Megan Killion argues that calling someone high-functioning is a backhanded compliment that masks harmful workplace expectations. She critiques how employers use eye contact as a false measure of honesty, attention, and competence, when it's actually just a cultural norm that disadvantages many people.
High functioning, which is a phrase I would personally like to launch directly into the sun, because high functioning usually means your suffering is not currently inconvenient to me. Here is a fake KPI that has done a truly impressive amount of damage: eye contact. Somewhere along the way, workplaces decided that looking someone directly in the face was a proxy for honesty, attention, confidence, respect, competence, which is adorable. Incorrect. Adorable.
