My boss and I do not understand each other.

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My boss and I seem to have some communication issues.
He seems to misunderstand or flat-out fail to understand most of what I say. I'm not sure if it is because he isn't listening, or if it is the way I talk, but it is frustrating nonetheless. I know that I have odd speaking patterns in real life, which for whatever reason do not transfer over to writing, but most people can understand me fine.

I can understand the words he says, and what he wants me to do, but I don't understand anything beyond that. I don't understand when he is joking and when he is serious. I've tried looking for clues as to whether or not he's serious, but I can't seem to find any. The other day, he told me that he was going to fire me if I went on my break without vacuuming, and I said, "fine", and he started laughing and said that he was just kidding and that he would not fire me. Then, later, the vacuum wouldn't work, and he told me that if I broke it, I'd have to pay for it. I laughed, but this time he was apparently serious and told me that he wasn't kidding.

This happens quite often. He frowns and sounds angry when he is joking and when he is serious. It's really frustrating.

Does anyone have any tips?

Edit: Just so you know, the vacuum wasn't working after I was horsing around with it, so it wasn't mean of him to say that I had to pay for it, and it ended up being all right in the end.

How did you get inside my head, and how long have you been there?
My supervisors do the same thing to me. I have been attempting to work with them to get better commo, and it has improved but it still sucks.
ETA - it wouldn't hurt for you to learn some basic mechanical/electrical troubleshooting skills. I've been able to point my employers to the right way to solve a problem, even if it was above my skill level to do so.

My new manager seems to be always mad at me,scowling,frowning,fake smiles...?I can never tell were I stand with her.I try and work really hard but she just seems annoied with me.I dont know if I am imagining this or reading non-verbals correctly.I cant tell what she is saying half the time and she and the assistant manager are always telling me to do things differently,so it is a bit of a mess.She hasnt yelled at me,I just cant tell if she doesnt like me or if she is just an unhappy,stressed person.It's good to keep in mind that even NTs have poor social skills and being a manager seems to be a great excuse to get away with it.

That's the nice thing about engineering....The managers are almost as oddball as I am. Makes it easy to communicate.

As for trying to get when your boss is joking, hmm. tough one.

I'd like to say talk to him about it and advise him your having trouble figuring out when he is joking or not but I don't know how he'd see that kind of discussion. Do others who work for him recognize when he is joking?

Well generally we will inevitably have trouble understanding people in general

Look on the brightside at least he wasn’t like my last job as a trainee account where know one understand a bloody word he said including the NTs to the point where his secretary would translate what he said into English although unfortunately I lost that job which was a shame as it was a decent (trainee account) as he felt I didn’t listen to what he said idiot no bar his secretary listened to what he said as know one could understand what he said