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I started a new job as a part-time administrator at a nursing care home in September and by November I'm already suspended from work while HR/Management investigate an 'incident' between myself and a cover manager whereby I told her I wasn't going to tolerate any more bullying provocation from her. I am raising a grievance of my own but it may go down a disciplinary route for me as I raised my voice and swore at her. Getting into 'trouble with management within 2 months of starting a job is a new record for me! I wonder why the hell I bother, especially as I was previously on ESA, in the support group so didn't need to work. No, out of the bizarre need to help others and feel useful I made the fatal error of thinking I might for once find some level of acceptance in the workplace!

I didn't disclose my Aspergers Syndrome diagnosis to my employer when I applied for and got the job as I know for a fact that it would have gone against me and I wouldn't have stood a chance of getting the job. Evidence for this has been amply provided by the manager referred to above who referred to an agency worker as "a nutter, literally". With attitudes like this abounding in the workplace there's little point in disclosing Aspergers in my opinion. Now that I have informed my employer of my AS diagnosis they are making all the noises about making adjustments but as far as I'm concerned I've gone off the whole idea by now.

I don't want to be among these people who have no gratitude for all the extra unpaid hours work I put in to try and get up to speed in a job where I was given minimal training and have had to suffer the unfriendly, often downright obnoxious attitudes of many of the staff, which I tolerated and to then have to put up with this cover manager telling me I 'didn't appear to know much of anything' for the 'crime' of not knowing how one form was processed!

Now I've got to suffer being patronised to within an inch of my life

If I crack and a bloodbath ensues, be sure to come and visit me in prison!

Don't 'crack'.

It's good you stood up for yourself but you need to learn to control yourself (ie. make your point clear but without swearing/yelling at the person next time).
I know it may not seem easy sometimes but you should be assertive (find balance between being passive (letting other walk over you) or aggressive (making other feel threatened)).
Good luck.

You are right to a certain extent but in my opinion the ability to keep your temper when stress has built up too much is a specific executive function within the brain and it is well known that people with Asperger's Syndrome and other neuro-diverse conditions often have a deficiency in their executive functioning.

How can a person with Asperger's Syndrome who commits murder be given as lesser sentence due to 'mitigating circumstances' ie as they are seen as not being in full control of their actions yet myself having a temper loss in the workplace be given no such concession? This seems very unfair to me as I am actively trying hard to fit in and work.

Either people with Asperger's Syndrome are classed as being in control of their actions or they aren't and there seem to be a number of legal cases where the person has been given a lesser sentence as they were seen as not being fully responsible for their actions due to having Asperger's Syndrome. A case in point is the computer hacker Gary McKinnon, who argued that his Asperger's Syndrome meant he wasn't fully aware of/responsible for the likely outcome of his actions. Why does this hold for some people with Asperger's Syndrome but not others?

I feel for you - last week almost exactly the same happened to me. I was getting pushed around since I started three months ago. I tried to stand up for myself (without shouting or swearing!), but I got fired anyway.

I'm still confused about what actually happened. I might have saved myself if I'd mentioned Asperger's, but I wasn't gonna beg them to let me keep a job I hated anyway.

as*holes!

I don't agree with your statements. AS is not an excuse to be rude and curse at people and loose your temper. It may be harder at times to control, but it's still something you should be striving for.

As for your job, what kind of "bullying" was going on?

I never said it was an excuse of any kind - that's the very reason I didn't disclose my Aspergers to the employer, as I wanted to be treated the same as anyone else. I had already tolerated a fair amount of unfriendly 'you're too weird for me to want to know!' type ignorant attitudes off some of the staff at this workplace without reacting in any other way than being friendly and polite in return - so I would say I had already done a hell of a lot of striving to control myself! Far too much in fact!

I work part-time 4 hours a day and this isn't sufficient to get all the work done - by myself anyway. It is a fixed-term one year contract to cover for the maternity leave of the existing Administrator. She was evidently having trouble getting things done herself in the time available as unpaid invoices kept being chased by finance and I'd been asked to pick up other tasks she should have been doing/done.

The manager who bullied/provoked me was on my case right from when she took over last Monday (she was covering for the week as my manager was on annual leave).

On the Monday, when I had a lot of work to catch up on, she told me to concentrate on completing a highly labour-intensive agency staff usage form that wasn't vital and wouldn't listen when I told her there was other more pressing work that I needed to do such as entering staff sick leave onto the HR system.

She then proceeded to watch right over my shoulder at regular intervals and the following day she told me to start keeping a diary of work tasks completed so I could show what I had been doing all day as "That form was on your computer all day!" - I call this harassing behaviour as I was working as fast as I could on that form, I had to regularly switch to doing other tasks, including tasks she and another manager asked me to do and she sat having a chat with this manager in the office for a long time which made it very hard for me to concentrate. She also referred to an agency worker as "A nutter, literally!" - a comment that I found incredibly offensive and which I struggled not to challenge!

On the Wednesday, when I was trying to place a phone order with a supplier, she interrupted me while I was still on the phone to question how many cases of the one product I was ordering, saying they used far less at the home she ran. I could not concentrate on what she was saying, talk to the person I was ordering from and think through what I needed to do all at the same time - she was putting unnecessary stress on me and it is very rude to interrupt a person when they are on the phone as well.

Later on the same day she asked me whether a copy was taken of staff holiday leave forms - I said I didn't know (As I didn't!) and she said disparagingly, "I think we need to look at exactly what your induction training covered!" I said "I can't know what I don't know!" and she said "Well you don't appear to know much of anything!" Given that I have received minimal training and have stayed over to work in my own unpaid time on most days to try and get up to speed with this job and that my manager had never indicated she was unhappy with my work, in fact she'd said she thought I was doing well, I felt exceedingly angry to be spoken to in such a rude and disrespectful manner by this cover manager. Hence I told her I'd had enough of her bullying attitude and happened to swear at her in the process.

She's lucky I didn't punch her through the f-king wall, the way I was feeling by that stage!

Most people can only take so much provocation and I'd reached my limit! I remained at work until the end of my work hours and was informed just before I went that I should not come into work the next day and wait to be called in for a meeting. As of Thursday 15th November I am still suspended and due to attend a 2nd investigatory type meeting on Monday 26th November.

I initially wanted to put in a grievance against this manager but at a meeting with HR the day after the incident I said I didn't want to put in a grievance if I could help it as I didn't want to cause trouble. After having my work email access disabled by my manager yesterday morning though, with no explanation, I am now in no mood to return to this job and will be making my grievance formal.

I will also be visiting my doctor next week as I don't think my mental health is stable enough as a result of all this stress and anger, to be coping with formal meetings. The way I feel at this moment in time I could rip someone's f-king head off!

Last edited by nessa238 on 22 Nov 2012, 12:23 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I'm very sorry to hear that

Perhaps the workplace is just not a tolerable place to be these days?

The most miserable back-stabbing place to work in is a nursing home. I'm surprised I survived all these years. It's been nothing but torture, misery and pain for me. But I have to pay my rent or be homeless. Those are my choices.

Sorry to hear that

I thought I'd come through the worst and seemed to be making progress in terms of getting on with people but then this cover manager came in out of the blue and blind-sided me - you can't win!

I no longer seem to have the tolerance for this type of behaviour.

Your not going to like some of what I'm going to say just to warn you but I've been in this position before.

If that's what the boss wants, that's what the boss wants and that becomes your priority. If my boss says "My cell phone isn't working" unless I am out on a field call, I stop what I'm doing and go fix it. While I may be given a wide latitude to set my own priorities based on needs of the departments I manage, my boss is a vice president, and if she says "Do this" I do it. If I don't, I better have a damn good reason why I'm not.



In my last job, I had to complete a weekly report on the number of service calls I received, number closed, number remaining based on time open, and then a number of other forms.



Was she? I've worked with some people who met that description and after dealing with them I struggled not to mouth off at them directly.



I agree this was not handled well by her. Does she approve the ordering or was that your job? If she approved the orders, she should have addressed it at that point. If your job was to order, it would have been better for her to ask you to call them back and discuss the issue.



This was not very professional. If there was a problem with your training, she's a manager, she should be fixing that, not speaking that way.

One thing I've learned working in the jobs I've had the last 8 years, you gotta have a really slow burning fuse.

I know what you mean - the slow-burning fuse is something I severely lack!

The essential 'take the s**t because they are the boss' thing does not seem to compute in my head and if I think the person is being too unreasonable I can't not vocalise it and it ends badly.

I didn't say boo to a goose at school and certainly never challenged authority and put a lot of this change of personality down to me taking anti-depressants in adulthood, which have raised my confidence levels falsely and seem to have made me a lot more belligerent.

On Prozac (which I was taken off years ago), I nearly rammed a shopping trolley into the moving car of some people I had thought were laughing at me in the supermarket so this should give an indication of how the wrong level of the wrong SSRI has affected me.