How do you stay out of trouble in real life?

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An aspie can try to stay out of trouble in school and university by being discreet and quiet. If it works, you're lucky. Unfortunately, it's no longer that simple in real life, when you have to get a job. NTs confuse work and social interaction, so it seems you can no longer stay out of trouble.

I don't think it's much different than college. Try not to draw too much attention to yourself. Play it cool. Respect people's differences and allow for the reality that you are often "different" in ways that are sometimes challenging for others. Learn to be polite and formally friendly (e.g., say "good morning" to people in the morning, "thank you" when they do something for you, and "Excuse me" when you upset them. )

Critically important: learn and do the required and expected parts of your job. Don't spend time at work doing other stuff, particularly special interests--unless that's part of the job.

Don't worry too much about social interaction. Don't freak out when you don't understand what is going on. As long as you do your job and are polite and friendly, you can get by in many situations. If you can develop closer relationships with anyone at work who becomes an ally, then you may find out what is really going on politically.

The best thing to do in a working environment is to occupy yourself with WORK.

Within a college/university context, always seek to present yourself as a pleasant individual. Make sure you know what you're talking about (you don't have to have a scholar's knowledge of something--just be able to offer some generalized proof for a thesis). Dress neatly and cleanly. Always be clean of body. Don't argue every point.

Excellent, concise advice.

The problem is that people realize you're weird and bully you. If you try to do something about it, your boss soon finds out and you're fired. Aspies get in the way of business, so we're supposed to be bullied out of business. We're genetically broken and shouldn't exist. Therefore, the capitalist society starves us to death. Social Darwinism, baby! You can't fight the system.

Not in my experience. I'm very, very good at my job. Nobody bullies me. Why would they? I do my thing, they do theirs, my employer recognizes that replacing me would be exceedingly time consuming and expensive.

Are you bad at your job? A jerk? Unable to do your work without antagonizing others?

All the times I've ever gotten in trouble since I was out of high school were for doing things I knew I shouldn't be doing, there was no confusion or anything like that. My advice would be to not do something you know you could get in trouble for unless you have bail money. Around here, simple s**t costs you 50 bucks for a bondsman for a 500 bond. It's best to have the 50 in cash hidden somewhere just in case your family is pissed off at you and won't pay your bail.

If you mean getting "in trouble" as in pissing somebody off or annoying them by making a mistake, I still do that from time to time. I turn it into a joke and laugh at myself and then they can't very well be mad at me or do anything to me about it.

Everybody makes mistakes, especially when they're new to the job. it isn't necessarily a firing offense - owning up to the mistake, fixing it and not making the same mistake again has worked fine for me.

I have worked for a company as a programmer. I was good at my job and did everything that was asked from me. Code that was bugged I got back from the testers and I immediately correct it. But... after two months I got fired. Why? Not because of my performance. I lacked social skills and that was more important to the boss than job performance.

HMK: not all jobs are like that. That sort of thinking is prevalent within a "help desk" sort of environment--or anything involving contact with the public.

Many jobs just require you to do your work well, and have basic social skills. What's wrong with saying "Hi"? What's wrong with acknowledging someone when they compliment your work? If you do that, and ask them about their day once in a while, that's probably enough, as long as you do your job well.

Don't go on and on about some philosophical notion, unless someone else goes on and on--then you have something there! Just stick to the mundane at all times.

It's a two part process - be good at your job and be likable.

Step one - Being good at your job is a mix of determination/hard work plus your natural aptitude for the work. The best advice I can offer is to figure out what you're good at and try to get into that field. The ideal situation would be something that is related to/similar to one of your special interests. If you can manage to bring your aspie obsession to bear on a job, you'll have all of your other coworkers beat in terms of focus!

As for being likable... part of this is innate, but I would argue that there are several things you can do to help yourself out here. One big thing is to not complain too much. If there's a serious threat or oversight or something, yeah, go ahead and bring it up. But the more you can avoid complaining about small hassles in life, the better. Being respectful and kind will also get you really far.

In case of a helpdesk, communicative skills may be (very) important, but not if you are working in a company as a programmer and during work you have no contact with clients and limited contacts with nearby colleagues.


Doing these things, which are generally appreciated by colleagues, doesn't make you less insufficient socially, if a company has very high social standards which filter out autistics, because they can never meet them.


Conversations must be enjoyable, and not too "heavy", IMO, if you want to be an appreciated colleague.

I want to say: If you have just basic social skills and having contacts with the company's clients is not part of your work, that may still be unsufficient.

At the current job I have more contacts with other people than just colleagues BTW: teenager pupils and very rarely contact with their parents. It is necessarily IMO that you have some communicative skills.

Generally, it is tough for autistics to get a decent job. Having social skills (like saying "hi", "How was your day?") may not cut it.

Right. Of course not.

You must be able to have basic ability in reciprocal conversation and in expressing empathy.

And to know that "how are you doing?" at times, is somewhat of a "scripted" expression. It is not required to be totally honest when you are responding to a "how are you doing?" from a stranger. Usually, the "scripted" answer is "fine. How are you?"

It can get irritating for one who values truth at all times. But, alas, there are reasons for these social niceties, historical reasons. I believe they were, originally, meant to establish peace became people who are unknown to each other.

It's not a way to put autistic people down.

I guess I can share this, since it's in the literature review section of something I'm working on.

Autistic people tend to have natural traits that inoculate them against common work stressors and let them pull ahead over time with the assets companies need.

For example, companies look for extraversion in employees, which is not a clear natural aspie trait. But check this out: Conflicting relationships are a work stressor, often caused by extraversion and office politics. Since aspies are not interested in office politics, their workplace relationships are simpler and more positive. Over time, they pull ahead with learned social skills, mimicking extraversion.

This goes along with another trait companies look for, openness to experience. Again, this appears to be opposite to aspies. But aren't aspies used to being uncomfortable? Over time, the aspie employee is able to get over their discomfort and plow through when a neurotypical employee can't, because the aspie employee has experience with plowing through their discomfort.

What I'm arguing in my project is that autistic employees are already there in the workplace, providing what employers need, but may not necessarily know that they need.

Conflicting relationships in my case are rare, so relationships are not a stressor. I am pretty extraverted but I notice almost nothing from office politics. I rarely am interested in conflicts between colleagues. Sometimes I can get a clue of what is going on between two arguing colleagues.

By the way, although my old boss try to keep me with a subsidized salary, the more I analyze his behaviour and the more I talk with my new boss, the more questionable my old boss gets. The last few years I find his behaviour a bit as if he is talking to a child or someone with an average or light intellectual retardation. I ignored it, but the last few weeks it is going to irritate. My new boss agrees with me and she is a great support. The problem is that he is her boss. If she decides to do something with me (giving other tasks that he would not give) or allowing to following a course that I can do better paid tasks such as computer related stuff, I am afraid that he will intervene and condemn her actions.

I blame my old boss for preventing me to get a normal job, instead of a protected subsidized job. There is some insecurities about the current situation unless I get a regular (normal) job:
- The municipality whose citizen I am, wants to cut in the expenses of this kind of jobs;
- When my old boss leaves, I don't know what his replacement will do. If his replacement and my new boss has the same opinion as me, there is really nothing to worry about. A normal job will be extremely likely.