Should I let my employer know?

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Hi.

I am fairly new to the community. My four year old son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS a few months ago. While reading about the signs of Autism, I starated recognizing a lot of them in myself.

I must be very high functioning. I have worked on and off since I was 16, got married and have two beautiful children.

I have also worked as a vocational nurse for over 10 years. Yep - a nurse, as in having to deal with patients, their families and other professionals. I am usually pretty good - although can have some misunderstandings if I am not alert and get verbal clarification when I don't quite understand what someone needs.

I have come to realilze that I need people to be very, very clear about what they need from me. I am actually pretty good with the patients (I work in long-term care so I get to know my clients and their families pretty well). It's my co-workers who I sometimes have a problem with. I have said to my co-workers that, if they need something from me or have any issues with me - to please TELL ME clearly. I am always happy to accommodate them (if possible). Sometimes I have co-workers who say, "Cripey Rose, you should just know that this is needed" or words to that affect. I find this frustrating, because I just don't know as I have always had a hard time reading people. I mean, if something is really, really obvious - yes I can tell ... but subtle stuff - I am not so good at.

Thankfully I have a unionized position (hard to fire me based on personality conflicts) and I have a supportive employer (they appreciate that I am a very clear verbal communicator (although I am lousy at reading body language). I have been informally spoken to though when there have been upsets in the workplace. My supervisor once said, "you need to work on how you come accross to the others. I feel that you think you come accross differently than you do."

In any event - I do my best to do a good job and keep my patients well physically, emotionally and spiritually.

This then brings me to my question - should I tell me employer that I might have mild Autism and I NEED VERY CLEAR COMMUNICATION FROM MY EMPLOYER AND OTHER STAFF.

I actually called my union and asked a servicing representative. The servicing representatiave was aghast and said that I should definately NOT share this information with my employer. It's weird though - my union has a strong disability advocacy. For me though, he seemed to think that tellilng my workplace about any special needs related to possible Autism would be career suicide.

Also - I have not been formally diagnosed yet.

What are some of your thoughts on this.

Hi CanadianRose,

As a practical matter, I would agree with your union servicing representative.

When it comes to Public-Relations in the USA, all companies subscribe to the spirit of the
American with Disabilities Act, but in practice, it's just the opposite, with a few minor
exceptions.

After graduating university, I had a near 100-percent response rate to my resumes, but a
less than 50-percent rate with any mention of impairment. Since I couldn't completely hide
my impairments during an interview, I never did get a job, and ended up on disability.
With federal employers, I filed discrimination suits. But even when I had the best
scores on the exams (and once, when nobody else was competing for the job), the employers
always found an excuse totally unrelated to my disabilities in denying me employment.
In court, my ability to perform the jobs wasn't challenged, my status as being
disabled and protected from discrimination was successfully challenged.

In the federal appellate court, the judges complimented me on my ability to present a
well delivered oral legal argument, but then used the compliment as evidence that I
couldn't possibly be disabled. So, if the judges were sincere in their compliment, and
if I were able to better hide my impairments in the informal job interviews, I would
probably have received many job offers.

The Rehabilitation Department used my temporal lobe epilepsy as an excuse to deny me
any services afterwards. Catch-22 is a self-evident truth!! ! LOL. - Tadzio

And that pretty much sums up the ADA.

Penn & Teller did a nice BS episode on it.

I don't like "background checks" for a similar reason. They don't really operate to screen out unqualified people as they serve to find dirt to use to justify not hiring someone they don't want to hire. I've seem some petty stuff turned into a mountain to justify my not being selected when they hire people with stuff 10 times worse in their backgrounds. The difference? They wanted to hire the other guy, so they overlooked his issues.