NT coworkers

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I work in a small office in very close proximity to my co workers, which is a first for me. I usually get jobs which put me in a cube to do data processing or something in a back quiet corner. This was a good job though and paid better than my last, so I took it.
I am finding weird little things every day though that remind me just how different NT’s are. A good example; I get off at 4 pm every day. I always leave at exactly 4 pm and I have since the day I started. One of my coworkers got mad at me because apparently yesterday I didn’t announce “I’m going home” at 4, I just got up and left like I always do. I am trying to figure out what the he** she is upset about; I mean it is fairly obvious to me. She said “I didn’t know you had gone home, and tried to ask you something” to which I replied naturally “I leave at 4, why would you have thought I would be here?”
I then got berated by her because apparently I lack “common courtesy”. I’m still a little baffled by the whole thing, mainly because I would assume if someone leaves at 4 and it is after 4, they aren’t there.
Does anyone else have problems with stuff like this?

I wouldn't say that I have problems, but I have an NT office mate who insists on telling me when she's going to lunch every single day. She verbalizes a lot of stuff that I normally wouldn't. She's big on all of the social niceties and general pleasantries (ugh) that drive me batty. Every single day around 11:30, she says "I'm going to go eat." The reminder was nice when she first started, because she does leave on the early side, but now it's not really necessary - she's been there for 6 months now.

If she thinks I'm rude, she hasn't come out and said anything directly to me about it. Then again, she's even admitted that she's not assertive and uses guilt trips to get her own way.

You're getting the third degree from your co-workers becasue your leaving at 4pm without giving prior notice to others signifies to them that you have no desire to be a team player.

I learned this at my grocrey stocking job. If someone left with out saying goodbye it angered everyone else. The others felt that leaving early meant that one wasn't willing to pull his socially determined weight, that you had no concern for your fellow workers, and that you had no loyalty to your employer.

Don't ask me why this is, I don't understand this either.

Really? I would have never thought that. My first thought actually was that she was too absent minded to pay attention to the time. Now that you say that though I can see what you mean. I am having issues with the office small talk/gossip as well, perhaps that was her lashing out for more than just not saying good bye then if that was why it upset her.

Several of the women I work with like to chatter for a long time about nothing and once in a while they ask me things (trying to add me to the conversation I suppose) but I never really say something that is what they were looking for I think. For instance "did you have a good weekend?" is a yes or no question to me. But if I say yes or no they look at me like they are waiting for me to say something else, and I am done talking already. I don't really like being put on the spot with questions honestly. I can't tell if they are hoping I'll ask about thier weekend or asking for details about mine, or maybe it is something different all together.... bleh.

You are exactly right.

And if you leave early, let's say 30 minutes... that is 30 minutes of work you DIDN'T do and others had to absorb that load. I think the rudeness of that is obvious.

The bottom line is whether or not you understand why, you need to follow the social rules. Otherwise people will give you a hard time, a hard time that you could avoid by following the rules



I get off at 4 because I start at 7am, I'm not leaving early from work. Besides, I'm the only one who could do my job in my office, so no one is having to take up any extra work when I am not there.

regarding the small talk....
I *understand* that something more is expected to be said, however I can never figure out what they are expecting me to say at the time it is happening. Having grown up in a large, talkative family I understand that there is supposed to be more fill in the blank chatter, I just never know what is the appropriate thing to say because I wouldn’t feel the need to say anything if I wasn’t being put on the spot.

Where I work, the hours are fairly flexible, but I get in at 9 and leave at 5. Some people leave earlier, some leave later. But when I am getting up from my desk to leave for the day, I just say, "See you tomorrow" or "goodbye" to the rest of the team, and everything seems to be OK.
We don't have cubicles to separate the employees from each other, so everyone can see when you are about to leave anyway.

We don't have cubes either (I wish we did actually), just desks that have hutches and the door beeps when someone opens it, which I guess is part of why this confuses me also. I try to remember to say "I'm going home", but like a lot of things, I just forget to most days, I am kind of in my own space by the end of the day, a little exhausted from all the noise and people and not as good at being "courteous" I guess.
It can be frustrating to me, because while I sort of understand some of the people I work with do the things they do because in their mind it seems natural, it doesn't make it any easier for me to try and do those things.

I think of it kind of like learning Spanish. I can understand a lot of Spanish, but it is because I translate it in my head and go "oh, this word means this, and it was in this order so he just said _____" but I can't think in Spanish. I feel like that with other people sometimes, if I think it out carefully I can realize "okay, this person is standing in front of me, they said ____, and they are smiling, they probably are expecting me to respond" That doesn't mean that it occurs to me to naturally respond, or that I will think that through every time someone talks to me. Which may add to it because the times when I do go through that in my head, I respond and other times I forget to or am unaware of the fact I was expected to unless someone says something to me about it.

I had a similar problem. However adding a walk through the lab telling key people (the one's I had noticed were chattier) "have a good night/weekend" to my departure routine not only solved the problem, but made them see me as "friendlier" and "more approachable".

Maybe she was just having a bad day.

My son is an aspie. I try to script things for him when he is in a new situation. He follows the script or adapts it as well as he can. Complaining that things don't make sense will not change the reality of needing to respond to your co-workers. Have somebody who understands you and your situation help you script some things for these situations. You don't need to socialize with these people outside of work if you don't want, but if you aren't seen as a team player you will run the risk of losing your job. As I tell my son, life isn't fair. You can't fight gravity. Certain things just are, you can't change them. You have to learn to adapt.

I know this thread is a little old, but I just joined the site.

Sometimes there are good practical reasons to let people know when you're leaving, too. At my office, the last one to leave locks the door. There have been a few times when one of us assumed everyone else was gone, and it turned out someone was just in the bathroom or going to the vending machines, etc., and didn't have their keys and got locked out.

It seems pretty silly to me not to take your keys with you when you leave the room, especially near the end of the day when this sort of thing is likely, but it sucks when you appear to be the last one there and you're not sure whether you should lock the door or not. So now we make sure we let people know when we're leaving (as well as when we're just stepping out for a few minutes). During the winter it's easier, because you can just check to see whether their coat is still in their cubicle.

Even if you leave at the same time every day, less observant people might not necessarily notice that. And there's always the possibility that one day might be an exception.

Jeremy

In a lot of jobs, mine for instance, you can sort of set your own hours to an extent. For example, although 3:30 today would have bee 8hrs, I'm still here at 4pm. There are a variety of reasons, but mostly it turns out that they don't care if I work over a little and I can use the extra money. The point is that NT's always assume everyone is exactly like them. So if they make a habit of shifting their hours a little they assume you do to and therefore they don't know you've left until you tell them. Just because you left at 4 yesterday, you might have decided to stay late today.

Thought of something else that might help pooftis. Choose something you do on Saturday, usually whatever takes up the majority of your time, and plan out ahead of time what words you will use to relate it to your coworkers if they ask on Monday. The amazing thing is that it doesn't matter what it is. If all you do is lay around and what movies. Then tell them you just laid around and watched movies. I know its wierd because they don't actually care what you did, they just expect you to follow the pattern.