I always had to be in a job that had some sort of game element. I worked at a video game store and I loved trying to get every unsuspecting mother or father to buy the Game Informer magazine discount card. I have a hard time socializing in an open ended environment, but due to a life long love of Monopoly I knew how to sell. That being so I was great at selling the magazines because there was no personal conversation being done. I call this in my book, "in an alias" which means I'm just playing a role.
Playing a role though only goes so far, sadly. While I was great at selling I was horrible at the meaningless small talk that co-workers seemed to enjoy so much. I was certainly the social outcast and was pretty much mute until the next shopper came in. This duality created some tense times for me because at the time of this job I was undiagnosed (I was diagnosed with Asperger's at age 20) and my co-workers would get angry with silent ways. What they didn't understand was that I was virtually unable to talk to them. What I couldn't express though was why. I often have the problem of believing "If I think it they should know it" and I figured they knew. Of course, sadly, they didn't and my environment often became overly stressful.
Nearly every job I've had ended because of this. The stress of those open ended conversation outside of the activity of selling becomes too much and I have never once gave notice of my intention to leave. Once it's too much I have simply said, "That's it, I'm done, thanks for the employment, but I can't take this anymore".
I've had jobs in my area of interest and those have gone great. I am a race director for a racing series and can do that with no issues. the key is to find what you like and go with it. Most people will at one point or another have a job that isn't the most pleasant, but if one can use their area of interest to their advantage the results would be much better. Of course in a perfect world all would get that job, but hope is something I used to not have and I would laugh when people would tell me things would get better, but they just might.
05 Mar 2010, 1:34 pm
