do aspies change jobs frequently?

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do you work with people? (shudder, i hate this)
i worked as a casher in mcdonalds, salad girl, cleaning offices, cleaning an animal shelter, typist, shampoo factory, back kitchen help in a restaurant that now i forgot its name, lol. too many workplaces... now i work doing survies over the phone. no way can i deal with people face to face or try to sell something, not me.
how many jobs did you have, and what are you doing now, and which one was your favorite/worse one?
i liked typing the best, hated shampoo factory because it was too boring. i dont mind doing survies. it's not as bad as it sounds!

My work history is strewn with inability to tolerate a job for long, and the problems that come are always to do with my people problems, and issues that arise in the dynamic between myself and co-workers or bosses. The inability to cope with customers has also been a factor, but I would say that the biggest one was the co-worker dynamic.

I've worked retail -- store assistant, cashier, etc and the longest I stayed at one job was maybe eight months. At every position I've held, everything starts out great -- I manage to be liked by my bosses/whoever hired me, I "present well" at interviews most of the time, I manage to be reasonably well liked by my co-workers, and everything starts out dandy.

But that's always just the honeymoon period. Gradually, misunderstandings creep into the picture. My actions, non-actions, or something I say gets misconstrued, people build up a reason to dislike me, and things tend to escalate to the point where arguments happen, the boss is pissed off, "she said/she said"s happen and I walk out.

In my last retail job, for example, someone thought I was offending them when they had been nagging me about something and I responded with a reasonable -- well, what I thought was reasonable -- defence of myself. It wasn't even anything horrible thing, I just stood up for myself because I felt the person was getting close to being a bully, being condescending and a jerk to me.

Well, this person's best buddy at the place, whom I actually got along with incredibly well, was pissed off at his friend being pissed off -- and so in loyalty to his friend, he turned on me too. And wasn't my friend there anymore. The atmosphere became poisoned with all this loyalties/broken friendships BS, management got involved, and I was the bad guy in everyone's eyes.

Of course to this day I don't agree. I feel like I was the victim of a bunch of bullies who turned on me in that place.

Anyway, I walked out, and I haven't worked as an employee since. I took up self employment in something very boring and mundane -- I'm a self employed housekeeper. It's boring and trivial but there is a certain calm and simple satisfaction in carrying out the work well, and I get my mental stimulation from my freetime pursuits, which are creative, artistic ones -- I write, I'm a musician, I do photography, I read, I'm thinking of writing a book, and I'm interested in wildlife issues.

But I've now lasted at my boring self employed job for twenty years....go figure. It helps enormously that I work alone, have no co-workers, and not even really a boss because the people I help are clients, not "bosses" and if any of them is a pain in the ass I just quit and find a new customer for that time slot. It's the only thing I've lasted at. As long as you pick and choose clients who are nice, it's a quiet, peaceful job and you don't have to socialize or getting along well with a whole bunch of people.

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A m the opposite problem in that Im TOO loyal and stayed in jobs long after I should have moved on. Loyalty is actually seen as a bad thing in work history believe it or not because the assumption is made you are lazy and unmotivated.

I am happy with my present job and have great coworkers. Why should I move on just to get "experience"?

When I was younger I bounced around every couple years because I got bored with the job or had issues with my co-workers, but I've been at my current place for eight years, and I prefer the stability.

I agree with your thoughts on being self employed. I wouldn't have it any other way. The thought of giving up all my autonomy makes me quite unhappy. I'm lucky in that I can choose to work with people who value my opinion.

Last edited by superluminary on 10 Jan 2014, 2:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have only worked five jobs and doing my fifth. I think that is pretty good because lot of aspies have had a lot more than that in this short amount of time in ten years. The reason why I have had five jobs was because I worked in the school library in my senior year and then school ended. I quit my second job because I got another job that gave me more hours and I could make more there. Then I moved and then had my fourth job and then I quit because I was only working about once a month because I was laid off my full time job due to the economy and they wanted to save on money so when things picked up again, they still didn't use me unless someone called in sick so I quit when I was in job training and then was unemployed for four months and then I was given a job. I have been at this one for almost four years now. That's the longest I have ever kept a job so far.

Seems I'm pretty much the same as BirdInFlight. I do great at the job interview and the initial introductory period, and I get along with my co-workers at first, and then the social awkwardness and misunderstandings pile up, and I get alienated from most of my co-workers pretty fast.

I have a rather spotty and inconsistent working history that spans the past 5 years. I will typically hold a job for 3-6 months, then leave for varying reasons. I've held a total of 6 jobs now. I've also had a couple of stretches of being unemployed, the longest of which has been 8 months.

I have worked in the corporate environment now for ~ 27 years (all in high technology). During that time, I have had 15 different jobs plus 3 stints of unemployment (each of which lasted ~ 6 months). My longest job was 5 years. My shortest one was 1 month.

Pretty much, each time I started a new job, within months, I was looking for a new one.

I became a contractor roughly 4 years ago. That worked better (than being employed). As I was able to become disengaged from office politics (which never made sense to me).

Looking back, I feel fortunate (and quite surprised) that I was able to make it so long. From my perspective, Aspergers can be debilitating in the corporate environment. Especially when dealing with illogical people.

This has been my achilles heel throughout my employment history. I have a very strong sense of loyalty and hate change and so I've stayed in jobs long after I should have left - at one point my inability to leave sent me into depression.

I also interview well and get along with people for awhile but then end up isolated and on the periphery of the group. I do like social contact to a degree and have a strong want to be accepted and liked that I've carried with me from my time in school.

I have been unemployed for a long time now, searching and typically finding that I can never make it beyond the interview phase. We all know they never tell you the reasons unless the reasons are legitimate and won't offend you. I know the reasons for me are that I am bombing the interview process due to lack of social skills and being perceived as strange. Every passing month I remain unemployed and lacking in formal education just makes it worse, because it's another month added to the long period of time being unemployed, the longer that period of time gets the less likely anyone is to hire me, so the problems compounds itself month-on-month.

I have been focusing on other aspects of my life in the last 4 or so years as well, but I need something, I need income and a job, but I can never attain these things. My previous real job was working at a Subway and I struggled to deal with customers, could not keep up with the sandwich making and was told I made customers nervous and especially whenever it was a parent with children. Prior to that, I had the worst job any of us can imagine, working in a steel mill that my father pushed me into (he worked there). Most NTs would love this, pay was great, really had good job security, did not require education, it was just work you could "do" and get paid well for it. For someone like me, it was pure hell, it was disgusting and loud, it was filthy and hazardous, coworkers were all very masculine and gossipy and if you were not a NT male with a love of manly things and heavy machinery, these people would eat you alive and that is what happened to me. Very quickly I was being bullied and giving my father a bad name, I am sure I humiliated him among his friends. They quickly just gave me a broom and had me doing 'idiot' work like sweeping but I struggled with this as well due to my problem of getting lost in thought or obsessing over quality, so I'd be trying to clean some store room off on my own and end up getting own small area VERY VERY clean, but never accomplishing the 'general' task of cleaning, so you'd end up with this big filthy room that only had a single small area of it cleaned to obsessiveness. Had a similar problem years prior with dishwashing at a restaurant, I was fired in under a month, I'd be cleaning a skillet or something and the whole line would get backed up because I was trying so hard to clean it properly and to detail, I had to be taken aside multiple times and told I could not get the burn marks out of the bottom of the skillet, then I'd argue with the boss about how he lied to me, because he would tell me to "clean things real good" and so that is precisely what I would do, then he would become angry with me because his lack of clarification caused a situation that he did not want.

So of course when you're like that and obsessing over so much detail, holding down any job is hard. Doesn't help that you tried to correct the boss, I know that's never a good thing and most people in positions of power in the workplace can not tolerate criticism, it is their way or the highway even if they are 100% wrong. My goal right now in life is to just try to get into something before my unemployment period becomes so massive that I have no choice but to live as a homeless person on the streets.

OP you say you liked being a typist and I believe I could be quite good at such a line of work, even if it could be very boring. I type very fast and obsessively, so I figure that'd be a benefit, the downside is most of those jobs are basically secretarial and I do not feel I can present myself well to clients/customers. Tuck me away in a dimly lit room and give me stuff to type and I'd probably be the best typist in the world, though.

Hard for me to understand job changers because changing jobs takes a hundred times the work that it takes to hold down a job. So I tend to stay in rut too long.

My current main job is counting inventory in stores for an inventory service. Its a good bad job. Boring, but not as bad as most boring jobs. On weekends I work for a party-deejay company: sometimes I still do actual deejaying, but usually nowadays Im the back-up doing boring office work: so its either terrifying-but-thrilling, or easy-but-boring.

I don't even easily reach the stage of passing the job interview. I get disliked almost instantly in most cases. So it's worse than changing jobs very often. I've had my current job for quite a long time though. I never have to have any direct contact with a client. It's chemical analysis. I like the job itself but I'm having problems with my colleagues. It's about time to move on to a different job.

I've had 13 different jobs in just the last 5 years, 26 different jobs total since I graduated high school. Yes, I change job frequently. I don't change jobs just for the heck of it. I'm normally pressured out of jobs because I don't interact with the other employees or because I spend the day researching my special interests instead of doing my work. The job I currently have, I've had for over a year and a half now. It's the longest I've ever held a job.

I loathe interviewing for jobs. Unfortunately, my track record is really bad (as measured by the rate at which the interviews transform into job offers).

I fully understand that there are several parts of interviewing. First, do you have the skills to do the role? Second, does the company believe you are motivated to do the role? Third, are you a “fit” for the company?

- I typically always have the skills for the advertised role. After all, why apply if you are unable to do the work.
- The motivation thing can be a bit difficult. I am now 50. I no longer have the energy of a 20 year old. Am I willing to work above and beyond? Sometimes. But definitely not always.
- The “fit thing” is the wild card. Ultimately, it comes down to whether the people who interview you “like” you. This is where things get complex. How do you “act” in order to get people to like you? Most “experts” say, “be yourself”. But, what if that doesn’t work?

A former colleague of mine, who was in sales, once compared the interviewing process to managing a sales pipeline. He indicated that you need to have a “funnel” of opportunities lined up. Fortunately, you only need to find one company to hire you.

Not me. That would require being able to GET a job a lot more easily. Once I get one, I stick with it.

I used to do so. There would be long periods where I couldn't find a job, then I would take anything I could get--food service, tourism, retail, call center, secretarial (all terrible for someone like me)--and then after a few weeks or months would burn out from sensory overload and social issues (pissed-off at coworkers or boss, or uncomfortable talking to the people I was supposed to be serving). I'd become convinced I might be fired and so I would quit preemptively, and would be unemployed again for however long it would take to find the next job.

I like my job now, it is basically a university job managing a program I created, so it is the next best thing to self-employment. I have been at it a few years now. Prior to that I worked part time at an art supply shop, and was there eight years because my boss was tolerant and I liked most of my customers and coworkers. Ideally I would like to do the same job on a contractual basis, so I could be fully self-employed and take on more work as I choose (current position is only part-time, no benefits).