I got fired for trying too hard

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Agreed

I'm 27 and for the first time in my life I got hired on a job that I got by myself, not through any agency or organization despite searching for hundreds of jobs for the past several years and having dozens of failed interviews.

I had an interview on Saturday and I mentioned nothing about my autism either on the resume or during the interview.

Yesterday on Monday was my first day of work and both the manager owner and the chef were really happy with me during a grand opening of the restaurant. Then I decided to drop a bombshell just as my shift ended and I let everybody know in the management position that I was on the Spectrum and I wanted to see what was going to happen now I like expected to be fired immediately as my entire life I've known nothing but discrimination and ableism. This has left me a very negative and pessimistic person and I was diagnosed recently with depression and generalized anxiety disorder because of my constant fear and depression because of being constantly discriminated against.

Today during work, I tried even harder than I did yesterday and I made sure I was doing that only what I was supposed to do, but extra things that I wasn't even asked to do just to show how dedicated of a worker I was, just so they wouldn't fire me even though I was still in training.

I learned really quickly and had no trouble operating the cash register at all for tending to the customers and I was doing even better than most of the other trainees there.

While on break, I told one of my fellow trainees that I'm probably going to be fired because I'm so unlucky. He was shocked by what I said and he said, what are you talkin about you're like the best one here if anything you're probably going to get promoted.

About halfway through my shift my manager came up to me and said that he needed to talk to me.

He took me aside and told me that I don't need to continue working heater being trained because he told me that I didn't know how to do the job even though I was clearly doing it better than all the other trainees. YOUalso told me, that he will call me on days that they're short-staffed or need an extra worker, but basically I was not going to be an official employee.

To make matters worse, yesterday after work I found out some bad news for my family as they cancel my self-direction program saying that I'm not ready for it and when I asked him to cut the BS and tell me the reason why their ableist asses think I'm not ready for it, they told me because you hang out with your LGBT friends and you don't tell us where you go.

Anyway, getting back on topic, I asked my manager to give me a legitimate reason why he doesn't want me to continue with my employment and he mentioned a couple of things, literally just two reasons why. One that the jugs of water that were meant for the customers weren't being filled up, yet that was because the dishwasher was taking his tome cleaning the jugs of water, and I took the f*****g initiative to help him to speed the process up, which no other trainee did but me.

And then when he said that the jugs were not filled up I showed him the fridge and all the jugs were there. He also mentioned that I was not being very attentive to customers, yet I was walking up to every single customer giving them new jugs of water when the previous one was empty.

I was able to tell that the manager was very uncomfortable whenever I countered one of his Arguments for the reason he did not want to continue my employment.

I even told him about a 10-minute story about how unlucky I was and how I actually accurately predicted that I was wasn't going to continue my employment there both because of my autism and because I'm cursed with bad luck.

In fact, I was so sure that I was discriminated against on other interviews that my job coach from AHRC, accompany me to my interviews boat to bounce for my skills and to see how I perform on them. Initially she thought that it was something that I did wrong, but after going on a few interviews she realize that I had no difficulty performing interviews, but I like clean it was because of my resume I stated that I had Asperger's Syndrome.

So in an experiment I decided to remove autism from my application and not mention it on my interviews and then I got hired at this Indian restaurant right across the street from my school. My employment didn't even make it out of the training phase before I got fired, mainly because of my very tense and pessimistic attitude, even though I was working the hardest out of everybody.

I actually confessed to my manager that I expected to be fired and this is why I was so tense and then he told me this is why I was not the right fit for the job as they needed someone who is very optimistic and in good spirits. How can I be in good spirits when nearly every negative prediction I've ever made in my life it's coming true one by one.

For an example, when I came back from the Boston higashi School in 2012, despite writing a very good report about me about how I did not belong in a group home with 24-hour supervision, I could tell that my mom had other thoughts and I predicted and argued with her that no matter how much I prove myself she was never going to change her mind and then I'm probably going to end up in a group home or with 24-hour supervision.

In an attempt to prove her wrong that she will still discriminate against me no matter how hard and well I do improving to her that I'm independent, 4 6 hours a day when they left me at home alone I would vacuum, mop and sweep the entire house from the basement through the second floor including all of the rooms. In addition I washed all of the dishes after breakfast, set up the dishes before dinner just before everybody arrived from work and school and I also set the food up as well and cleaned the dishes off the table and wash all of them by myself after dinner and put them away as well.

Despite doing this for over four months and not being told to do anything, during a meeting with the agency but I currently reside in my mom blatantly lied saying that I needed constant prompting and supervision to do the simplest tasks such as bathing and showering and that I cannot be trusted to be left home alone and I called my mom out in front of several agency Executives, including the CEO of her lies and I called her out for not mentioning how she left me alone for 6 hours a day alone for me to literally lick out the entire house.

My mom didn't give another reason for why I should not be trusted to live by myself and that is my very pessimistic and negative attitude.

Fast forward six years I'm still living with 24 hour supervision and I have almost no rights at all, no video game privileges no computer privileges all because my parents are taking away things that they claim it will addict me because they make me happy since autistic people get addicted to video games and computers.

When I countered my mom's argument that in my special education school in Boston I played only an hour a day, she said well you're not in that school anymore and I don't trust you that you can do that without being addicted.

When my mom found out for my staff that I played an hour a day and that I made a statement to my staff that they reported to my mom about my video game privileges stating that, at least I don't have to live under that dictator's rules anymore.

As a result, when I was in school one day my family confiscated all of my video games from my apartment and told me I could only play at my grandmother's house and usually when I'm there my uncle is usually there and he never let me play.

When I took it back there without their permission and told them that they had no right and taking my property from my apartment and that I was going to call the police on them if they ever did that again, my mom forced me to sign a contract stating that I can only play video games one day per week instead of one hour per day as a punishment for my extreme disrespect for my parent's Authority.

My staff now don't let me play at all as a punishment for my constant negative attitude and they stated, since you're going to be so negative and predict that we're never going to let you play, that's exactly what you're going to get.

Also, my mom told me that she will let me go to an out-of-state school when I graduate from LaGuardia Community College but I've been constantly predicting for years that she will change her mind at the last minute and that I have been wasting my life for 6 years in college all for nothing because I know that you're just going to not let me go and you're going to be satisfied watching me be upset.

I am so absolutely sure that my family won't let me go to an out-of-state school on the false pretense that I'm "Not ready" that I made a YouTube video and uploaded it so when my prediction comes true, I will make the video public so my parents can be publicly shamed for disability shaming me and discriminating against me.

And just yesterday my mom cancelled the self-direction program and the thing is, I publish a YouTube video a few months ago for addicting that my mom was going to cancel the self-direction program on a BS excuse since I honored all the promises that had to be fulfilled for her not to cancel the program and despite that she made up a BS excuse that and said it's because of that reason I'm cancelling self-direction even though she never told me that before.

And honestly maybe there is no point of me going to college as not only 85% of us are unemployed, but I'm obviously have some psychic tendencies and I could predict the future, albeit only for myself. And so far every negative outcome that I predicted that would happen as a result of discrimination and ableism has come true verbatim, 100%.

I'm planning to go to Lyndon State College after graduating from LaGuardia Community College in order to pursue my career choice of being a broadcast meteorologist and the reason I'm choosing to go to that school which has a much higher math requirement than Mississippi State, despite math being such a hard subject for me I want to go to Lyndon State College because of its 100% job placement rate of finding jobs four people in that career choice in a lot of students on the Spectrum also go to that school for that specific major and career choice as well, but I fear that I will be the first person in the history of the school who will graduate and not find a job in that career choice.

You're 27 and can hang out with LGBT people if you want. Your family sounds like they are overstepping their bounds by keeping you from programs because of their sociopolitical ideologies.

You are correct in that many employers will discriminate against those on the spectrum. It may be advisible not to disclose disabilities unless or until you need specific accommodations. You may be able to sue your former employer for discrimination but it probably won't be worth your time.

Concerning performing responsibilities you were not told nor trained to do, understand that while you might see this as a positive, in many situations, employers see this as a negative; particularly if they think it detracts from the responsibilities they want you to do as it distrupts the structure of the process and the supervisor no longer knows who is doing what so cannot effectively supervise. They also might only see that you are not doing what they expect you to be doing or are not around when they need you. If the dishwasher can't keep up with his or her responsibilities that is between the dishwasher and management and their respobsibility to fix, not yours. If you are running in to the back to help the dishwasher, they are short a person up front.

In some work environments, it's also bad to do someone else's job because it detracts from their value, or puts them at risk for getting in trouble if you do it wrong, or causes liability issues.

At my job, there are small things I do on occasion that are technically not my responsibility but my employer does not have an issue with because they are small "orphan" tasks related to my responsibilities that no one has an assignment to. However if I were to do something such as answer the main line phone, even if I am the only one in the office, that would be an issue because that would be an issue because the responsibilities surrounding that task are strictly delegated to people who's primary responsibility is to answer the phone, and they are trained to handle particular situations in particular ways. I am not even to take a message.

You bring up a very good point that I didn't pick up on about doing other people's work.

I agree that someone may be thinking they're impressing management by taking initiative to do other people's work without first seeking approval or being directed to do so. There can be many reasons why that's not a good idea:

While you think you're helping, perhaps the task must be done a certain way that you're not completely trained on. Or, the person assigned that task can be upset if you do their work and possibly incorrectly.

It an cause strife among the staff making management's job more difficult.

Good point, Chronos.

You shouldn't tell employers, or potential employers, that you are on the Autistic Spectrum right off the bat. That just isn't a smart thing to do.

They can easily counter that, though, by requiring you to make conversation with them while you work. You’ll be unable to do both without screwing up big time and they’ll beat you hands down.

Thank you. It took me a while to learn this in life. There are exceptions of course, some of them clear, and some of them not so clear. For example, a clear one, we had a fire at work once. Putting out fires is not part of my job description but I took action to put it out because it was an emergency.

A not so clear one: I had a task that had to be completed at a specific time and place and required power but upon arrival, I discovered the power had not been turned on to the facility. I located what I thought might be the power switch, which was clearly outside the jurisdiction of my department. It was a weekend and the department responsible for the power only had a skeleton maintenance crew, the only member of which who was also not authorized to touch the switch. We both stood staring at this switch debating about who should touch it, both knowing with enough certainty to worry that this was something that upper management would take issue with should something go wrong. His argument was that I needed the power so I should flip it. My arguement was that the switch fell under the jurisdiction of his department and not mine so he should flip it. We both had to call our supervisors on the weekend and hope they answered the phone (they did), and our supervisors basically agreed that one of them would take responsibility if something went wrong.

You shouldn't tell employers, or potential employers, that you are on the Autistic Spectrum right off the bat. That just isn't a smart thing to do.

You can always ASK what more can be done, but don't make those decisions without clearing them first.

I think I may understand what happened with your employer. Goldfish21 has been trying to explain this to me and I think I know what happened and I understand him now and your situation solidifies it. Perception is reality. I will explain. You displayed a negative attitude to your boss and those around you and they reacted in negative way towards you. People don't like it especially in employment if one projects negative emotions like sadness, sullen, anger, feelings of I can't, etc, etc even if it might be true. These negative emotions bring others down and in turn bring down an organization so productivity goes down.

If you want success and what I say is necessary for success but will not guarantee you success with an employer. But I think it will increase your retention rate with an employer. Even if you're feeling negative emotions and they're based in logical you have to learn not to project those and instead project the can-do, happiness, I'm happy to be here and help positive attitude. In other words, you may have to fake the attitude they want and as weird as this may sound things may turn around for you and genuine positivity will form. NTs never explain things this way but always in this pseudo-spiritual new age BS.

The only times that I was ever fired for "trying too hard" were when I had union jobs (3x) -- exceeding quota is a big no-no with those people, even if your quality rate is 100%. The union members at each place got together and demanded that the shop stewards "do something", the shop stewards went to HR complaining that I was being "disruptive", management called me in to let me know that my services were no longer needed. and I was escorted to the parking lot and told to vacate the premises.

So maybe it wasn't anything that the OP has said or done, but maybe some jealous co-workers who didn't take kindly to someone else doing a better job than they -- co-workers who had some kind of leverage they could use on the manager.

I'm sorry for your experience and I hope things turn around for you. You do seem to have a case of self fulfilling prophesy with the attitude of something like: 'Watch, I'll be proven right about this because people always discriminate against me..'.

I worked a temp job once after moving to a new city. The job was quite fun in that me and two other temp workers were brought into a large conference room of an office with a huge number of boxes of envelopes and folded letters. Our job was to simply stuff the envelopes. I set up my work area and switched it around making numerous slight modifications to the position of the letter stacks and envelopes until I found a system in which I could stuff the envelopes as quickly as possible. I then made a game out of it to stuff them even faster if possible. One of the other workers looked at me and said: "What are you doing??" The question was profoundly odd to me as our activity was clearly shared and self evident. "What?" "Don't stuff the envelopes so fast. This job can take us four days if we don't work so fast. At the rate you're going we'll be done tomorrow." I was baffled. I ignored him and kept working at my fast pace. The other two were cold to me for those few days and I never saw them again. It makes no sense to me to be less productive that you're capable of being. That seems lazy to me.