Anyone else have to work a low-stress simple job?

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..Thank you.
Do you see my point t about some of my inherent disadvantages , which neither positive thinking nor a haircut will delete?
Then there's the homeless vibe I doubtless, Aspie-ness aside, probably give off. Oh, and my teeny-weeny record.

I decided I wanted to avoid anything scientific or business-related, but more because I hated the office politics, the need to give up a lot of free time to keep progressing, and the competitive environment when I stepped into IT. The relationships I had with clients and coworkers were always negative, like people were angry or trying to dodge blame.

I don't know about retail but things like horticulture, gardening, and farming interest me a lot.

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Amen to the idea that there are different kinds of stress. To me, traditionally stressful things don't bother me at all - because they're simple. I've had guns pointed at my face and didn't feel stressed, because I knew what to do about it. It was clear and understandable. Things like major surgeries and major accidents didn't bother me either. I was in a hatchback and got run over by a truck once, and all I did was hitch a ride back to where I was staying and go to bed, because the car was crushed and obviously, couldn't be driven.
But things involving intricate social systems one is expected to intuitively navigate, situations where focus is on social graces, communications, "team work," power plays, money, emotional understanding and intelligence, situations where there are behavioural expectations and anything outside them is unacceptable - that I find incredibly stressful and cannot deal with. I cannot deal with being trapped in a situation, and unable to get out if I need to.

^^ You would make an ideal "first responder."

^ Precisely. That's what I concluded. And based on that logic, I studied at university for years in that field.
But what really gets you about these jobs in settled societies is it is, much more often than not, not about crisis whatsoever. You get out there thinking you'll be up to your elbows in blood, bring it on - but what you get instead is the "hidden" majority of these jobs. You find your days full of social games with your colleagues that depend entirely on how popular you are, and how completely you conform to the job culture. You end up having your personality scrutinized day in and out and gossiped about by co-workers and others, and it soon becomes apparent that the fact that you're different, you don't have the right lifestyle or orientations or personal history, you don't fit in, you look wrong, you talk wrong, you move wrong, you make all the typical autistic mistakes about socialization - all this crap you didn't think would matter when you were there to save someone's life, all make up the majority of the job.
Everything you thought would be visceral, immediate, clear and extremely necessary instead degenerates into the routine, the pointless, the structures of a society which is way too comfortable with itself to be urgent.
They say the devil finds work for idle hands - in settled societies, this is even true of first response. It's not about life and death. It's like everything else. A homogenizing social cage that I could not handle.
Which is why my goals to date tend more toward working in literal warzones. There should not be room enough for this nonsense there.
I'm a ways off this goal however, due to the structures and restrictions of the abysmally settled society I currently peripherally live in, but I'm working on it.

I know an Aspie who decided to become a night watchman and has been doing it for a long time. He's said it's been the best job in the world for him. Gets left alone and has plenty of time to read or study or whatever.

I can't really handle retail or fast food. I've tried both and they were too stressful. I work in a library now, and have so far (I just started less than two weeks ago) found it to be ideal for me. I don't have super-long shifts and I don't have to interact with people too much. I can take short breaks when needed and the people there are very understanding.

I actually found retail to be sky-high stressful for me, not because of the work itself but because of the customer service aspect and also just co-workers.

But I think I know what you're saying -- you're talking about being capable of a "good" job or career but needing the lower stress of a "simple" job in terms of how at least you get to just show up, do the work, and go home, as opposed to a more corporate career where there is a level of intellectual and emotional investment and commitment expected in more ways in terms of teamwork, being on call, needed for meetings, overtime, being part of a corporate culture, attending conventions etc. Although, even in retail, they expect some of these things of you these days.

I'm a bright, talented person who would have been -- "on paper" -- supposedly capable of a more challenging career path in something that pays better, but I have had to seek the "simplest" work I could find, expressly to avoid the stress I experience acutely in "normal" work settings and jobs. I discovered after many years of struggling to cope, that I work best alone and as my own boss. Failing to find a normal position that offers me the solitude and autonomy I function best within, I went into self employment in something that people unfortunately look down on, and assume I'm doing it because I must be stupid, unqualified, uneducated, can't do more interesting work etc. Though I say it myself, I'm none of those things.

I'm doing it because people drive me f**king crazy, lol.

I'm also a creative person whose talents are in the arts -- which doesn't pay unless you're one of those lucky enough to go viral, which is actually, behind the scenes, also all about.......people. Networking. Knowing all the right people. It's that "people" thing again. . . . .

So in order to have the time and energy I really want to spend on my creative projects, I need a simple "show up, work, leave it behind" job rather than a "career" that takes all my energy for corporate purposes.

It also means I'm in poverty for life.

I've been thinking about what my options might be if I switched jobs to do something simpler and less stressful. I would ideally love to have a job tailor-made for me (companies sometimes "create" jobs for people with disabilities, by giving them a few small pieces of someone else's job, or by creating work for them to do). Something very simple, with only a handful of basic tasks (no more than four at a max) that were written down for me to follow step by step. My biggest source of stress when working is multitasking and learning to perform complex multi-step assignments. I really struggle with too many instructions at once, and I can never memorise all the steps of a task that's too difficult for me, where the NTs around me who learn the job alongside me eventually have no trouble with it. I'd love to be a dog walker and feeder at a humane society or doggie daycare. No cleaning, no customer interaction, nothing but feeding and walking. I'd be perfect at something simple and repetitive like that.

I think that so-called "simple" jobs tend to be very stressful in their own way because the environment is usually more informal and personal conduct less "proper". I couldn't deal with that.

Until recently, my friend always had low paid jobs like cleaning, factory work, supermarkets etc, and she said that there was a lot of banter and often inappropriate behaviour from her colleagues. Being an extrovert who is able to get on with most people, she could generally cope with that but now that she has a better job she feels much more comfortable.

Ideally, I'd have my own business so I didn't have to deal with workplace politics, but if that wasn't possible I'd need to work somewhere quiet and formal.

I've worked in customer service/call center for the several years. It's an entry level position. I've been thinking about finding something with less interaction with the public, as there are days when it's tough.

I don't have any work experience but recently I came to realize that I want a simple job. I used to idealize a more creative, exciting job but they also come with lots of pressure and instability. Now my ideal job is something at Estate's bureaucracy, because you just take an admission test and then you don't have much pressure on work.

Sometimes, what makes a job stressful isn't the field or position itself but the way the place is managed. My job could be stressful but it usually isn't because my bosses usually provide for enough time to complete tasks.

This is basically what I mean. As someone with aspergers, it's like I feel too immature (intellectually, in a certain way) to do things like engineering or high responsibility jobs... I don't act immature though, it's just that the way I think is immature. i.e. if I were tasked to engineer a bridge, I'd feel like a "child engineering the bridge" rather than as an adult. I feel like I'm a child in a man's body (but not because I'm misbehave, but intellectually). Even though I feel childish, I was never one to misbehave. I'm very law-abiding and am able to get along with just about everyone. It's just that I'm different... and because I'm different I may be stuck having to do simple jobs for money (like working at Starbucks or Whole Foods), and then pursuing my own ideas/hobbies on the side.

Also, just because we're in a simple job doesn't necessarily mean we'll be poor. Eventually, we'll know the place well enough to move up to assistant manager, and then eventually manager (which means 40,000 a year or more). It just means we're job-oriented rather than career-oriented.

Most of the dollar slices are probably cheap ingredients, but I found one place that is very good. Vinny Vincent pizza in East Village. It's actually a very good cheese slice and here's why...

Cheese slice: $1.00
Pepperoni slice: $3.00
Speciality slice: $3.50

So what they're doing is assuming people will want toppings and pay the extra premium. But I'd just get the cheese slice (which was good quality cheese), and then put the toppings on at home (if I wanted). So if your'e ever in the East Village area, try Vinny Vincent pizza... trust me, I tried all the pizza places. Also, I love Two Boots pizza (but then you're looking at $4 a slice...).

But... this was back in 2015, so maybe that pizza place has changed since then...