Developmental Disorder Through Job Hunting → Man Now Working Says “I’m Scared of Being Found Out,” “Pay-wise, Regular Employment Is…” — Where Workplace “Reasonable Accommodation” Stands Today and What’s Still Missing
Thu, Aug 27, 14:45 JST
ABEMA TIMES
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Is that actually a normal way to phrase it?
At work we'd probably say "pro-con" (プロコン), though that doesn't really land either. First time I've heard "meri-deme" (メリデメ, short for merit/demerit — pros and cons).
Nah, developmental disorders are hard to prove definitively, so it doesn't really count.
Everyone's got some traits that look "developmental disorder-ish" — nobody's a perfect human being.
This country discriminates like it's nothing.
Even when you can't actually hide it, on paper you're "able-bodied," so people come down hard on you.
You get treated as lazy instead of incapable.
They're so bad at picking things up that everyone stuck training them is burned out.
The rush into cosmetic surgery is actually because the residency-matching system capped the number of dermatology and ophthalmology residency slots in the cities.
They restricted urban slots specifically to push more doctors into internal medicine and surgery in rural areas, and this is the result.
By the way, cosmetic surgery actually carries bigger lawsuit risk.
If anything, they go in assuming they'll be sued and keep lawyers on retainer for it, so in that sense they're covered.
If a low-paying job is going to wreck your mental health, you're better off just going on welfare.
Because this is a crazy quasi-socialist country with insane pressure to work…
There are plenty, but this is a country obsessed with short-term money, so nobody bothers.
They wrote a fake school name on their résumé?
If the high school name or department on the résumé is false, that's grounds for disciplinary dismissal, you know.
It's exhausting whether it's a coworker or a client.
Throwing tantrums is a classic trait of developmental disorders.
Even with certifications, they don't trust a middle-school-only grad — "you're probably trash anyway" — I've had my documents thrown back at me in interviews, had tea thrown at me.
Is dropping out really that bad?
When I said I quit because I couldn't take the bullying anymore, they screamed at me, "That's just because you've got no guts!"
I'm a loser until the day I die.
Normally you'd get screened out at the document-review stage.
Why didn't you just take the high-school equivalency exam ("daiken")?
A bookkeeping certification only really matters when a new grad is trying to sneak into an accounting job, or when someone with experience is job-hopping.
By that logic 70% of people have ADHD. Guess phone-walking needs mandatory jail time, no suspended sentences.
The SPI3 test is built to screen out developmental disorders now.
More companies are also bringing in "scouter"-like unsuitability tests to flag misfits.
Only if it interferes with your work — assuming it doesn't, lol.
Day one: destroyed hundreds of thousands of yen worth of equipment.
Month one: wrecked a machine we'd put him in charge of — millions of yen in damage.
After that: three personal-injury accidents during his commute.
Also crashed a company truck.
It was an absolute disaster.
The fact that he didn't mentally or physically break down and quit before all that is honestly impressive.
Most people couldn't keep a job that long.
Sounds like ADHD.
If anything, only ever wanting to do simple repetitive work is more the developmental-disorder trait.
You're just one of those people who's quick to slap a "XX disorder" label on themselves.
Background and Key Points
Japan formalizes disability employment through a legally mandated quota (法定雇用率): private employers above a size threshold must ensure disabled workers make up a set share of staff, currently 2.5% and scheduled to rise to 2.7% by mid-2026, with fines for shortfalls. Whether someone counts toward that quota depends on holding one of three official handbooks — physical, intellectual (療育手帳), or the mental health and welfare handbook (精神障害者保健福祉手帳), which is the one developmental disorders (ADHD, ASD, learning disabilities) fall under once formally diagnosed and registered. This produces Japan’s open/closed employment split: “open” (オープン) hires disclose and get accommodations but often at reduced pay and status, while “closed” (クローズ) hires — the article’s subject — compete on equal footing but carry the constant risk of exposure. Screening tools like the SPI3 aptitude test, now widely used across new-grad hiring, are cited in the thread as increasingly able to flag atypical response patterns before interviews even happen.
The thread’s real fault line isn’t over whether workplace struggles happen — those accounts are treated as unremarkable — but over blame: several posts frame concealment as a firing-worthy deception once it causes damage, while others insist the hiring system itself, which screens out disclosed disability almost automatically, leaves people no real choice but to hide.
What the thread gets wrong: post #166 claims developmental disorders “don’t really count” for quota purposes — in fact, anyone who obtains the mental health handbook does count, so the real barrier is diagnosis and disclosure, not eligibility. The posts also never mention that Japan’s reasonable-accommodation duty was extended to private employers by law only in April 2024, meaning the “accommodation” the article’s title references is still a very new, unevenly enforced obligation.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News Plus) thread “Hiding a Developmental Disorder Through Job Hunting → Man Now Working Says “I’m Scared of Being Found Out,” “Pay-wise, Regular Employment Is…”.”
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