Does anyone volunteer/work with asd people?

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outofplace
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Joined: 10 Jun 2012
Age: 52
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,771
Location: In A State of Quantum Flux

26 Sep 2012, 1:54 am

I have a co-worker who is younger than me and, like me has ASD and ADHD traits but is able to more or less function. I have been teaching him to work on cars as that is a shared interest between us. Likewise, he has been a good sounding board for my coming to grips with my aspie traits. He even guessed I suspected AS even before I mentioned it to him (so I guess it's obvious to outside observers who are on the spectrum). I also have another co-worker who is older than me that I suspect is on the spectrum. He lacks my level of intelligence and his literal thinking gets him in trouble. However, I have helped him to inject some gray area into his thinking which has helped him to go from the slowest driver at the pizza place we all work at, to one of the faster ones. I did this by teaching him my routing rules which deal more with the big picture of the overall run time rather than the minor details of things like the actual age of the order. (I am the store's fastest driver and uniquely qualified to teach this sort of thing.)

As far as it goes, the younger one is easier to deal with than the older one. However, I still get along with both fairly well. We also have someone with hard core ADHD and he can be a bit difficult to converse with at times because of a combination of his seemingly low self confidence and the fact that his mind skips as bad as it does. All of them have some manner of difficulty dealing with management at times and are also misunderstood at times by the NT's. Of all of us, I probably have the easiest time of it and am the most respected. I sometimes end up having to use my position to stand up for them and try to bridge the gap between both sides. I used to have a profound amount of problems in various working environments and so I feel it is my duty to help those who have similar struggles to overcome them and be understood.


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Uncertain of diagnosis, either ADHD or Aspergers.
Aspie quiz: 143/200 AS, 81/200 NT; AQ 43; "eyes" 17/39, EQ/SQ 21/51 BAPQ: Autistic/BAP- You scored 92 aloof, 111 rigid and 103 pragmatic