Social Workers on the Spectrum-HELP!

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Complete an online continuing education course about communication in the workplace such as this one: https://www.continuingeducation.com/cou ... 12-60.html and bring the printed certificate of completion to your meeting, or hand it in before to your manager.. this may help you to know how to communicate and manage conflict and will also help with office politics and can bring them to your side. Good luck!

This is a really good point you raise about the workforce in general. You can train themselves to be 100% competent in terms of your theoretical knowledge but mastery of a skill involves putting into practice working with other people in teams. In my experience team work is a big challenge because your training rarely teaches you how to deal with communication.

There is no reason to disclose anything to your work partner but I suggest you need to better understand your own role. Why was this not explained to you when you applied for the job?

I suggest meeting with your boss (or whoever you report to) and determine what is required in working in a team. If your boss says its standard procedures then you need to very quickly acquaint yourself with what those procedures are and at least how to engage minimum communication standards (I am sure this is documented somewhere).

Thanks the meeting is first thing tomorrow but I will look at it over the weekend and hopefully complete it.

I just wanted to say thank you for all of the great ideas. I am just catching up on these now and plan to take the online course. The meeting with my boss did not go bad. The union rep, pretty much spoke for me and was able to clearly articulate what I wanted to state. However, my boss's boss, still would not change the overall rating, so we appealed to her boss, the Chief. Due to Covid, we had a telephonic meeting about 3 weeks ago and he said he would get back with us, on his decision. I am still waiting for his decision.

That being said, things with my partner have improved. I got tired of the way she was treating me and decided that when she was in the role of Responder 1 (the person who is mainly responsible for the incident and services-Responder 2 is mainly responsible for driving) I would just wait in the van unless she specifically asks for my help. The first few times, I waited in the van, sometimes for hours, while she worked with the clients and I never even asked her what happened. I just signed her report, when she finished and drove. When I worked as Responder 1, I didn't tell her anything, unless she asked. This has worked out! I wasn't expecting this to work out, I only did because I could not take working with her any longer but we are getting along better. She is now asking for my help when she is R1 and and asks me questions (rather than sabotaging what I was doing) when I am R1. She finally stopped talking to me like a child, in front of the clients as well. I never would have thought.

It sounds like you are handling the situation well caseymom. Sometimes addressing communications issues head on get's results.

Well thank you cyberdad. I agree that addressing communication issues head on, can and should yield good results but that's really not what I did. I avoided addressing the issue or communicating with her at all and actually sat back and waited to be fired. I was surprised to find it had positive results and still don't understand it but I'll take it, either way.

just remain calm and don't panic.. you will grow from this experience.

idntonkw -thank you, good advice that I needed earlier but probably was not ready to hear until now.

In the "art of war" strategically allowing your oppressor to change without any action on your part is a true zen type move

cyberdad-I will remember that!

Yes, that happened to me - I hit an obstacle at work, started panicking and fighting with people who were complaint of me at work, and created a bigger problem by fighting and being rude to those people.. fighting seemed like a solution, but it only created a bigger problem.. wish I did not fight and just remained calm.