Isn't It Cute That He Has a Job.

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I went to a disability conference where they showed films of people who had been placed in jobs. Every job was a restaurant or a janitorial job. I understand that there are people with lower abilities who are grateful just to have a job but many Aspies have skills and intelligence and want careers, not just jobs. To coin a phrase: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste.

I worked with an agency in Birmingham, Alabama. When I approached them I listed my transferable skills and stated the type of job I was looking for. After a disaster when they made a bad choice I ended up at a grocery store. I got that job myself but they did do coaching. They considered me a success even I went from a part-time job I liked to a disaster then to a part-time job I didn't like. Plus my boss refused to give me full time.

I know a man who has problematic social skills but a good mind. After years of searching, he finally got a job at a cleaning service. His parents were grateful to find that. He has to get up early and ride an hour sometimes to get to work. This can be a beginning job but why can't he get something more convenient? NTs can get starting jobs in their local that is not as erratic. And I don't think the agency is interested in working with him later to help him move up. I don't think he is a suitable candidate for management in the cleaning business, and I know that I would not be interested in managing even though I could do better than most of the bosses I've had. Of course, the agency slaps themselves on the back about their success.

I contacted the agency saying I wanted to talk to them about ideas I had about how they could improve. They know me. They should respect me and know I was series. The leader pushed me down to the employment manager and she only talked to me on the phone. Even I can read a put-off. I sent an e-mail with links, conference slid photos, and a conference video and got a polite thank you.

They know more about getting employment for Aspies than Aspies do. Look I'm a trained monkey. Watch! I do tricks!

I do not advocate self-disclosure before being hired. Too many people have wrong ideas about what it means to have an ASD. We’re not mentally deficient, we’re not mass-murderers, and we’re not going to hide in the stockroom and stim all day long. We’re people, with quirks, talents and dreams of our own, just like everyone else.

Landing your first job can be difficult. But you build from there because you are building up your skill set. What I find strange in your case is that you are 57 years old and that at your age you should be nearing the end of a career rather than at the beginning.

On another point, maybe work is not using your full potential. That may be true. But I considered work to provide me finances to pursue my interest. It is my interest outside of work that utilize my full potential.

I cannot really say I want like a serious career, that said sometimes I do find myself unsatisfied with my current job because I feel I could use some of my skills more if I was given the opportunity, but I've been there barely a year and only part time so whatever for now I am happy just to have the job and get the income from it.

But I am 30 and its the first job I have lasted more than a few months, I got on disability in my 20's and so currently I still receive some SSI disability in addition to the part time wage. Not sure how long that part will last, I am not currently enrolled with voc rehab or any employment helping agency so that means I am no longer protected from medical reviews to determine if I should continue receiving disability.

But yeah I don't really want a career, a job is just an ends of making money to live on don't want it to be my life.

Robert, stigma flows into the minds of the general population because they have been taught by "experts" (like the DSM committee but not only that group) that all AS people are to defined only in terms of their deficits, never their abilities, aptitudes and strengths.

Then, to reinforce the DSM message, Autism Speaks got into the money making act of posing as a charity that wanted to "help" autistic families and autistic people, their idea of help being to paint AS people as monsters wrecking families and a disease on USA culture. They have done this for 15 years, and used vast millions in political ways to oppress AS people further, trying for example to make ABA funded by the government in every state of the USA.

Then you have the researchers. OMG, if I had the strength, which I don't, I could write volumes about how poor quality research has damaged the public image of AS people. And it still does.

So someone like you comes along - perhaps talented, enthusiastic, ambitious, hopeful - with a lot to offer. But the entire establishments above have hexed you already as a person with only deficiencies to offer. So here's the broom, get sweeping, there's a good boy.

It is heartbreaking. And until AS people learn how to work as a political group for their own advancement, it will probably continue. So in the meantime, my message is to be wary of NT organisations that "help" AS people,
because in their help-speak, help really means "the smiling face of controlling you".

It seems to be about public optics.

The charities and support groups in regards to employment I have come across obviously have to fulfill the need of the person seeking employment, and then of course use them as their shining beacon and proud example of helping Autistic people into work, and reintegrating themselves back into the community, be it, in a restaurant or sweeping the floor. IE:

"Look what we can do!"
"Look how we can we help them!"

This is all well and good, if they are more than happy to aspire to this, but then you end up with supposed 'awkward' people such as myself, where (being a Brit), at The Job Centre, when I disclose my career aspirations and accompanying qualifications, I am presented with a blank look and may as well have told them I wish to be the first American President to walk on the Moon!

I could happily take cleaning or cooking jobs, but in my given circumstances, the mounting debt would outweigh the paycheck as opposed to the apparent burden I am causing from being unemployed and on welfare benefits.

Nevertheless, they have still sent me to menial jobs, where I am rejected on the grounds of "scaring them off" after disclosing my qualifications and Asperger's. Two disclosures I was once advised by a job centre hired Careers Advisor to "simply not mention them at all" for the reasons above.

When I have also been referred to the few and far between job support groups outside of the job centre (that more than often neglect Autistic adults over the age of 18), they often state and suggest that I work with them for others, as opposed to being a client for them myself, due to my qualifications and (in their opinion), superlative skills to offer.

This is fantastic, but such work is still freelance, sporadic and short-lived.

A pain in the arse all the same, but I am presently heading to my original career destination I originally set out for years ago.

That is certainly an irritating case my fellow primate. I sympathize. I am in my 40s I have had over 40 jobs from 25 different employers. One strategy I used in my bullheaded struggle was position hopping. Each time you move to a new job title/responsibility you can use the "learning curve" to temporarily mask your barriers. But it is never a lasting solution always ending up in disaster
If i attemped to try to stay in a position in addition to my normal autistic sensory over stimulation, tuning out events, and pieces of conversations and social gaffs. I would usually end up with GAD, anxiety attacks(with full on respiratory alkalosis) IBS, stomach ulcers, bouts of weakness, clumsiness, stress induced migraine headaches, difficulty speaking, and shouting matches with coworkers who irritated me and up and quit during a meltdown. It got so routine that I was always planning getting my next job before the inevitable settled in rather than building a savings account, keeping a 401k instead of cashing it in with penalties etcetera.
This was a learned process until I was diagnosed with autism at 45. Now I know for sure the problems were not the workplace, it was me. The workplace PTSD is so bad, I am barely able to sign papers beyond the hiring process due to mistrust and have (my therapist has told me) irrational fears about potential changes to my duties. I have managed to stay at my latest job because it is part time, I have never seen my boss, I can take stress breaks at will, I have freedom to move my work schedule, and have had my wife join to help drive share burdens and keep me from quitting when my symptoms get too intense. Part time retail merchandiser for Driveline Retail merchandizing/rgis They didn't know I was autistic. I stupidly informed them this year and now they have been hounding me to sign papers stating that they are meeting my disability needs. Of which I don't need anything as the nature of the job already full fills that. The first demand of which states my position would change. The second omitted that. So I am alarmed, and have been unable to sign it, freezing up. If they change anything I know I will quit. So I am procrastinating because being fired gets me better odds for unemployment, I learned that the hard way.
Ook Ook eek.

You are damned if you do reveal your diagnosis, you are damned if you don't. I once worked at a retail company where I was removed from the schedule without any prior notice whatsoever. They never addressed whatever it was I did wrong with me. I had to call the next morning and ask why I wasn't on the schedule for the next week.

Those situations at the conference sound a like like tokenism so that more people can perhaps donate money to their organizations. Otherwise, those agencies don't care about disabled people, rather it's all about money and the lack of education.

Years ago, I worked at a sheltered workshop as Ga voc rehab sent me there for a work eval because the intelligent doctor told VR that I was not "Employable." Then the workshop's employment program through the dept of labor (DOL) sent a few people to a warehouse with their job coaches. They didn't do anything for us, instead, they provided us a place to work and that was it and didn't really move us up. There were also several times where I was not happy and I was asked to have the job coaches move me somewhere else but all I got was discouragement and excuses.

As for the workshop, I had tried to talk to the director about offering classes that taught skills such as IT, Excel, etc. She goes "Do they want to do that thing though? Some people want to work in a lower position." Uh no, that's because she had a small mind and has been feeding them garbage about how "Broken they are."

If I were jobless I’d be jumping on the Amazon/Walmart bandwagon at this moment.

I work for Giant Eagle. (It's a supermarket chain in Pennsylvania.) I work as a Parking Lot Attendant. I started working there that week of Valentine's Day. I never imagined I would hear people thank me for working a job that our society perceives as menial before the COVID-19 pandemic started. Back in mid-March, when the endless media coverage about the pandemic making it into the United States started, the store was packed with people panic buying.

I am glad to be working but I am sorry to say that many people aren't so lucky considering their businesses have closed.

That whole thing sounds just like tokenism to be honest because it seems like they are hiring people with disabilities just because they have disabilities and then make their stories like pretty window curtains to make themselves look good. It's not about the person with a disability