Remarkable minds just waiting for work - SMH

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Article in the SMH

Remarkable minds just waiting for work
JAMES RUSSELL has a truly remarkable knowledge of train timetables.

He was diagnosed with high-functioning autism as a child. Off the top of his head, the 20-year-old can tell you just about every Sydney train line affected by track work for the past two years, and the date it happened.

Yet the only work Mr Russell can get is filling envelopes and lugging boxes. Since leaving school - filled with hope for the future thanks to supportive teachers and a loving family - he has been shuffled from one menial job or TAFE certificate to another
http://www.smh.com.au/national/remarkab ... -qmad.html

Oh don't I know that feeling. I've gotten plenty of jobs, sure. But keeping them? That's a different story altogether. It's quite frustrating to live in a service oriented city as well, because there is literally nothing I can do here that doesn't involve interacting with people.

They'd still figure out how to pay us nothing for what we do and then get angry if we start asking for a decent return. Special interests are fun. If they want to utilize our SI's they pay big hard cash or they can do the bullsh*t walk.

I still think we should put our SI's up for auction to the highest bidder, and if we like the offer, take a non-returnable cash deposit to see if we can work with them. If we can't that's their fault, not ours. Their speculation.

Did he apply for work at the train company?

Not acting on what you have is the problem.

Someone is out walking every mile of track, alone, a boring job for most, but needed to catch failing sections before a train derails.

yes we have great mental skills, but so do computers that can show the age and condition of every section of rail. It still takes on the ground inspection.

Is he like our aspie crowd who want to start their first job on the Board of Directors?

Most people are underemployed, because that is what they do best.

[quote]
Someone is out walking every mile of track, alone, a boring job for most, but needed to catch failing sections before a train derails. [/quote]

Yeh true. We don't make enough effort. I'd like to do a Phd, but I can't even begin to think where to start.

I had this image of them putting in him a little office somewhere doing the work of couple of million
dollars worth of computing and software, paying him the minimum wage in return. For free publicity the train company bring him out every now and then for a freakshow interest slot on local news.

All I'm saying is we are worth a lot more than this.

I think the key phrase is "just waiting for work".

What I've found is that many people with AS who are unemployed that I know personally are doing just that. They're waiting around. When they do submit resumes, they only do a couple at a time based on preconceived ideas of what they can and can't do.

Or, they wait for a disability agency to set them up with another unpaid work term. But nothing ever comes out of it, so they just become more and more discouraged and eventually give up looking for work.

Getting to the point, you can't complain that people won't hire you if you're not even trying. I think that this is one of the main disadvantages of early diagnosis. You fall into this trap where you believe that your lifestyle is already set due to an ASD diagnosis, so you just go with the path of least resistance.

Katie

Indeed. Thought of all that forced social interaction totally puts me off going for a job where I'd have to be exposed to it eight hours a day. I think I would burn out ,very quickly in a place like that.
That's why I prefer isolated menial work. I'm free in my mind as well.

Special interests are probably what we have to do, to stop ourselves going crazy in an under- stimulating workplace. - Mental energy harmlessly burning itself off. Imagine if someone constructed a library of special interests, it would be a fascinating place, there might even be some useful things in there, including train time tables.

Early diagnosis does not explain why so many who never had an early diagnosis have the same issues and problems. Executive functioning and pathological passivity are probably better explanations, particularly for the large contingent of relevant persons who never received an early diagnosis and who manifested these issues before being diagnosed.

Hear! Hear! I had these issues all my 50 yr life and was only DXd 2 years ago. And get off your self-righteous high horse about waiting for the right opportunity, Katie. I took plenty of jobs I didn't really want because I had to have something to stay alive and you know what happened? The same thing that happened at the jobs I loved, only ten times faster - the stress would eventually bind me up with so much anxiety I couldn't function adequately and they'd fire me. If I loved the job, I might last close to two years before I burned out. If I didn't, I wouldn't make it to the 90 day mark. So whether I ran out and took the first job I could find, or waited six to eight months for the opening I wanted, the result was the same. I was never psychologically equipped to perform socially up to expectations. Nobody ever fired me for doing lousy work - they always fired me for not fitting in with 'the team', meaning: not kissing the manager's @ss they way he/she liked it.

It isn't a handicap just because we say that it is. We call it a disability because it's an F'ing handicap.

That's exactly it. Managers have this built in sensor and no matter how much you try to hide what you are, explain to them ,or do the right thing, or please them , they give you the impression first you annoy them, then you are like their least favorite human being. This filters down to the rest of the team. You lay awake at night wondering what you can do to improve on this. There is nothing. No imagined scenario or constructive strategy works. Net result you end up moving on.

No I haven't got a solution to this,except find work where you are around for a couple of weeks, don't interact, finish the job and move on. Or spend a day or two a month with them in another similar environment.

I found the social thing did not work for me, so I found jobs working alone, photographic darkroom, computers, or jobs where my skills were worth so much, mechanic, that talking to me was expensive.

I quickly figured out that there was a lot more money in buying broken cars, to fix and resell, than in repairing them for others. The same in computers, and now in the applications that the computers and printers, binders, were made for.

I am good at finding hard to find parts. Then good at offering them where everybody will see them.

I speak to no one and make 1000%.

I look at what having something done costs, an existing market, then figure out how to do it for 20%. I can undersell and make 500%.

Most things that take a little skill, some thought, some investment, a lot of parts searching, are beyond humans, but they will buy the finished product.

This social thing does not work, it does not get better with age, but "That's the deal, take it or leave it." Does work.

I can relate. I'd be stuck like him stuffing envelopes too. But I've tried other jobs, ALL dealing with people unfortunately. I was forced into them, as I had no other choice. I TRIED my best to keep those jobs, but my social ineptness ruined everything for me. Now I've given up and am on disability. I hate how this world has only one sort of mold for people. NTs all of them.

Yes, but it would be very rare to find an older person with AS who has never worked (especially a male).

Rocky employment history? Sure. Completely absent employment history? Almost unheard of.

Which is much more than I can say for the multiple young adults with AS that I know who have never worked a day in their lives, barring delivering papers when they were 13. And when they tell me how often they look for work, I'm really not surprised that they aren't getting calls back.

My boyfriend prints off 75 resumes, and gets 3 job offers. If they print off 5, maybe 10 at most, they can expect a total of one call-back. And there have been instances where the people I know were encouraged to refuse the job (by their parents, or a disability agency) due to insufficient accomodations.

Point is, older people didn't really have anyone telling them "You can't do it, you're disabled". They were generally taught that they should keep on trying until they succeed. Even if it sucks. That's why they have worked, even though their lives weren't perfect.

This article is about the very serious issue of undermployment. People who have a patchy work history and/or a work history characterized by jobs that are ill matched to their actual potential to contribute (and receive the economic benefits of this). The person who is the primary subject of the article has held a number of jobs...

It really has nothing to do with whatever you have against early diagnosis. People with Autism of all ages and diagnostic status struggle with underemployment disproportionately, and that is what the article is about.