How will I survive a job if I can't be on time for school?

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I'm seventeen and I've hardly ever been on time for school. I don't really have any problems being on time for appointments, it's mostly just school or anything that becomes too routine.

I just hate routine so much. It makes my life so meaningless. I have no energy for meaninglessness. Since appointments are a change in routine that motivates me to be on time.

I know that most jobs are very routine, so I'll probably be very late most of the time. I also can't focus on most of my school work especially if I put most of my energy into getting ready in the morning.

Exactly i have lost quite a many jobs due to bunking and late coming
In my present job the scenario is same the beginning of the year i was late
on daily basis

But then i tried to keep up and forced myself to be on time.

Yes but i hate a routine...it gets on my nerves...
but just sitting at home and idling time also bugs me

when I was in school my problem was I HATED school, so I never had the drive to get there on time or even go at all. With a job I suspect the same thing will happen. I get VERY depressed trying to force myself to do something on a daily basis that I hate. When I played soccer though, I was always early because I was excited to be there. Maybe when I find a job I LOVE then I wont mind going everyday at a certain time.

From my experience(not including myself) our workforce is full of people who are professionally absent and tardy. Tardiness is more a problem than absenteeism IMO. Employers should be more lenient on family emergencies and medical issues. Many employers will fire you after the first occurrence. I have a nephew who has worked the same job for almost 30 years and he almost got fired last year because he was out of work for surgery for about a week, I used to work in a major city hospital, actually a regional medical center where some of the women in the registration department would be absent or tardy almost every other day. Enough of the women indulged in these practices that probably only 15% of the department could get through one month with a zero infraction rate. It is common place I think.

I have the same problem - as the saying goes "I'll be late for my own funeral," but I managed a 30+ year career. I just got fired a lot.

And I loved my job, that didn't help much, I still managed to drag in anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes late nearly every day. Fortunately my field was one where I rarely had to punch a clock, but it certainly contributed to my chronic unemployment. You can't explain it to people who don't have the problem, they're very intolerant, but it really is a neurological thing I cannot control.

Oddly, in those jobs where I had to occasionally meet with a client first thing in the morning, I was never late for those meetings, but I couldn't get there on time on a normal day to save my life. Even if I get up hours early, I will still get distracted, or drive off and forget something important and have to go back, or encounter abnormally heavy traffic or hit every red light along the way. My subconscious just seems to rebel against the idea of being controlled by someone else's schedule.

Same problem here. I am always late... I don't even know why. It doesn't matter what time I wake up, even hours before the class, I get distracted, or forget things, or lose track of time (what?? that late already? Seemed like only 2 minutes...). I always lose a few classes because I get distracted.
I don't know how to help you though, I don't even know why I do it myself.

"I need to earn money to eat" isn't enough motivation?

Probably not.

That's fascinating since a lot of people with AS thrive on routine.

I wonder if you could think about the things you will do at your job, ie you have a meeting Monday, a project Tuesday?

Maybe think of it that way?

That's my thought as well. I'd think the way we obsess with routine would ensure we're early for work if not on-time.

Frankly, you need to suck it up. Those who are chronically late for work are not tolerated beyond their value. I see no reason why anyone can say they CAN'T get someplace on-time (if not early) on a reliable basis. It's all about having a schedule and sticking with it....Not hard to do at all. The failure of most people (NTs included) is that they do something stupid like wake up at the last moment before they must get in the car and race to work. They go through a lot of stress getting up, throwing on clothes, grabbing what they need, rushing out the door, speeding to work...and have no margin of error for anything to happen.

It's all about getting used to waking up at a time that gives you what you need to prepare for the day and head off to work so you have plenty of time to drive/walk/take public transit without needing to rush. I set out stuff the night before so I only need a last-minute check before I go out the door.

If your AS makes you so bad that you can't manage to keep a schedule for anything, you probably won't be able to work unless you find a field that lets you set your own work schedule.

Also, it's not unusual for a teen to struggle with this. Give it a few years and you'll likely find that your life becomes a world of set routines that you get uncomfortable when they are disrupted. I used to want to sleep all day and be up all night. I hated getting up before the sun. As an adult, I'm almost set to operate without an alarm clock. Don't know why or how the change happened, but it did.

I'm probably like this because I'm not much of an Aspie. I have mostly ADHD symptoms and a lot of my ASD symptoms can be explained by ADHD.


That's easy for you to say. How would you like it if I told you to suck it up whenever you had sensory issues or had a meltdown because of a change in your routine? What is easy for one person to do may not be easy for another person to do. Haven't you learned that by now? I thought that people here might understand.


I'm glad you've found something that works. If only I had the executive functioning that you seem to have...


I'm hoping that I will get better. Unfortunately that seems a bit like wishful thinking because I've been extremely late for school for my entire life. It's not just something that started happening when I hit puberty.

I do understand. I'm presenting you with the reality you live in. I found that I had to put my life into routines I can follow every day. I literally took a dry-erase maker and wrote on my bathroom mirror "shower, shave, brush teeth" so I'd remember to do all of it when I got up and had to go to work. I did the math on how long it should take to go to work and made sure I set my alarm to wake me up so I had plenty of time to get ready and get to work on time. The biggest effort (other than setting this up) was to get out of bed when the alarm went off.

Your routine(s) will ALWAYS change in life. You need to start learning to adapt on your own terms. You know you need to be up so you can get to school on time. So start doing things of your own creation to ensure you move in that direction. You will need this ability for the rest of your life. Start learning it now.