Job advocate / liaison?

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Continuing from another thread, “Performance doesn't matter, only social capital”
http://www.wrongplanet.net/modules.php? ... 85#5346685

Wherein the comment was made:

If only I could call a lifeguard.

I’ve tried, by the way, to get a kind of lifeguard for the job.
I actually got into a program to get a kind of job coach. I wanted someone with credibility to help me to educate a potential boss. My issues include office politics, non-verbal communication and such.

First off, this job coach reassured me that she had attended a program about Asperger’s and therefore knew all about it. (Need I mention that she didn’t?)
After wasting an absurd amount of time with the usual crap of trying to teach me to write a resume or tie my shoes…
(Gimme a break. I don't need any kind of training at all. I need a specific form of help, and acceptance.)
I finally dragged her to the brink of a glimmer of my real issues – office politics – she paused, blinked, and with a wave of her hand said, “oh, I can’t help you with that – so let’s talk about your resume.”
I went through TWO of these jackasses before giving up on the program.

I’m a grown-up, and the learnable “social skills” are as good as they are going to get.
I don’t need training or a special program designed for children who still break simple rules that you can explain in rational terms.
I need acceptance. Accommodation. Just shut up and let me do the job, without the games that always go over my head.
What’s lacking is a set of social instincts that you can’t teach. As an alien anthropologist, I could tell you all about it. But in the moment, it will never work.
I will never be fast enough. If I can ever figure it out at all, it is only in hind-sight, which is never good enough.
One can coach from a wheel chair. One can understand the game perfectly, and still be unable to play the game.

Ok, so let’s assume that I have:
1-Found a shrink who gets it and can diagnose Asperger’s or HFA or whatever the DSM is calling it this week; and
2-Found a job with a boss who might give me a break; and
3-Manage to persuade them to talk to each other, with the shrink acting as a kind of liaison/advocate.
Just to get me started and taken seriously. If the boss gets the general idea, I think I could take it from there.

Is there any chance at all of this?
What can I say to explain myself to the shrink, and then what can the shrink say to the boss?
I don’t know how to do it myself without a look of deepest disgust as I compare people I’ve known to baboons.

I can relate somewhat, I'll be going on a course eventually sponsored by The National Autistic Society which should identify weaker areas, only problem is im quite apprehensive about it as it covers every single thing I knew from school. I'm also part of a job advocacy charity for vulnerable adults. The area I fall down is the job interview, eventually I would want a jop without need of an interview (I look for IT professions, back of house, limited social contact within a sensory comfortable environment).

I think having a therapist talk to either a boss or a Human Resource manager can be your best bet, but its bust to know exactly your working needs are. I wouldn't know the outcome, but often in my experience, employees don't like the 'extra baggage' illness or disabilities have these labels.

Yeah, I went through an annually rotating cycle of "vocational rehabilitation counselors" during university studies (none of them caught on I wouldn't be able to use my degree due to my social deficit, despite their assignment to me for that very disability) and then went through three "job coaches" post-grad. That "individualized plan for employment" really bombed something fierce!

I finally quit that silly program in 2008 when I successfully applied for Pizza Hut cook on my own. I didn't want them taking credit for my initiative!

Many years ago, I often wrote "Poor Management" as my reason for leaving my previous job. One prospective employer once queried me a bit about that, saying something like, "I want to know whether there really were management troubles there or whether you are just some kind of malcontent who cannot function well in an otherwise-tolerable situation."

From the smallest places I have ever worked to the largest, the key has always been in my interviewer knowing my actual abilities and my asking questions about things things I already know can/could/will/might be troubling for me. In once case, I was suspicious and asked for an opportunity to just walk through the place to have a look around, but was told that would not be possible...so I just accepted the job and said I was doing so to be sure I would not be making a mistake by turning it down. Three days later, I walked out and never looked back.

I do not know how to make any of this into any kind of formula, but I eventually learned ways to let interviewers know (or to at least allow them to perceive) I was also interviewing them just a bit to hopefully see what I might be getting into because *I* knew there are going to be challenges for me. That has definitely worked against me at some places, but that has also told me there is likely not much accommodation there and I might just as well move along anyway. Like you have essentially said, we need employee coaches, not job coaching, and I have found my particular brand of "self-advocacy", however difficult, about the best available.