Stress with work

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I am finding it hard to cope at work lately. I only do a cleaning job, which sounds easy and calm, but it is not. My feet barely touch the ground, and you have to think of and remember so many different things at once. It is a big building I work in, and I am often backwards and forwards to the cupboard, needing more toilet paper to provide in the bathrooms, and just other little things like that.
There's so much to think of, that I usually end up making mistakes, and I find myself being told off by my supervisor about something stupid every day I'm there.

I feel they pick on me the most, well, most of the time. It's like everybody else has a valid excuse to get out of doing so much, but whatever I do, if I have a reason I can't do something or whatever, they don't listen, and instead just argue with me. They know I have ADHD and anxiety/ASD, so some things I cannot help, but they seem to think I should control it.

I get tired easily. I don't know if it's my anxiety, or the antidepressants I'm on, or just the way I am. So that makes me shattered after my 6-hour shift. But all they say is things like "oh you're only young, you shouldn't be tired!" or "oh we all have to do work here, we're all tired" or "oh what if you had to work 5 or 6 days a week then?" and it just annoys me when they say things like that.
Today they were going to make me stay after my shift for a pointless meeting (I say pointless because the meeting was meant to be an all-staff meeting but nobody else had turned up) and I got anxious. I didn't want to be the only one at the meeting, and I didn't want to come out late during the rush hour (heavy traffic and crowds of schoolkids makes me panic, I just hate being out between about 3.30pm to 5.00pm). But all I got when I told them how I felt was "oh none of us want to come out late, but we have to", which was an annoyingly irrelavent thing to say to me because a, most others don't feel as bad anxiety as I do with crowds, and b, I was the only one going to the meeting whilst everybody else was going home so nobody but me and the two (higher paid than me) co-workers/supervisors. And, yes, everybody else got to go home because they had valid reasons.

I just feel like my supervisors pick on me. I always turn up to staff meetings, even on my days off, but today I was tired and hungry and just wanted to get home like everybody else was. I'm fed up with always getting told off or picked on about something or other. Even when I'm doing the right thing, they still find something to get on my case about. I can't cope with working there any more. But I can't cope looking for a new job either. I hate the way employers want you to be precise, and that applications take so much time to fill out, and they make jobs like shelf-filler in a supermarket ridiculously hard to apply for, like you're trying to hack into the government's system or something. I hate work. Why can't I just win the lottery?

I feel for you.

From what you say about the things those people say to you, I think they're being incredibly invalidating and belittling to you, with the "we all get tired" type of comments. When you never get heard, and never get treated like an individual having an individual experience, but instead have your experience trivialized or lumped in with everyone else, it's accumulatively stressful and breeds resentment.

Have you ever considered becoming a self-employed cleaner? No one person is your boss but instead they are clients you get to choose as much as they choose you. No co-workers, just you doing your work. You pick your own hours and fees. It could be your way out of this job if you start maybe with one client on one day off.

I have no idea of how to go about being self-employed. Plus for most self-employed jobs you need your own transport, which I don't have. But it does sound like a good idea, but I don't think it's as easy as it sounds to get into self-employment, otherwise everybody would be doing it.

It depends on the type of self employment of course -- there are complicated businesses that need a lot of setting up and even money to start, and there are things that are as easy as just putting flyers out and registering online with HMRC.

Being a self employed house cleaner is so easy to start doing, I'm not even kidding. You literally go to the HMRC website and use their easy menus to "register as self employed." And then advertise locally, old-school style with home-printed business cards and fliers, put in appropriate places. There's nothing to it.

Once a year HMRC remind you to fill out your self assessment tax form. It's ridiculously easy, just a few lines of questions with a simple business like this one. They just ask what money you made, and what expenses you had buying things you used for your work, or even transport costs. They subtract one from the other and tell you whether or not you owe taxes or NI. Under a threshold of £11,000 you may not owe either one.

There are zero start-up costs because you just show up at a client's house and use their cleaning supplies. Depending on the area you live, you may not need a car.

I don't have a car. I just put business cards in the doors and on local noticeboards and all my clients are within walking distance.

I now walk, ride a bicycle or have taken a bus to various client's houses.

Seriously this particular type of self employment really is as "easy as it sounds" to get into, because if I did it anyone can! I have some bad executive functioning problems but I managed to do it.

Nts can't understand our problems. They aren't aspies so they see us as just another nt who's making excuses to get out of stuff out of laziness. They don't feel the anxiety and mental exhaustion. I am tired after my 5 hour shifts plus 4 hour transit. They don't get it andnnever will. We don't look disabled like physically disabled people. One of my coworkers is physically disabled with back problems. He gets special treatment. He calls out all the time but doesn't and can't be fired. Me I look and appear normal unless you talk to me for long while.

Hugs.

There's this Polish woman at work (lovely woman she is) and she has blood pressure problems. It's a rather invisible condition, as she dashes around the workplace like the rest of us, but she still gets special consideration. She's always put on the easiest jobs, so that she can take a break whenever she feels she needs to, and now she has hurt her arm we are all expected to take her rubbish out to the bins for her (even though she does countless other tasks that involve more use of arms than taking the rubbish out).
I feel my problems are affecting me like her's are, except mine are mental instead of physical. And mental challenges can be just as afflicting as physical challenges, but, like you said, people with physical challenges get a lot more pampered. (Plus I think this woman is a favourite of their's).

I sometimes feel alone in this. I feel like people just overlook me and think that I should just get over myself because that's what everyone else has to do. But what they don't understand is not everybody's the same. My aunt is NT but she has a good understanding of how someone like me sees the world. She says "all non-anxious people get stressed/anxious/exhausted about work to an extent, but times those normal feelings by 10 and that is how stressful work and other life situations feels to someone with anxiety/autism/ADHD". I'm not sure I worded that right so I hope people here get what it means. I find it an excellent explanation to how much more anxiety can affect some people more than others. The way I see it, most NTs without anxiety disorders are probably better at shrugging things off and getting through the workday without mental exhaustion that could lead to panic attacks. I know I'm on antidepressants, but, expectedly they don't cure me. They just take the edge off of anger and help me have better control with outbursts.

I say this almost everyday.

I'm working in a great environment, people are super nice and understanding. But I need to work unrealistic hours for such little amount of money, it's barely enough for my rent, insurance and taxes. When I come home I have no energy to do anything at all and I go straight to sleep. The other day I complained about how I'm getting so little to my parents and my father told me to get a weekend job too. When I said I can't do that, his reply was 'I'm 60 and have been working my ass off for over 40 years every single day. What am I supposed to do then if you're tired?' I honestly don't know how to reply to this. Because whatever I say, they will accept it only as a crappy excuse.

I have another problem. I smile all the time and speak with a strange tone that makes me sound less serious. I just don't know how to express my feelings so a smiling face is my default mode. So people all the time underestimate the hardship I'm going through because I look always happy.

Komamanga, I had that same "smiling" problem, but it was when I was younger and I no longer have it now as I managed to stop. I did it for similar reasons to yours: because I didn't know how to be, what to say, how to look, in social interactions, I defaulted to this benign smile I couldn't seem to break the habit of, even when it was not appropriate. I knew it was something I tended to do yet I was tortured by it and wanted to stop, because yes, it did make people think I had no pain, nothing going on, and even that I was stupid.

I eventually managed to break away from using this smile as a default, due to several different life circumstances making me feel able to really figure it out and find another way of being which was more authentic. It took a lot, though, for me to take onboard that having a neutral face that waits for an organic reaction, rather than the smile I used as a mask, felt better to me.

But I just wanted to say I do relate because I did that same thing myself, and that it is possible to break the habit.

There is that. About which I start feeling resentful after a while. Wonder if they'd laugh me out of the license office if I went down to see about getting a license to smack ignorant NTs?

In the paperwork mentioned earlier, and I don't know the 'fine print' details about my own town in my own country, and if it has already been mentioned for where you live I have missed seeing it, in addition to other registrations mentioned would there be a need to have a local business license and what fees and the like might be involved in that?

In the US the need for a local business license will vary. The OP is in the UK, and in the UK for cleaning services the only business registration required is to register your business and business name under a "sole trader" status with HMRC, which is our tax authority.

OTHER types of businesses will need a license and other things. But that's one of the reasons why this particular business is so easy to just start doing. Other self employed businesses can be complicated to set up, this is one that is about the easiest of all.

She could literally stick a notice on a noticeboard tomorrow, get a phone call, and be cleaning someone's house on her day off next week. Just get yourself set up with HMRC as soon as you do and you're all set.

I laugh when people close to me die. People all the time think I'm not intellectually capable of doing things. And this is rubbish. People even asked me if I was a drug abuser, like, a lot times and I have and would never. It's just something very involuntary to compensate for a lack of voluntary expressions, if it makes sense.



At least that's good news to learn that it's possible haha. I'll try my best to get myself out of it. Thank you for sharing.