I'm pretty sure this guy is an Aspie. Should I tell him?

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There's a guy at work who I'm pretty sure must have ASD. It took me awhile to pick up on this, because he has all the traits I don't and I have all the traits he doesn't. He does seem to make eye contact with people (which I usually don't), and he has friends, but he's very awkward socially. My workplace involves people who are very passionate about music and computers, so a pretty high degree of "geekiness" and eccentricity is tolerated, and I suspect that even the NTs I work with would come across as weird and aloof in most settings - so the fact that even the other people at my workplace find him hard to relate to (in a way that they don't find me to be) says something. He chalks it up to having been homeschooled, which I'm sure is a contributing factor, but I began noticing other things. He eats the same (odd) thing for lunch everyday, doesn't get metaphors, analogies, or jokes, and can be obsessively quantitative. I didn't think he stimmed, until I noticed that he's always chewing gum - even when eating something else - and he said it "helps him relax". He seems to be very at home with numbers and has really good hand/eye coordination (he juggles, among other things), but can't tell right from left (I can't, either, so I can relate to that). I watched him have a meltdown a few days ago. He's young enough that he could have been DX'd as a child, but it might not have been observed, since he was homeschooled. Or maybe his mother homeschooled him because he was DX'd and she thought he couldn't handle school? I can't decide if I should say something to him or not. If he's unaware, having someone like me bring it up may not be pleasant for him - he's already freaking out because he's a temp and his assignment is about to end. If he's unaware that he may be ASD, and someone suggests it to him, he may stress out more. On the other hand, maybe it would be good for him to hear it - maybe it's the answer he was always waiting for. Or maybe he already knows?

Yeah you should tell him. If someone had told me about autism when I was younger it would have saved me massive amounts of grief. I know a guy who I'm fairly sure has high functioning autism too. He seems to be real cynical of me or something though which prevents me from befriending him though so I'm not really in a position to tell him I think hes autistic.

Sit down, have lunch with him, and share and that you have Asperger's.
(just have a matter-of-fact backup plan in case he takes offense)

Try and share with him an episode from your life that is mostly positive. Okay, this is how I am, it gives me some strengths, it also gives me some issues which I just handle in straightforward fashion

Unless you're good friends with this guy, I don't think bringing up his own health and attempting to diagnose him is a good idea. He could easily take offense to it.

That's why you take a medium step and you're ready to graciously back off.

Also, there's a book entitled 'Neurodiversity' which seems new at Barnes & Noble, and reading ten pages or so, it seems good not great. Now, if you don't mind spending the money on the book, and you don't mind partially coming out of the closet, you could leave it on your desk or read it while eating lunch.

PS None of this should be done out of a sense of misplaced obligation. If the energy feels right, if it feels hopeful, then you can choose to roll with it.

I think that you should be careful, about such matters.

That part hurts. I remember when I was 19 and I got a job in October at a department store. I was let go in March, and it stung. Wow, I'm good at closing the register, a lot of customers like me. No one (on the management team) has really worked with me, no one has really taken an interest in me.

Well, what happened is that I was hired for Christmas. And I was kept about 10 or 12 weeks past Christmas, and that's a compliment. And with things now slow, they're just letting some of the new people go. And maybe of the managers don't really invest themselves that much in their jobs, they tend to get overpeopled, they have limited amount of social energy ( . . . this is my social skills now, that I can kind of read it that way. But back then, no way)

-----------------------------

And now, with my job working for the U.S. Census coming to an end. Well, it's not leading to a future job even though I've done a good job. We're not really going to become friends (with co-workers, even though training class was great in some ways, and things have been good since, although at times lonely. A co-worker has shared that her son has autism. I took a chance and shared with her that I have autism. Her son is about my same age. He likes sports and movies and creativity like I do. The mom has suggested that we meet. I think it's a good idea, too. But light touch, let's just meet, we might hit it off, we might not, let's just meet.)

Even with all this, it's still sad, and a little unfair, that the census job is coming to an end. Unfair perhaps because the world is not as open as it could be, esp on the job front.

agreed.
a guy in my uni is totally aspie... one day i talked to him about it, and he was like "what the *** are you talking about"...
was quite upset when that happened

Would he benefit from be diagnosed? If not (granted that he's happy with his life and can take care of himself)
I don't see the purpose. He's probably found a way to compensate for his weaknesses. Besides AS is just a label and doesen't provide much insight - it's already there (for most). By the time I was diagnosed I had pretty much figured everything out on my own, neither the diagnostic criterias or the diagnose itself came as a surprise, you never now, maybe he'll feel the same way about it. What you must also consider is that you might offend him if you're not carefull - and if he knows about you having AS, he's probably looked it up already. Also he could suffer from what I like to call the 'geek- syndrome', without someones personal thoughts or inputs, an introvert person with geeky/nerdy interests could easily be thought of as being an aspie.

You may want to seek a diagnosis yourself before you go diagnosing it in others and telling them they have it

There is a downside. But the upside is such that it might be worth taking the risk. And this is why you do it in a series of medium steps (and I know, easier said than done and I'm still learning this part myself)

When I was 17, one semester I worked in the school office. The principal talked to me and said that my mother had shared that I was having health worries, and he said he thought, well, gosh, I've struggled, too, if I could just tell ol' _______.

Well, I was so shocked that my Mom had shared this confidence, esp since the secretary was the mother of a kid I used to pal around with several years before.

But, if the principal had just said in passing that he had a doctors appointment and he used to really worry about that kind of stuff, these days not so much, and he kept this aside to maybe just 30 seconds, just a little humorous, good-natured, joy-of-life riff, that could have been extremely helpful.

So, there might be a way to do it.

(trust your gut feelings, and again, sense of possibility, not obligation)