Good jobs...not so good jobs for aspies

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There was a thread like this a while back. I thought I should remake it

So, from your experiences, what are some good/bad jobs for aspies

I have always done best while working alone and with minimal supervision, and especially while knowing the mindset of the business owner, general manager and/or of at least my immediate supervisor. In other words: The *kind* of work I was doing was relatively insignificant in comparison to:

1) Knowing and understanding overall goals and what was actually expected of me;
2) Being allowed to attend those matters apart from continual (unnecessary or merely "nosey") oversight, distraction or even outright interference.

The best job of my life was working at a ski lift in a winter resort.

- Alone all day in the middle of beautiful scenery
- Seeing and interacting briefly with a majority of people being happy
- Easy job, 3 buttons: start, stop, emergency stop
- Helping worried mothers to help their children (my superhero ego I suppose)
- Very good pay!
- Working with tough woodcutters that don't speak much and find it normal to do so
- Snowstorms, hard but funny

I did that job when I was a student, I asked myself then if I should carry on studies or simply live that life in the wilderness, I choose studies and got serially fired since then

Retail absolutely sucked for me. It was awful. Don't do it.

I found data entry/scanning type of jobs to be pretty good for me. But it has to be in an ideal setting as well, and not production-motivated. If you can afford it, part-time jobs work wonders for my mind (I get exhausted just dealing with people alone, and switching to part-time really helped in that regard).

So if people feel brave enough to say, how many jobs have you lost? I've lost 25 and I'm 33. That doesn't include some temp jobs that were temp, and one under the table job that ran out of work, that was Hurricane Katrina related.

Data entry stuff, while boring, was pretty nice and easy.

I work part time as a sports reporter for a local newspaper. I can't tell you how many times now I've had anxiety flareups around the time I need to do post game interviews. Even yesterday I had one, and felt like crap much of the afternoon afterwards.

I've been thinking about Data Entry recently, can anyone give advice about how to get into it...? (Please? )

I job I "lucked" into about 6 years ago and one that I've kept since then is working at a supermarket on nights. The only people I see are the few others that work there, although the sensory aspect can be a little stressful I can just pop in my headphones most of the night. The job is okay to subsist on, i.e., it pays the bills, but I know I'm sort of hiding from the world a bit so I don't recommend it as a long term employment strategy!

Am I right in my rememberances in thinking that there was an Aspiejobs website not long ago...? All I'm getting is a 404 style page saying "It Works!"

I like anything with a routine- working in schools has been great. I'm only really ever with one adult at a time and I know what to expect when. I hated retail work, and find jobs without much direction (eg when I worked in a care home) really hard coz I was constantly being told off for "not taking the initiative".

That makes a lot of sense. In my small segment of the retail world I have a set number of things to do and a set amount of time in which to do it, I have the freedom to do everything in between in my own way which works best for me. Clear goals and targets. What kind of work have you done in schools?

I worked at walmart for 2 years at the frontend as a csm. at the time, I was too busy to think about what I didn't like about the job but now that I am no longer there, that job stressed me out more than I thought. schedules constantly changing, getting constantly bombarded by customers, having nothing to do one minute then having to be in five places at once the next. I now work for the school district in the town I live in as a computer Tech/network admin and I absolutely love it. same schedule everyday, district staff treats me like gold, having a job in a field Im passionate about, yeah, definitely the best job I ever had

Well my first job was in medical genetics counselling. I did it well but it was very stressful for me as I had to interact with patients and their families and with a bunch of other specialists as well on a daily basis. This drained me so when I got my PhD degree I gladly ditched the job.
Then I was a senior research fellow at a lab for some years and this was a definitely better, only that the number of personnel working under me increased and I couldn't manage very well - heck, if I have to explain to several people what are their duties for the day I might as well go and do them myself - since I don't like to waste time on socializing at the workplace and can get focused on a specific task, I am usually more effective than the average fellow. Still, having to be attentive to other people did put a strain on me, when I finally got home, I was usually in a state of shutdown.
Luckily, my bosses discovered some time ago that I was really good with writing project proposals, research papers, reports and other specialized stuff - and that no-one else in the lab was able to write a coherent text in any language - so basically that's what I do now and everybody's happy. Just give me the raw data and specific instructions what you exactly want as an end result. I have never lost us a contract yet.
Best part is that I can really work from home most of the time. Though, when a strictly controlled or critical experiment is needed, it's invariably me who is chosen to carry it out.

I started off as work experience, mainly observing lessons and helping with admin stuff, then I got to take small groups, and worked up to teaching assistant work and I'm applying to do teaching full time next year. I love it, and I think working up to whole class work really helped. Schools are great because they have to be structured because of the children and they need clear targets and to know what they should be doing as well. There's also a lot of support if a lesson starts to go wrong, or things don't go to plan. The school I work in is brilliant; they have a lot of support for staff as well as children.

(1) Worst jobs- (A) Those which place a premium on communication and political skills- teaching, sales, (B) Jobs which place a premium on conformity and where weird people are persecuted- a lot of manufacturing and construction jobs, the military, law enforcement.

(2) Best Jobs (C) Computer and other hi-tech jobs (D) Jobs caring for people- ret*d, elderly, handicapped etc.

So far, the job that I've had the longest is at a school for special-needs children. I get to ask questions of the lead teachers that are actually helpful to me too; mostly about navigating the care/school system (I have children of my own on the spectrum as well) I understand where the kids are coming from, and they seem to know that i'm one of them too

Second best job was at a chain bookstore:
-- too big to be micromanaged
-- really good discount (30%)

Worst jobs:
--retail
--answering phones/ calling people
--working with bullies and people who never got over being cheerleaders in highschool

I still have to deal with pointless chit chat where i am now, but I'm learning to tune it out unless someone's speaking to me directly!

Worst Jobs: Field biology internships and teaching at an ESL college.
Field Biology: having to live 24/7 with my coworkers, not being able to stop and eat when I needed to, lots of bruises etc. due to clumsiness and exhaustion, bad pay for long heavy work, living out of a suitcase. Also sexual harassment at one place, and major trouble crossing the border into the USA. Resulted in meltdowns in front of bosses and coworkers as well as a lot of distress.
Teaching at an ESL college: lack of instruction as to what I should be teaching, communication with students hard, no training in handling a class, other instructors spent a lot of time socializing out on the porch smoking and I dislike the smell of cigarettes.

Best jobs:

chemistry lab jobs: quiet (well, except for a couple of coworker's music choices), logical, mostly repetitive but required a brain, didn't have to live with my coworkers, better paid than some I've had. Unfortunately I've developed repetitive strain injuries, then fibromyalgia and had to stop. If it weren't for that I would still be doing it.

petstore worker: I get to work with small exotic animals all the time. What I do there is actually sort of specialized - My main duty is to look after the fish and other creatures, and to troubleshoot when I find things wrong. I only spend maybe 10% of my time with customers, and then I'm usually talking to them about animals, which I do not have a problem with. My supervisor and my boss are happy with me because we've been getting a lot of compliments on the fishtanks since I arrived and fewer fish are dying. My main complaint is that it's only 12 hours per week and I can't make enough money to live independently without more hours than they're giving me. I like the work.

Note: I'm not diagnosed, probably sub-diagnosable so I don't know how others would find the last one.

Best Job: Pizza delivery- contact with customers limited to 1min or so, time alone in the car and ability to exercise my strengths in memory and logic. Decent money for the number of hours worked. Also it's fun to be the best at something. Worst aspect is time spent in the store doing my best not to offend the empty-headed teens and twenty-somethings with whom I work, and typicaly failing.

Worst job (tie): Retail and supermarket stocking. Retail because I hate talking to people and I usually didn't think they needed whatever crap I was supposed to be selling them so I was pretty ineffective in convincing them that they did.
Stocking shelves because it was brutally pointless and never-ending. Also the aisles seemed 10 miles long, the lights were too bright and they played really terrible music. And I couldn't enjoy the alone time because there was always some customer or jerk-wad manager bothering me .

Worst Job: Pharmacist

Best Job: Assembly-line worker (as long as line doesn't go too fast)