autistic cashier
seaweasel
Toucan
Joined: 28 Jan 2008
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 266
Location: In one of the New England States
Congratulations!
If I were to be employed in a customer-facing role, I surmise I would be fired within hours on my first day.
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"Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. " - Special Agent Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks
I've been a cashier but don't know if I have ASD.
I went shopping at a supermarket the other day and when I went to the checkout I put my items on the conveyor. I like to group the items so like items can go in the same bag (i.e group all the frozen stuff together). This has never been a problem for me or any other cashier but that day the cashier must of decided my grouping didn't make sense to her so she decided to scan items in the order she felt appropriate even if it meant stretching over food to get said items. It totally messed with the way I like to do things , I started to lose my s**t and it took all my effort not to scream WTF at her.
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R Tape loading error, 0:1
Hypocrisy is the greatest luxury. Raise the double standard
I've been one before. It caused me to get horrible migraines at the end of the day from the stress. Working with the general pubic is a pain. Can't stand working with people one after the other, and the beeping, and random complaints interrupting my flow. Being a fast food cashier is the worst. That's why i'm in school to become a lab technician, so I can mostly be on my own just running tests and stuff.
I cannot deal with cashiers as a customer. Instead I prefer to use self-checkout lanes. <rhetorical question>So, if I cannot handle being part of that interaction in the easy role of a customer just one time, then how can I handle being part of that interaction in the more difficult role of a cashier all day?</rhetorical question> I prefer (require?) a job that involves NO social interaction. No, I would not be a good cashier.
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31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.
Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)
"I am silently correcting your grammar."
I worked at and bar and restaurant once, mainly as a cleaner and kitchen porter but I also did some shifts on the bar which involved working the till and serving customers. I was often anxious and I hated it. There is no way I'd cope as a cashier.
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Diagnosed ASD Aug 2016, confirmed Dec 2016.
Also have OCD and various 'issues'.
I went shopping at a supermarket the other day and when I went to the checkout I put my items on the conveyor. I like to group the items so like items can go in the same bag (i.e group all the frozen stuff together). This has never been a problem for me or any other cashier but that day the cashier must of decided my grouping didn't make sense to her so she decided to scan items in the order she felt appropriate even if it meant stretching over food to get said items. It totally messed with the way I like to do things , I started to lose my s**t and it took all my effort not to scream WTF at her.
Grrr! Conveyor arrangers and bag organisers unite!
To the OP: Yes, I did a lot of retail work when I was in my teens/twenties. All of the shops I worked in specialised in my interests so that made it a lot easier. I don't think I could handle it any more, though.
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Diagnosed: Asperger's Syndrome (ICD-10)
Self-Diagnosed: Aphantasia
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 152 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 46 of 200
Listener of all things noisy, viewer of all things bloody, writer of all things sh*t.
Easy as pie for me.
Boring as hell,but easy as pie.
Though I also prolly couldnt hack a high volume grocery store either. But have spent more waking hours behind cash registers (in various retail jobs over the years) than doing anything else in my friggin life.
Even with aspergers have been told I was "good with people" in the job.
When you first start out in the job every customer seems like an ogre. But as you get better magically the customers get nicer, and some even bond with you if theyre local regulars. And then its just the one-a-hundred bad apples that you hafta.....not let ruin your day...that you hafta deal with.
Escaped my bondage to the cash register a few years ago when an Inventory Company hired me. Now I go into retail stores and do what amounts to the non-social part of cashiering. Join a crew of folks who take little portable laser computers into retail stores and do what amounts to "ringing up" every piece of merchandise in the store in much the same way I used to ring up merchandise being bought by customers at a cash register. Same darn thing: scan bar codes, count quantities. Only I dont hafta deal with customers, and I dont hafta make change, or do charges. Just straight ahead counting as fast and,as accurately as you can.
I haven't yet had a job, but I think I'd make a terrible cashier.
When playing Monopoly (which took me years to learn), I am a terrible banker. If I needed to give someone change, I'd take the money and forget about the change. Or I would give the wrong amount of change. Other times, I would give money to another player when I'm supposed to give it to the bank. I also put the money somewhere and forgot about it.
This was while playing a board game with people I know well, so it was relatively a low-stress environment. When I messed up, we laughed about it. If I was like that at a cashier job, I think I'd get fired quickly.
Plus, I'm sensitive to the beeping of scanning items.
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Life ... that's what leaves the mess. Mad people everywhere.
StarTrekker
Veteran
Joined: 22 Apr 2012
Age: 31
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,088
Location: Starship Voyager, somewhere in the Delta quadrant
I worked at Walmart for two years as a cake decorator in the bakery. I had an accommodation which permitted me to avoid being transferred to cashier, which they wanted to do early on, but I explained that with my diagnosis, I couldn't deal with that much visual chaos and rapid switching of attention from one task to another, especially while being under time pressure. Regardless of where I end up in this life, I know that unless it's for a tiny independently owned store with very little traffic, I could never make a successful cashier.
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"Survival is insufficient" - Seven of Nine
Diagnosed with ASD level 1 on the 10th of April, 2014
Rediagnosed with ASD level 2 on the 4th of May, 2019
Thanks to Olympiadis for my fantastic avatar!
I know I couldn't do it.
My current job, which I'm not actually doing right now, was dealing with people. My anxiety was awful, and my manager didn't make it any easier. The director suggested I could take a course or something.
It's also a position which requires me be involved in several different things at the same time. I've ADD which makes me easily distracted and the job comes with a lot of distraction. This adds to the anxiety and instead of getting two things done I end up trying to control my anxiety by doing something totally unrelated.
I was actually in a different position previous to that, something I'd been doing for over 15 years, but the last couple of years things have gotten worse for me. They declared my position redundant, changed the title and hired someone else. Then said I wasn't qualified for the new position (despite having done it for, y'know, 15 years). They knew I did have some mental health issues. Anyway, here I am babbling on your thread. Apologies.
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Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
I was a cashier at the service section of a car dealer. I did not have any problems saying the few things I needed to for the job. However, for some reason my work area was enclosed in plexiglass with only a small slot for sliding paperwork and a slot at head level. Maybe an effort to keep my area clean and quit because it was right beside the shop where mechanics worked.
So I am sure I was difficult to hear and probably did not make the eye contact I should. I know I tend to talk softly and I imagine that happening as I give you your bill looking down. Not very good social interaction. The dealer is now under new owners who got rid of the plexiglass.
No no no. I cashiered at an extremely high volume supermarket. While the job itself was simple (and it was fun memorizing all the PLUs), there was far too much social interaction involved. I mean, there were many times when there was a continuous line at my register...for the entire shift. It was too much. I used to think that more social interaction was what I needed to cure my social impairments. Heh...right. Anyway, while at work I alternated between panic attacks and breakdowns of some sort (I would hesitate to call them full-blown meltdowns). I would frequently involuntarily verbalize my thoughts, purposefully smash my fingers and smack myself in the head with things. Some customers would ask me if I was ok, others laughed. Maybe someday I'll be able to convince myself it wasn't real. I never should have taken that job. Two years of horror.
My first job was as a cashier at a Home Improvement warehouse, similar to a Home Depot. I was really good at it and enjoyed working in general but HATED being a cashier. I remember coming home and literally collapsing from exhaustion when I was working full time hours in the late spring/early summer busy season. The biggest thing I hated was not the customers or social interaction but the fact you couldn't leave the register AT ALL. I would have preferred to just have been shackled to it.
I asked to get moved to cart duty, it was eventually granted by a puzzled manager and I absolutely, positively loved it. I was really good at it too and received many compliments from customers on my fast responses to assistance requests.
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