The Top 5 Worst Careers for people with Aspergers

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Yeah, truck driving, maybe. Bus driving no way. It's highly unlikely that anyone with AS would ever last as a bus driver.

Nursing, with its sensory overload, outrageous work load and high expectations of open communication, is detrimental to the mental health of aspies. Hell, its made me suicidal.

I believe there are a lot of LEOs with AS. Most cops I've meet had zero social skills. I suspect a lot of them have AS.



Like cops I believe there are a lot of AS teachers. I think aspies could be good teachers. Especially if the subject they are teaching matches their interests.

For me, the spatial and driving skills requirements of the job would prevent me from being a cop. This is true for some aspies but not others.

can i just say that i have been a bus driver for nearly 15 years and im autistic.

Can I ask how you deal with people talking to you, asking questions, etc., while you are trying to drive?

If I could figure that out, I'd apply in a minute.

I work at a care home as a cleaner, which is OK for someone like me. It involves a little social interaction, but the social interaction is not essential, and I can handle that. I think some jobs depend on how essential social communication skills are, especially if your whole job depends on social interaction and it becomes a big responsibility where if you are bad at it your job can become affected. That is scary for someone with shyness, anxiety issues, social phobia and Asperger's Syndrome!

As I said, I work at a care home, but I have looked at the carers and straight away thought that I could never be a carer. I'm not speaking for anyone else here though, because some Aspies might find they want to do caring or might even be a special interest to them and feel confident at it. Not all Aspies are timid weaklings that are frightened of their own shadow, like me. The reasons why I couldn't be a carer are:-

-I have seen that being a carer for vulnerable adults requires a lot of social interaction and patience, and you need to know you can show your authority. I'm not very good at that. I have proven to myself that I'm not very good with showing my authority. But I believe it comes from lack of confidence and shyness. I am too meek for my own good.

-You've got to be quite emotionally strong, because sometimes the residents can yell abuse at you. Yes I know all about Dementia and I know that some patients with Dementia lose their social communication skills they once had and so can yell out things without knowing what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, and so you've got to be able to handle certain behaviours. Although I know all about Dementia and everything, I am an extremely weak, sensitive person emotionally, and I cry at the drop of a hat, probably through humiliation. Also I get emotional when seeing that a resident is in pain, physically or emotionally.

-The carers have different shift work, working some nights and some days. I wouldn't be able to cope with that. I prefer stable hours, and working when it's dark outside just makes me feel anxious. I don't know why.

-Sometimes carers can be cliquey, especially younger ones. I have seen that stuff go on where I work. There's always some sort of argument going on between the younger ones, and some are strange and unfriendly, and there are some who I wouldn't want to work with. But the other cleaners seem nice and they all accept me for who I am, and there's only very few of us cleaners and we all tend to just stick together, so it's not so easy to get cliquey anyway.

I am happy to sticking to cleaning. It's peaceful, repetitive, easy to pick up, and the hours are regular, no shift work at all.

well most people know that they not supposed to speak to the driver whilst driving and usualy wait til it stops, but if they do i just either answer the question or say i dont know if i dont know. at first i thought it was a bit daunting to speak to people while driving the vehicle, but after all this time i have finaly got brilliant at everything to do with driving a bus so i face no problems.

we are all different here, some aspies and autitistics are better with authority than others. i am quite extraverted so i am good with dealing with the public. well, i never used to be but i have just got good at it with age really. i am 43 and have had a lot of experience in the past. i may be good at dealing with the public but i still am no good at making or keeping friends. social interaction comes in different forms.

but most bus companies are shift work, but if you dont want to do shift work you can ask, also you can do part time. i do 4 days a week but never know what hours i am doing from one week to the next, but i am happy with that, and my manager said she is there if i want to discuss any issues or worrys with her and she is happy to change my contract hours if i want.

go for it anyway and i hope for the best for you.

At one time I was considering applying for a job with a local transit system, and getting bus driver training. Then I planned to switch to driving tour busses. But, now that I know my limitations from AS, I know it would have been a waste of time. I would never have made it through the training, and even if I could have gotten through the training. It would have been just a matter of time before I would have had a meltdown on the job, parked the bus on the side of the road and walked away from it. Thats pretty much the way every other job I've ever had ended, and most of those jobs were a lot less stressful then driving a bus.

If I was considering a driving job now, I would go for truck driving, instead. Even that I don't think I could handle.

Easy way to get them to learn, even if you're Aspie:

im thinking of becoming math/engineering or cs professor. everyone i know agrees. but programmer might be better choice for me--sensory issues

There are good aspie / autistic teachers. I'd like to recommend the blogpost "But you can't be autistic... You are such as good teacher" by The Third Glance: https://thethirdglance.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/but-you-cant-be-autistic-youre-such-a-good-teacher/

That said, I've also heard of someone who was a bad high school teacher, and sacked because he was obsessively in love with a student (who wasn't interested)... He was then diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.

I think it comes down to personal development a lot. There's a lot of things I couldn't grasp and social skills I couldn't learn when I was in my 20s, which I've developed later and now have in my 40s. Some jobs may be unsuitable for most aspies, but I don't think teacher is necessarily one of them, and even if it is not necessarily permanently so. The brain is plastic, and autistic people develop over their lifetime just like anyone else.

That said, I don't think I could cope with being a teacher in a normal sense due to sensory overload and overwhelm during the breaks, the whole environment being too social and fast moving. A lot would depend on the surroundings (acoustics, architecture, withdrawal options) and the social culture though. I think I could learn to be an excellent teacher because I'm highly motivated and attentive when it comes to perfecting communication and noticing social patterns. In my case the stuff that isn't in the job descriptions tend to cause the biggest problems - like breaks, the physical surroundings (sensory overload, the need for calm solitaire places to withdraw & recharge).

This is an interesting and very funny thread. I guess the difference in our opinions about this reflects the spectrum.

Personally my worst ever job was being a barwoman. I survived one night and had to drink about 6 JDs afterwards to come down from all the stress.

I actually did a Politics degree. I did very well at it and because the subject itself is social it made me open up a lot. For example, I even voluntarily attended and participated in, the Debating Society lol.

I now run my own business from home. Yes almost all human contact is via email, but I do get some who like to telephone me. I have like a basic script now so I can be in control of the conversation when new clients call up. So I have slowly learned to do sales and also to manage my freelancers (I have strong suspicions that most of them are ASD as well which is why we all love working from home), although I could never work in a proper sales environment in an office. I did try recruitment at one time, which landed me with 3 weeks of laryngitis followed by a week of chronic asthma.

Oh and the most terrifying phrase in the world of work is "open plan office". Nooooooooooo lol.

Any job that would bring me into contact with people that are mentally more unstable than I am. I have this gift of unintentionally making people feel bad about themselves. In some cases more so when I actually try to make a compliment. ( ) Suicide rates most definitely would go up if I'm the one anchor they need to get a grip on their lives again.

It depends with me.

Like if I worked in a supermarket, I know I would be OK on the tills where people pay their shopping, because (once you know how to do it) all you have to do is scan the items, ask the customers easy questions like ''do you have a clubcard?'', ''would you like help with your packing?'', and ''that's £XX.XX please...'' And I think I could cope with that, once I got used to it. And you don't have to make conversation to every customer. If they make conversation to me then I will, but otherwise I do know a lot of shy people work at the check-outs in supermarkets and are friendly but not necessarily chatty.

But being on a till in a shop where you have to sell things, or a customer service kiosk, I could not do. There's more pressure to have to speak up to customers and sort out problems. Sometimes when I go in shops where they sell things like perfumes for example, and sometimes they advertise items, which I would probably get nervous having to keep explaining how to purchase certain items on offer or asking the customers if they want to have a clubcard for the particular shop and having to explain how it works, etc.

Or I couldn't work anywhere where you have to ask young people for IDs either. I know kids would take advantage of me for that, because although I'm good at sussing things out and being able to tell if people are lying or whatever, I get too shy to argue and just end up saying ''OK, you can have that''. I would probably let myself get haggled too.

The only thing with working in supermarkets is the screaming toddlers. They distract me from whatever I'm doing. I wish they would invent creches to keep the little kids in while their parents do the shopping, so that they don't have their kids with them wailing and screaming all the time. They can wail and scream all they want there, as long as they hire supervisors who can filter out all that irritating noise. But then again, if they are there to just supervise kids, then it's easier to tune into their noise, where as when you're trying to do jobs in a supermarket that are completely irrelevant to kids, the noise of the kids is more distressing.

The sad thing for me is that just about all the jobs that actually are available where I live are terrible for Aspies.
The island just can't seem to accept the fact that we no longer live in an industrial age, particularly coal mining, and even when we did that would also not be good for Aspies. Slaving away in cramped darkness, breathing toxic fumes, the place caving in on you any second. Yay, so much fun! Not.

I only have a 9-th grade education but I can't even imagine surviving college because when I finally entered 10th grade after being "held back" 8 and 9 I left after only a month or so because I was bullied into nearly having a nervous breakdown. I guess I must really be a loser.

Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed of being a real artist, a cartoonist, an author or even maybe an animator. Guess that was stupid of me, thinking that was actually possible. Really just a hobby and nothing else