Please read this!! Somebody!!

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Ok so here is the situation,

I got called into the managers office at my place of work which is a grocery store tonight. They gave me a written corrective action statement in regards to how fast I am putting up product on the shelf. Typical Aspie problem in the workplace I know but here is the story behind it.


Before my most recent manager came in to the store I was successfully navigating both the dairy section and the dry grocery section of a grocery store. I had my own little system set up where in a given 8 hour shift I would literally time myself with a stopwatch and attempt to accomplish all my tasks in under 45 minutes. Example: Lets say I am working in the dairy section of a grocery store. I have a list of tasks to do: (1) Work perishable truck (2) fill the milk and egg sections (3) Work the bottled juice section of the department (4) Hose down the back containment area ofthe cooler (5) work the cottage cheese and coffee creamer section of the store (6) make the dair section look pretty at the end of the night (7) every hour on the hour check the milk and egg section to make sure that they do not run out.

Now most of these tasks I would accomplish them in sequential order while timing myself to get it done and it worked brilliantly!! !


However corporate office came in one day a few months ago and wanted us to go about out tasks differently. Now the emphasis was on spotting which section of the store that had the most amount of empty shelf space and work that first while at the same time making it look pretty. And also looking for any items that are near their expiration date and marking them down. And of course checking the other sections of the store based on the amount of customers that are in the store.

Now heres the kicker!! !

DO I THINK THAT I COULD HAVE ADAPTED MYSELF TO THESE CHANGES!! !! !! YES. But the reason why I did not was because I was suffering from workplace boredom. IMO long term visible effects of workplace boredom can include a loss in productivity. I just let it go and did not really deal with it because they were not down my throat about it.

According to the store manager I have problems with consistency in my work. Somedays I'll do really good in the dairy section and somedays I will not.

I have noticed that over time I am so uninterested in what I am doing that my mind will wander off and think about anything else other than my job. I have not been able to focuse as well as I used to when I first started. Now this started to happen BEFORE the changes that corporate wanted which I mentioned above. Why you may ask, because I had already learned to successfully accomplish tasks and I left it at that. I made no attempt to learn anything else about the store.

Now the first reason why I decided to plateau was because I was in college and I was having difficulty earning good grades in my academic subjects. The second reason was after my third or fourth year even thoughI had worked out my academic issues I had decided that I wanted to pursue a career in another field. The reason why was because of the fact that I knew I could move up the ranks in retail easily but the long term costs of moving up the ladder in retail would be a poor social life. I would have to make friends with people whom I worked with and the only thing that we would have in common would be that store..........

The second reason was I am mentally not the same person I was when I was undiagnosed. What I mean by that is.........I am a 33 year old white male. Most other 33 year old white males I know in my area are settled down with their wives and children and they work their private sector jobs. They have their house, thier car, their mortgage payments and their bowling league on Tueday. MOST of them are not interested in outdoor activites or if they are they would not take it to the extreme that I would. They would bring the RV camper. Alot of them now are.....couch potatoes more or less........I spent my entire childhood as a couch potato and no longer wish to do that. I want to travel and live life............not settle down with a family. I desire a nice apartment with a dishwasher,, steady white collar salary work which is first shift and I want weekends off. Retail will not grant me weekends off. So now I am attempting to amke the transition to administrative clerical work for the government. I think I wold like that much better because it will grant me many more weekends off.

At the end of the day, I was not prepared for the challenges that would come with holding on to the same position in a job for years at a time. Nor did I have the clairvoyance to see how big of a problem they can be.


I would say I have learned two lessons from this:
(A) Change in today's American workplace is a constant. And you have to know that whenever a new manager arrives canges can come with him.
(B) If things in your life start to get a little stale, whether it be in your job, your education, your romantic life or your friendships that is the time for you to move on to the next step. Which for those of us with Aspergers is not so easily said and not so easily done. But hey that\
But hey thats just my opinion.

And your opinion is 100% valid.

Gee, outside of the white male part, I could've written this essay.

I have no house, no mortgage payments, no wife, no kids, no RV camper, no bowling league on Tuesday night.

I do have a car. If all else fails I can always live in it. I've done it before in Nashville and L.A.

I could have written this one too. No house, husband, RV, mortgage, or kids.

Until the last year or so, I did all the crap contracts and hourly jobs too.

My hope is with you!

It is really rough in that situation where you find a method that suits you best to complete you job accurately and on time, then get a manager high on the chain from another area who doesn't know you at all give you a directive that there is only one "acceptable" method on doing your job (probably brought to him by a consultant he hired for a seminar) and you must conform to that method or be fired. Much more that you can't effectively complete your tasks on time because of certain things that new method requires. Vicious cycle as you are really not being allowed to do your best work so you may be on the chopping block either way. Sorry i don't have any good advice to help you along the process.

Well it wasn't that I could not come up with another method. I could have but the problem was workplace boredom got to me and I did not deal with it effectively. This was a mistake on my part where if I would have had the maturity to see what was coming down the road I could have adapted to the change. But like I said it was workplace boredom that was my main downfall in this particular situation.

Everyone gets workplace boredom from time to time. But for us Aspies we have to be much more proactive in dealing with it. We have to draw upon our team of specialized helpers to come up with either a plan to change with the situation: i.e. new tactics or develop a plan of evacuation into a better area of employment.

Your job sounds very similar to my own. One problem with store policy/management changes is that each individual above you is looking for different qualities from your work, and they're not going to spell them out for you most of the time until a problem arises.
Boredom is always a factor, but the new approach described doesn't seem very systematic. You probably handled the situation much better than I would have.