Employers Guide to Asperger's Syndrome (PDF)

Post Reply New Topic

Have you ever suddenly gone back in time (figuratively), and realized you made some spectacular social faux pas at the workplace that probably explained why, for example, you didn't have that job for long?

I read this Employers Guide to Asperger's Syndrome

Employers Guide PDF

and my jaw hit the floor. Turns out cubicle work isn't actually work, but just a giant social bee hive. Which explains why I was never given any actual work on my internship, but only told to go and talk to people and see what they were doing. Of course, I thought that was a ghastly idea, boring, and sure to get me fired, so instead I organized the supply room. Hm.

Dam.

Also, when the boss calls a meeting and asks you to bring suggestions as to how he could make the operational system better next year, he actually doesn't want to hear any suggestions. Especially not two typed pages worth complete with flowcharts and diagrams. What he wants is to be told he's done a great job and everything's great.

Yeea....whoops.

hence why humanity is a giant pile of failure. Social skills and s*** matter far too much :/

It's not just the social aspect that affects us in the workplace though...my biggest problems lie in my superiors neglecting to give me specific enough instructions, training, or tasks, and in the overpowering sensory environment that I'm expected to excel in.

I'm trying to move my co-worker and myself to a different office space, for general practicality reasons as well as my Asperger issues, but the manager, though a friend of my co-worker, keeps writing us off...and I'm trying to figure out if I should bring Asperger's into it to speed things along. The instrument repair shop where I work is one of the most uncomfortable and distracting environments I could think of for someone with sensory issues. The noise of the instruments being play-tested, the different equipment, and the loud, crude and vulgar attitude of the techs is bad enough for a customer service department to have to be in the middle of, but with AS it's downright unbearable. Constant chemical and greasy food smells and poorly-maintained fluorescent lights flickering warrant frequent hideout trips to the bathroom to prevent meltdowns...so far it's worked. But I can't get anything done.

Others on this forum say you shouldn't tell your employer about your AS...but this handout seems to indicate it can help. And I've already proven myself as a capable and productive employee...

So now I'm confused? Lol.

Oh yeah, and I've definitely organized my share of supply rooms during various employments. Nice and quiet, and boxes of supplies don't care if you say the wrong thing...

Of course, that begs the question, why was I talking to boxes of supplies in the first place?

Your guess is as good as mine. ^_^

The oddest thing that's ever happened to me at work was this. I remember once all the support staff where I work had to go for a training session. The guy doing the training gives us a problem with a solution that requires "thinking outside the box" and asks us to do it. So I look at it and think of two ways that it can be done. Then he asks if anyone has solved it. I say "yes, here's how" and he looks blank for a second, completely ignores me and tells everyone that solving it requires "thinking outside the box" which is why none of us could do it, and then says "here's how it is done" and repeats one of the solutions I gave him. It stunned me.

I don't remember anything about what he was supposedly teaching us, for some reason.

lolllll. We've all been there. People need to say what they mean, I'm sure even NTs who don't perpetuate BS have trouble with this, too. Where do draw the line? Good Lawd.

I've had professors do similar things to me a couple of times. Both times, I ended up in quasi-meltdown in the classroom, arguing with the professor. Both times, I immediately dropped the class afterward, even though one was too late to drop so I got a "W" on my transcript and one was too late to even get a W so I had to visit the dean of the department (which was a painful and difficult visit, I think for both of us) and get special permission to leave the class without an F.

I've been told I'm supposed to learn to "suck it up and deal with it" but I haven't learned how to do that yet in cases where someone is publically insulting my intelligence or integrity.

I've had that happen numerous times as well. I took a history class focusing on the USA in the 20th century, it was a dreadfully easy class, even had open book tests. I never take notes anyway, don't need to.

So, the teacher stressed the point, repeatedly, that any answers we needed would be found in the book for the class. Come test time I looked up the answers, entered the correct ones and expected that I'd gotten them all right.

I got the test back and the teacher had given me a 70% on the test. I was shocked and asked why he had marked any of my answers wrong, as I'd gotten them all from the book, as he'd instructed us to.

He replied that the book isn't always right and the answers he'd marked wrong weren't correct in his opinion. I had to argue with him for close to half an hour to get him to mark the answers right, and even then he would only concede to half of those he'd marked wrong as being actually correct.

I even looked them all up again and showed him where the answers were in the book, and they were word for word what I put. He wouldn't even budge, despite his idiocy, until I said I'd have to go to the Dean with the matter if he refused to be cooperative.



I have been told that many times as well, and still as of yet have not determined how it is accomplished.

I'm going to print this out and "accidently" drop it behind the counter at the vet's office when the techs and receptionists aren't looking. Or "carelessly" leave it on the exam table when I bring in my pet.

o yeah, college had plenty of the same experiences.. the most memorable being when I asked a question and the teacher (some mohawked, tattooed punk 3 years younger than me) pointed at me and said

"that is a stupid question, I'm not even going to answer that question." and then turned to the class and shouted "Stop asking me stupid questions people, I will not answer any more of them!!".
Then he turned his back and ignored me.

I FLIPPED.

Walked out, went not to the director of the program but to the DEAN of the whole communication arts program and ranted for an hour about how I paid to learn, and it's a school they are supposed to teach not call customers stupid, and I won't put up with it blah blah blah.

He was reamed out and his class was audited by the Dean for seven weeks thereafter. Almost lost his job.

He didn't like me any more than I liked him after that, haha, but he never called another student "stupid"!

Every other student had been called names by him at one point, and they all complained about him between classes, but nobody said anything. I figured they just didn't care about getting their education. But maybe there was some invisible social rule they were all following that I missed. Dunno.

Sounds like in that situation, not following that invisible social rule was the right thing to do. Much easier for an aspie to do it... it's easy to not follow a rule one doesn't know. Those who easily pick up on the rules need to learn the wisdom to sometimes not follow them.

I was actually kicked out of an internship program because I would often be so focused on something that I didn't acknowledge anyone else by stopping what I was doing to turn around and give people enough eye contact. It was what led me to get the diagnosis of Asperger's as I thought I was a good worker.

I was reading that and I am having apparently more problems with expressions than I thought. I didn't know that "bad hair day" had any meaning beyond that, and I have no clue what "run with the numbers" means at all. I need to look up a list of expressions to see what else I'm missing.

this isn't a workplace story but the concept is similar:

a friend sent out a mass email to announce his new art & photography website, asking for feedback.

i paged through the site and sent him back a lengthy note that said these sorts of things:
- on the page with your art thumbnails, there is no link to return to the main page.
- clicking on a thumbnail to see a bigger photo of artwork resizes the browser window, making it difficult to keep navigating the site.
- such and such section of the site does not work correctly in certain web browsers ...


no response.

clearly that was inappropriate (maybe even rude?). he must have wanted to hear "your artwork is great!" his silence was probably supposed to be a clue, but i get nothing from silence other than "what did i do wrong????" and it drives me MAD.

i do figure these things out on my own, but it often takes me months or even years.

I was in a class where the professor was abusive to all the students except those who were getting As. Since 3/4 of the class was failing, that meant she was abusive to almost everyone. (This was also the class where my fellow students were abusive toward me and doing things like grabbing my test paper to pass it around and show everyone that I got 117% on the test and pretending to punch me in the face but stopping their fist two inches from my nose, etc.)

Someone in the class decided to put together a letter describing how the teacher was behaving and get everyone to sign it. The person who did the letter was someone who was nice to me so when she brought it to me and I read it and agreed with everything it said, I signed it too. Apparently, I was the only person who signed it who was not failing the class. So no one else got taken seriously but the department chair called me in and asked me about the professor (without making any reference to the letter.) I told the truth: that I liked the professor and enjoyed her class but that I had seen her treat many other students very poorly. That professor was gone the next semester.

I'm still torn about what I really should have done. I was honest and I don't think I should have lied. But I wonder if I should have signed that letter. I did like the professor and did well in her class so I, personally, had no reason to sign the letter. And in signing it, I gave credence not only to what the girl who was nice to me had written but also to all those people who were abusing me in the class. I kind of feel like I chose sides and picked my abusers over a professor who was good to me. But the letter was honest and she was being abusive toward other students. I don't know if I'll ever smooth out my cognitive dissonance over that situation.

In my opinion you did what was right.

I understand the conflict of thinking those other students were deserving what they were getting from the prof, but the prof really has no right to treat the students that way. Neither do the students have the right to treat you that way. The difference is the position of "authority" of the prof vs the more peer-like level between the students and you.

Last edited by eon on 17 Jun 2010, 8:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.