Consistent troubles at work never seem to cease

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**Warning: Long post**

I just joined the forum hoping to find someone out there who either has had similar problems at work or has tips for what an adult in my situation should be doing.

A little about me...

I'm Aaron, a 27 year old husband of Emily, my beautiful and loving wife. I have an adorable son named A.J., whom I worry will end up being too much like his father. I also have another baby on the way.

I didn't come to know what Asperger's was until it was too late for me to realize that I may have picked a bad career choice (teaching music) for my life. I was primarily socially outcast in school, however academic success was rarely a problem unless my clinical depression did not allow for good academic performance. Therefore, I was never remotely looked at for having a disorder of any kind; in fact, I was told I was only two IQ points shy of the qualifications for the gifted program in my school, and won a Who's Who award twice in high school. I suffered to cope within mainstream society my entire life without an answer as to why I couldn't seem to communicate well with others, namely my peers. I desperately wanted people who would care about me, and yet most people thought I was a jerk to them. My worst nightmares were always the ones where people in my family told me they didn't love me anymore.

I am in my fourth year as a music teacher in Missouri. I taught in a small town school district my first year and it was a nightmare. All first-year public school teachers make mistakes, and people with AS who are first-year teachers are probably doomed to make more. I was so doomed, and my boss did not support me enough to find a way to cope with my problems and be successful. I ended up resigning that position and moving back into my parents' house for a few months until I found a job teaching music for a school district that specializes in teaching students with special needs. Seems like a safe haven for AS, right? Wrong.

At least once a year I'll be put under a magnifying glass regarding my inability to demonstrate appropriate professional behavior. I never see any disciplinary action headed my way until it is too late for my boss to allow me the chance to salvage the situation. I am afraid of my boss because she never seems to grant me the benefit of the doubt. Currently, it's a new take on an old problem: sexual harassment. No staff member has ever mentioned anything to me regarding this issue, yet somehow she said it was a 'snowballed' process of complaints in only one morning.

I am on paid suspension pending an investigation. My family, whom I live and work every day to provide for, will not be able to stay in our home or keep our cars if I lose my job and cannot find another one. I have finally decided it is time to get an official diagnosis for AS, and I've made an appointment to see an autism disorder specialist with a PhD in St. Louis early next week.

I, unlike others in this forum, hate my condition because the problems I deal with outweigh any benefits I have from having AS. I see no reason why I shouldn't be a successful music teacher, yet somehow the intangibles of communication, and not my abilities in teaching concepts or as a musician, keep me from advancing my career and constantly seem to keep me dodging unemployment.

Is there anyone out there who can empathize? I'm feeling bullied by my boss, and even if I do find a way through this issue I am afraid she'll just fire me next year regardless. She seems to always find a reason to discipline me, as did the man I worked for before her. Would a medical diagnosis for AS help my employer to help me as a professional? I am so angry that this disorder was not even mentioned to me until I was almost through with my college experience. Now I feel trapped!

Maybe.

But concerning the issue with you acting in an unprofessional manner, even people with AS have to act professionally at work. You did not specify the exact nature of the complaint against you.

Most of my classmates in college were men, as were the instructors. There were a few other women in the class but we were definitely the minority.

The instructors rarely ever mentioned anything at all pertaining to gender, and they never mentioned anything which ever implied anything of a sexual nature or anything which implied women were worse than or better than men in any kind of way.

In other words, they treated the women no differently than the men, unless a heavy table had to be moved, then it was generally understood the tables were usually too heavy for the women.

So I suggest you follow that protocol. You would not tell a male student how pretty he looks today, so you should not tell a female student that. You generally should not speak about things like dating with your students either.

You need to keep a professional distance.

I do find this ironic:

Wait what?? You want a forum's members to empathize with a view they don't share on a site that encourages its antithesis?

I don't think there are not others here who do not hate aspects of their condition.

I get quite sick of myself sometimes. Frequently, I do wish I didn't have the specific problems I have. However that doesn't mean I don't take offense at those who suggest there is something inferior, or "wrong" with my personality.

There are pros to "having" AS and there are cons. There are pros to being NT and there are cons.

All things have trade offs.

Thanks for the helpful reply (sarcasm). While I hate the negative aspects of my condition because I feel I am more disabled than merely 'differently abled,' I do not hate others or criticize them for having AS. Perhaps if you were asking questions in a more imformation-seeking manner as opposed to being initially overly-critical would help me in my quest for a solution.

Thank you for your post. Your suggested protocol should help. Please keep in mind that my work environment is almost entirely opposite of your college experience. The men in my school make up about 10% of the workforce, and white males, which I am, make up half of that.

I'm having a lot of trouble with other staff, not students. When someone has a problem with me because of something I have said, they go straight to my boss instead of coming to me. My boss has always taken their word as truth, and instead of giving me a chance to build a relationship with the person who made the complaint, she reprimands me personally for the complaint and then usually never tells me who made the complaint in the first place. I don't know how to even try to succeed at building professional relationships when my comments are so frequently taken out of context and apparently offend quite a few people unintentionally. It would be different if my boss was even remotely more supportive of my need to improve, but I think she expects me to do 'it' the right way without any outside help or mentoring.

It is so frustrating. It makes me feel inferior to my co-workers. I am a great teacher and a phenomenal musician, yet somehow I am also a very poor communicator who also happens to be very verbose and am rarely self-aware of it until I've brought myself into a troublesome situation. I don't feel that AS should give me a license to act unprofessionally, but I also don't know how to change who I am, either. This is not a matter of intentions, it's a matter of what to do to limit unintentional encounters and help my boss understand my needs as a young professional with AS. I'm not trying to act in an unprofessional manner, I'm just being perceived that way without the benefit of the doubt. I think I will end up needing to change careers and get away from people, and I don't mean this in a sexist way (if there is any way you can disregard the inferred sexism), but getting away from the working world of women may not be a bad idea, either. They tend to have 'an elephant's memory' and are far more vindictive in their pursuits than I am.


Like I said, the current issue is sexual harassment. I have no knowledge of harassing anyone, yet apparently a few people who have never approached me about it feel that I have, and now it may cost me my job and put my family in huge financial bind. My boss seems to treat me unfairly because she thinks I should naturally not have these problems. She does not know I have AS because I am afraid she'd fire me for it, she has had other staff members dismissed for other medical reasons before (not by means of termination, but either non-renewed a contract or forced someone to resign). Would a medical diagnosis of AS help me to receive more understanding treatment and better professional development from my boss?

I don't see any way around discussing AS with your boss. Doing so may be the only thing that prevents you from getting fired or not having your contract renewed. As it stands now, she is assuming you are NT and therefore that you are doing all these things on purpose. NT men who sexually harrass will always say, "I didn't mean it, she took it the wrong way". But yes, they did mean it. This is how your boss probably currently peceives you. In order to convince her that you honestly don't know what went wrong rather than you are being a weasely (NT) liar about it, you will need to disclose AS. She may not renew your contract anyway, but as it stands right now, "about to be fired" is stamped all over your post. In order to stay employed, somebody who actually works with you (such as her) will need to actually observe you in the classroom and then give you an honest assessment of trouble spots. If you are an otherwise very good teacher, she may be willing to do that. But if she keeps thinking this is NT weasel-ness rather than AS obliviousness, you are in extreme danger of getting fired.


A word to the wise (to go along with Chronos's words to the wise): if a student feels sexually harrassed by you, she will never come to you first about it. It is the nature of sexual harrassment that the harrassee feels too intimidated and uncomfortable to go to the harrassor. In the case of an NT man who was doing this on purpose, he would take the opportunity of being confronted to just pile on more abuse. You aren't meaning to do anything harmful. But because it is assumed you are NT, it will be assumed that you are by the student who feels harrassed. This is why anonymity is encouraged and why you will never be given the name of the person who made the complaint. It is to protect them from revenge harrassment. All this no doubt feels grossly unfair. You are paying for the sins of NT men. Nevertheless, your boss has no reason to think you are any different from them (nor do the students) unless you tell them otherwise.

You don't need to know who complained about you, but I think it's important you try to figure out, either by discussing with your boss, or from your own memory, what you may have said that was taken the wrong way so you can avoid such comments in the future.

There are actually many people with AS who are instructors and professors, as we tend to excel particularly well in the field of our interest.

It might just be that you have a hostile working environment. If this is the case, there is probably a more friendly environment for you out there, maybe at a different school. You might actually do better managing a larger class size than a smaller one, because in larger schools the instructors usually don't work as closely with individual students due to sheer student volume, and so most interactions never get the chance to stray from academic related questions, answers, and problems because of time constraints.

Larger schools, like large universities, also have more diversity in their departments personality wise and there are departments that mediate problems such as the one you are having, that are independent of the department you are in.

I'm sure it's more than three, but normally, before I get to 3, odds are it's ending my employment.

Update...

I'm a teacher who is a member of NEA, an advocacy group for teachers in the USA. Being a member means I have to give them part of my paycheck, but it also pays for representation in these types of situations. I had such representation with me when I went to meet with the school district's administration last Thursday, my boss included.

After the assistant superintendent outlined the burden of proof, he told me that the most glaring thing that stuck out to him in his mind is that I hadn't offered my principal a statement immediately before I was placed on administrative leave. He stated that the district had a right to ask for one, and denying to provide one seemed to him to be insubordinate on my part.

I told him that I was scared; past dealings with my boss in her office have been fearfully unfair, earlier this year in August she violated board policy just to discipline me for a remark I made 100 days prior (I kid you not, she founded everything on hearsay and didn't allow me to explain, district policy states you have five days within occurence of the incident to make the complaint, and then ten days to submit it to the next highest level of administration if the principal does not deal with the situation, after 100 days she finally did but I didn't know the policy so I got burned), and of course this was not well received by anyone in the room until my NEA rep backed me on the statement that my boss had been unfair with me regarding board policy.

I had been advised not to say anything negative about my boss at this meeting, but I just refused to put up with her attitude one more time. She shouldn't be allowed to be a bully in the workplace, and if I was going to go down in flames, I wanted to make sure her bosses knew that. I cited several instances where she had treated me unfairly compared to other anonymous staff; instances where she made negative remarks about me to other staff members in public; and instances where I had problems socially and she always seemed to believe whatever hearsay she heard as the truth, even before she had asked me about it. I have all of these instances documented. She is about the worst boss an aspie could ask for. I'm confident she would have bullied me in school if we were classmates as children.

All this time, my boss is seated about 2 feet to my left and is constantly scoffing and being disrespectful to me as I make my defense. Horrible behavior on her part, but I was too nervous to ask that she be removed from the room. In hindsight I should have done that. The assistant superintendent was very gentile, I wish I had worked for him and not her, he didn't seem to respond in a shut-down manner the way my boss usually does. I do think he realized at one point that my boss was bullying me because I maintained eye contact with him as she continued to try to mock/scoff while I was speaking. I was dry-mouthed, nervous, scared out of my mind but very proud to stand up to her in such a situation. She is just a terrible person towards me, and I didn't deserve to be treated like that regardless of what she felt about me.

As for the harrassment charges, I informed them that the three women in question were friends of mine, or at least I thought they were (here is where being an Aspie really hurt my job situation, as I now see that they are not my friends and truly don't care at all about me, they'd like to see me fired). I told them that all of the comments quoted could be placed into a sexual connotation if they were isolated, however in the context of our friendship they were not out of place. I also told them that they had made remarks to me in the past very similar in nature, however I had not noticed any intentional harassment on their part, either. I did not consider remarks made by me or them to be harassment, or even intentional as a sexual remark. I also had never been confronted by any of these women about any remarks, and one of them had made the statement that she had. I had the right to challenge the accuracy of that statement, thank God.

I wrote a written statement after the meeting with the help of my NEA rep, and they told me they'd be in touch soon, Friday or early this week. It is now Wednesday and I haven't heard back, so I am unsure as to whether that is good or bad. I would assume that if things had gone 'very poorly, very quickly,' I would have been made known that they were going to terminate me post-haste. Perhaps my defense was strong enough to warrant further investigation on their part. In all actuality, regardless of my situation my principal should be fired for the way she has handled several personnel situations.

She is the most unprofessional person I have ever met that had a PhD behind their name. My school feels like a junior high, where we play clique wars and have catty arguments and people talk behind other's backs all the time. A nightmare for an aspie for sure, I will never understand office politics and I don't see why I should! I didn't get into teaching kids to deal with immature adults all the time; just because I don't operate well socially with my peers at work does not mean I am a poor music teacher, quite the opposite in fact, I am great and I know it. In my last two weeks before being suspended, I taught english speaking children with an MR diagnosis to sing four, count 'em, 4 songs in Spanish. Amazing stuff, and my boss thinks I am just a crap teacher by default. I really am worried about providing for my wife and children, but man, if they fire me at least I won't have to deal with her ever again. What a terribly ignorant person, and a reason for Aspies everywhere to not trust NT's. Even this principal of a special needs school would target and bully an aspie employee.

I feel for you, really I do. I experienced this same sort of thing in college and it cost me my graduation. The only good thing to come out of it was my aspie diagnosis.

I do feel that the confidentially of the complaints process is unfair. I've been told that I had several complaints made against me, but because of "confidentially", I couldn't be told what they were. How can a person modify their behavior if they don't know what they did wrong?

This probably works for NTs, but I just feel confused.

I can empathise.

I have hopes that this forum encourages honesty and provides a safe place where people can state how they truly feel, not just have to go along with some cheerleader-type attitude that autism is some sort of 'gift'.

Maybe for some of you, it is. Maybe, if your family loves and supports you, if you've managed to form friendships and relationships, if you haven't had to face being utterly alone, being aspie is something you can regard as special.

But for some of us it isn't like that. I've spent forty years alone; with my diagnosis now I understand why, and have to face the fact that I'm almost certainly going to spend the next forty alone, too. That's not a gift, that's not 'special', and though it may not fit with your wish for everyone to look on the bright side, it is my reality.

Is there a place here for people who are really struggling, or is this just another planet that's wrong for us, too?

Verbal remark? Once, if I recall. Not a verbal reprimand but a scolding.

Chastised for other things - there is never a good day, it seems.

Hi doublea082,

I can sympathize & empathize. These problems have pretty much plagued me all my life. I still have peer related issues at work.

Depending on where you live, you will probably have legal redress (both the UK and the US have Acts to protect aspies against discrimination), but only as a shield, not a sword. The good part is, harassment accusations probably won't fly in court; but the bad part is that the law cannot and will not change your work environment. Your boss also cannot fire you on the grounds of discrimination against AS anymore than she can fire you because of the colour of your skin. Even if she doesn't explicitly do so, the legal doctrine is something like de facto is de jure: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, eats like a duck and swims like a duck, then it's a duck, even if you claim that it's a chicken.

What I always do is:
1. Observe.
2. Observe some more.
3. Copy behaviour, however meaningless or senseless.

Steps 1 and 2 are not trivial - they are an ongoing process of observing social processes and rituals of NTs, almost exactly the same as, say, an anthropologist would observe the behaviour of a group of gorillas. However, an unfortunate prerequisite of effective observation, in science as well as in, well, an "aspie vs. the world" situation, that you must not participate while observing, lest your presence alter the processes or rituals. You will, gradually, because I did, emerge as an extremely quiet person. Depending on your local culture, quietness/shyness/timidity may or may not be pejoratively nuanced - in financial circles, for example, I've heard that it's negatively viewed cos a large part of finance consists of blowing your own trumpet. It's much more acceptable in academic or tech geek circles.

Over time, after you've acquired a sufficiently long list of social rules, then you may emerge a bit. But it seems like there will forever be new social subtexts and rules; I don't know what else to do other than to just keep adding to the list. Over time, too, you'll also recognize that no matter how well adapted you are, you just aren't one of them, and you can never be. It's up to you how well you accept this.

There are 2 things that will happen: either we adapt to the environment, or the environment adapts to us. Sometimes it's a give and take. Where I work, a few people may suspect that I'm an aspie, because I know that everybody knows that I'm a little oddball (tho I can't tell for the life of me how so), although I'll never explicitly admit it because one of my aforementioned social rules forbids declaring that you're an aspie - I don't know how or why, I just observe and follow. My boss knows that I wouldn't be able to sell a product at gunpoint, simply because I don't know the effective methods of socializing with a client, but she knows I can be depended upon to look at a client's problem, sort it out into a mathematical/IT context, and then derive a solution methodology - faster and more effectively than anybody in my department, or sometimes right in front of the client, which apparently is very good for promoting the company name when they stare at you glassy-eyed and say stuff like "did you just do all that in your head?" If you're a high functioning aspie, then show it in helpful circumstances, it will make life easier for NTs, and they will like you as a result.

However, there is the gender dimension of your situation that I think applies to NT men as well. There are certain things men, no matter their neural wiring, will never understand about women, the iconic one being why they have to go to the bathroom in groups. I suspect that NT men will have difficulty being a perfect fit in the culture that you describe as well.