Office Protocol

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I'm well known for being quiet in my office, and the same held true at any of my past jobs. I come in every morning and try my best to say "good morning" or "hello" or whatever prefabricated greeting comes to mind, then I vanish into my office and you're lucky if you see me for the rest of the day.

However I can only sit here and code for so long before I need a good old cup of coffee, a bathroom break, or just a quick walk around the building to stretch my legs. So I quietly slip out, usually not grabbing any attention from anyone. But when I return people always look up from their computer or desk as I walk by and smile, nod or just make some random facial gesture I cant distinguish.

If they ask me where I went, I'll likely grunt back a response. However thats hardly the case, I just get these weird looks, which most people probably can inturpret, but myself I end upmaking some odd face myself and then wandering back to my desk.

Its weird things like this (well, things I see as being weird) that can just totally throw me off track. Like the one day I walk by one ladies office and she yells out "Hello to you too!" so I stop, turn around, and poke my head into her office to see what she wanted. Turns out she was just giving me a hard time because I didnt say hello. So the next day I walk by, stop, stick my head in her office and say "Hello Linda!" and she screams and jumps out of her seat. Revenge!

And then there's the office birthdays. It reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine was forced to sing happy birthday and eat cake almost every day. Thats how my office is. Its always someone's birthday, at least once a week we all have to congrigate to the back lunchroom, turn out the lights, sing happy birthday, eat cake, chit chat, then back to work. I dont mind the cake, even the singing I dont mind (though I never know the person's name half the time, so I just mumble when we get to that part). Its the chit chat part that bothers me. I eat my cake as slowly as possible, so that way I'm not standing there doing nothing for 10 minutes. The one day, someone says to me "boy, you sure are quiet!" so I agree, she then follows it up with "you need to talk more, you scare me sometimes... its always the quiet ones..." So I dont know what exactly she has nightmares about, me coming in with an AK47 and blowing them all away, or me hanging myself in my office, but apparantly she's losing sleep over this. Honestly, its comments like that which make me not want to talk to people.

I'm done ranting about my frustrations of not being able to communicate with NTs... lol

If anyone else has had similiar occurances, please do share.

You may find it hard to believe, but it seems like people geniunely care about you being quiet. While you may be OK with not talking to anyone all day, most NTs would find that to be torture (and personally, so would I). So when they see you being quiet all day, they get concerned, since from their perspective, it looks like something is bothering you. Look at it this way. Those people work with you eight hours a day, so they don't like spending that much time with someone who feels uncomfortable around them. My suggestion is to ease into it; start by asking only a few questions about the upcoming projects, the prime-time TV shows, the weather, etc. This is a structured, back-and-forth exchange of questions, rather than free-flowing small-talk. Once you get comfortable with that, starting making actual conversations, where there's less structure. Over time, it should get more comfortable. Just keep the following in mind: your co-workers do not wish you any harm.

On a personal note, I used to work at this company, and the people there were incredibly nice to work with. Although I was one of the youngest employees in the company, no one gave me a hard time over it; they talked to me as an equal. Even emplyees three times my age used "please" and "thank you" when they needed me to solve a problem for them. Still, a little bit of my eccentricity showed through, but no one paid much attention to it; it was either ignored or worked around (for instance, people knew not to make jokes about me not having had a girlfriend). So hopefully, my next workplace will be as pleasant as my previous one.

Well if it helps any (probably not!) I'm "NT" and your day sounds a LOT like mine!!

I didn't join the "birthday club" because I didn't want to be forced to congregate and pretend I was happy somebody I don't even know has dragged through another year. That, and they charge you a buck a month here for the cake which I can't eat anyway.

They call me the "prairie dog" here because I only pop out of my office when it's time to eat, pee or leave. Otherwise there has to be an alarm ringing.

I work with these people, I don't particularly like or dislike any of them, but we have nothing in common except the return address on our paystubs. I don't presume they care about my outside problems and life and whether my sons school is abiding by his IEP or not, yet I get email after email of look at my cute kid/cat/spouse. Ugh.

Maybe there's a sliding scale of NTness....

I can relate too! Every day, I leave at around 11:00 am to go to lunch. I take my book and go to the local sub shop because I know there will be few people there. Throughout the day, all I want to do is sit and code and then go home. I like the people I work with, it all comes down to this: socializing is exhausting. Being "on" in any way for me is like playing speed chess, and I usually get it wrong because I just can't come up with the right things to say /fast/ enough. Then, I go an torture myself later for what I did say. In fact, for every social situation, I used to keep a score from one to ten. If I got an eight, I was real happy.

Now that I've discovered that I'm tone-deaf when it comes to scoring my social talents, I know I never know what that score is. I gave myself a nine on a job interview and didn't get the job. I nailed it, but they discretely gave a face-saving excuse for not hiring me. It definitely wasn't on credentials! So, I've learned that it is pointless to score myself and just stop worrying about it so much. And sure enough, I'm doing /better/ now that I stopped worrying about it. I'm still using techniques (smiling is really strange feeling -- I've practiced smiling in the mirror and it feels so fake, yet looks right and, sure enough, it is like oil in the social machine!) I'm learning a LOT from this site's articles and talking on these forums, so I'm not just giving up on trying to be social. I just forgive myself for things I wouldn't before and, somehow, non-verbally, that seems to put NT's at ease.

Unlike most people NT, but apparently much like many AS people, I enjoy my lunch breaks alone. My job involves constant interaction with other people, and I must say it wears me down. Lunch is an hour of much needed time for me to rest from constant "people" time.

There is nothing I can dread more than going out to lunch with the people in my office. Not to say I don't like the people, but I am a strong believer of keeping work and out-of-work life separate. It simply steals the needed non-social time from me, but it's even worse since there is the constant face-to-face and no time to just relax. I like to say to myself at the end of the lunch break, "Thank heaven, it's time to go back to the office".

I am very fortunate I don't receive many invitations for get-togethers in the evenings or weekends. I don't know how I would survive if that happened.

EXACTLY. Plus, I still measure every social situation from 0 to a negative number, happy to break even. So, every social interaction with someone in the office is a chance for me to say something they will be offended by (or, most often, give off a signal they will be offended by). The more I avoid extra interacting (that is hard to measure because too little also looks bad), the better!

One of my problems is that I am always lying. Yeah, always; you know what I mean. Always having to simulate interaction. Having to think about it all the time. I'm not a good actor and people can always pick up that I am faking it. So, they think I'm a liar in general. It's still better than "being myself", which I'm not allowed to be: quiet and non-interactive. If I had a dime for every time someone said to me, "Are you angry?" just because I was not showing emotion on my face and concentrating on something!

But, I'm preaching to the choir here

I identify with this stuff quite strongly, I come in to work every day and dread the "hi! How are you?" stuff. NTs seem to find it natural or something but I always have to think about what to say and how much. And then you always get people making comments like "are you ok? you're quiet today" as if being quiet is a disease they might catch or something...
it's not that I mean to be antisocial I'm just sick of having to justify something that to me feels natural. Even when I think I'm being outgoing and making a real effort to "fit it" I get the comments about how "shy" I am. And what the hell is wrong with just sitting there reading if you don't have the energy to interact with people? So much of what NTs say to each other is completely false anyway...and don't even get me started on people who are nice to each other's faces yet are bitchy behind their backs...

During small talk, sometimes someone will say something so fluffy and functionless to you that you can't even think of an angle to approach the statement from, let alone figure out the best thing to say. One really handy, all-purpose response for this situation--which you should never forget--is the simple one-word question "Why?"

Just to be clear here, the fact that you don't care to know the reason for whatever was just said is completely irrelevant. You are asking "Why?" because it lets you take your 'turn' in the conversation with a simple, monosyllabic response that seems more socially acceptable and conveys more interest and sympathy than grunting would. Frequently, any explanation will take longer to say than the original statement; this buys you some time to calm down and think about what to say next. Too, the next statement the person makes to you will most likely have more of a 'handle' on it than the first one, making it more obvious what you should say next. Perhaps best of all, the more nebulous the statement you use this trick on, the more likely you are to take the other person by surprise. Let them be the flustered ones for a change; it'll make them want to leave faster. The downside is that it sort of obligates you to pay attention to the reply. But hey, learning about your coworker lets you give them the response they're seeking faster, which gets them out of your hair sooner.

Now, if you use this too much, people will start thinking you're just trying to be contrary, and will dislike you for it. Similarly, don't go all doe-eyed and sound too innocent, or they'll think the same thing. Because you are an aspie, you'll want them to respond to the question at face value; if they think you have some ulterior motive for asking, then they'll shift the dynamic of the whole conversation, which gives us something new to figure out and worry about. So you'll see that there's an art to getting the pitch, duration and intonation just right, and you have to tailor your "Why?"s to your target's intellectual and emotional level to an extent. Sound legitimately curious but neither overly-interested nor confrontational.

Finally, don't neglect the possibility that thr other person will ask "Why what?" Be prepared; don't do this if you weren't paying attention to the conversation in the first place. Remember that the goal here is to throw the other person off-balance, like they just did to you. Don't let them shift the awkwardness back onto you again.

We just got a new tech in the lab a month who contunually comments on how quite I am. She says that she has never meet a person as quite as I am before. I don't know how to resopond to this other than stating that being quite is perfectly natural for me. My quite nature has never been much of an issue with my other co-workers. When I goto lunch I always read a book to avoid being drawn into conversations. It doesn't always work as some people still try to talk to me while I am reading. Sometimes when there are special occations (birthdays, information sessions) everyone in the lab gets together for lunch. Often I find myself seated with people outside my lab area who try to talk to me. I find myself at a loss trying to answer their questions. Samll talk is completely beyond me. What is worse is when they ask about my book. I usually give more information than neccessary and leave them more uncomfortable than if I gave a simple one scentence description.

Boy it BURNS MY BRITCHES when someone does that to me! You KNOW they're actually trying to convey something else, but being an aspie, you just aren't sure what. It might be:
I've never met a person as quiet as you before; it creeps me out.
I've never met a person as quiet as you before; how do you DO that?
I've never met a person as quiet as you before; I wish you were a gossiper, because I've got a juicy tidbit I need to share with someone RIGHT NOW.
I've never met a person as quiet as you before; every day I come to work, I fear you're gonna whip out an AK-47 and start blowing your coworkers away.
I've never met a person as quiet as you before; you're such a great listener!
I've never met a person as quiet as you before; belittling you by saying this over and over again makes my own sick little ego feel better as a result.
I've never met a person as quiet as you before; it really turns me on, babe!
The list just goes on and on and on. I recommend saying something like "You know, every time you say that, it makes me real self-conscious, which just makes matters worse." This should stop it, or if it is in fact meant as a compliment, she should try to clear things up.

If it keeps happening anyway, you still have other options. For example, you could invest in an air horn.

LOL! I love that idea. If someone starts talking at me, I'll just whip out the air-horn, blast them in the face, and everyone will instantly know to shut the heck up and leave me alone.

i get 'you seem quiet' alot too.. prehaps its somthing to do with being semi-mute....

anyway, i work in a office with two other people and i a very lucky in that one is an ex senco (special educational needs corwardinator) and the other is a damn nice bloke. he also happens to be my boss. in the office i tend to go from extremes depending on how neverous versus how into my work i am.

I work in webdesign and programming and i am 16 so it might be different to working in a mor mainstream job, but i find that convosatio wit the two people who i work with can at time be very intresting. it is nice to have two resonable adults to talk with who will happily give me help when i need it. my boss has seemed to make it his pesonal vendetta to get me more confidence.

anyway, i really like the airhorn i dea and infact i might have to pout that into practise one day soon, just where to find the air horn.

jammie

Man I have to try that airhorn idea

Yes, being quiet DOES tend to make NT's feel uncomfortable (unless they know you well), I have noticed this. This is applicable in multiple situations, work, dating, parties, etc.

Once they know you well enough and for long enough, it is probably OK to be quiet, but especially when meeting someone for the first time or in early stages, there seems to be a high probability that being quiet will make NT's uncomfortable.

Having noticed this, I have tried to make myself aware of it, and sometimes I will talk for no other reason than to make the NT feel more comfortable. But do not talk TOO much, if you overdo it, it backfires. A balance is required.

Yes it is all nonsensical and irritating, but sometimes it is just not worth the effort to fight it. Sigh and tolerate.

I hope gaming(multiplayer) will be a popular 'social way of interacting' just like chit chat is, in the future

Does anyone have prosopagnosia (face blindness)? It's hard enough to know how to respond to fake questions ("Hi, how are you?") when you know who you're talking to, but when a random face walks up in the break room and says "How's it going?" and I can't identify him, he could be using general fake question 1c, or I could be doing a paper for him and he wants to know its status, or he may have missed the morning's meeting and wants to know how the project is progressing, or maybe he wants to know if I've heard about his bagel order or if the coffee is almost ready. Why do people think if they see another human, they automatically have to say something. I wish I could say "I'm just here for a teabag..." and walk away.