Gattaca

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Have you ever been to a job interview? It's that way right now in vast sectors of our economy.

Hiring managers should gauge your actual ability to perform, and run you through some basic tasks, but they don't. The vast majority of them want you to COMMUNICATE how well you can perform.

So now we've got socially savvy, yet highly unqualified people doing jobs they should have never been given, simply because they can act the part. In the meantime, some of our best and brightest simply aren't the greatest communicators, and can barely pass the hiring process.

So sad, and so absolutely true!

Of course everyone with any ability to do it plays the game and is not their completely honest self -- whether on the job or at all. It's part of being "socialized" to live among other people and not do just whatever one wants at whatever time one wants.

There are two big differences I see between AS and NT when it comes to social "fakery":

1. It's far easier for NTs to pull it off than it is for us. NTs are able to pick up the "rules" of the "game" almost as if by osmosis. You folks just soak it all in and don't even realize how much you know because it's all so intuitive. We are able to pick some of it up by observation but much of it is invisible to us and has to be explicitly explained or we'll never even notice it.

There are so many little details to keep track of: tone of voice, volume of voice, body position, hand position, face-set (including how one hold's one's mouth and how one hold's one's eyes and how much eye contact to make and for how long each time and when to make it), whether to sit or stand, whether to reach out a hand or wait for someone else to offer a shake, what the proper clothes are to wear and how to wear them properly, what the right thing is to say to someone's statement or question or whether one is supposed to just nod or say "mmhmm" or say nothing but look alert or say nothing but look away slightly or . . .

A person can go insane trying to keep track of all that stuff consciously! So much of that is unconscious to NTs, even NTs who are playing the social game. I have a feeling that you folks just think, "now I need to look slightly sympathetic but not maudlinly so" and all your body parts just co-operate along with that thought but most of us if we think that's how we need to appear then need to run the whole checklist of eyebrows, mouth, voice, body, etc. to make sure that it all lines up with the impression we're trying to give . . . and that's assuming that we've done sufficient observation and practicing of what it looks like when one conveys that sort of impression and are able to pull it off convincingly. Now multiply that by every sort of way we might need to appear: happy, sad, enthusiastic, eager, surprised, and so on, and so on, and that leads to point number two, which is:

2. It is downright exhausting for us. Think how you feel after an eight-hour shift of sales and having to be nice to people who repulse you and having to work hard to give the right impression. You're tired, right? Now multiply that by all that stuff above, by all those things that youa re able to do almost automatically just by thinking, "now I should be bright and cheery" or "now I should be quietly serious and commisserate with the seller's problem but in a businesslike way and then shift the whole conversation from that mood to one of optimism that I have the perfect solution for his problem." Can you see how very much extra work it would be to have to consciously put together every part of that, not just think "now I must be bright and cheery" and then put a smile on your face and everything else sort of follows suit.

I tried working in sales and I couldn't do it. It just broke me outright. I can manage jobs where all that "face time" isn't required like washing dishes or cooking in a kitchen but even there I am apparently not able to put on the act well enough to keep the job because I've never been able to hold on to a job for more than two weeks and I am a hard worker who learns my tasks quickly and does them well (even the bosses who fired me were surprised at how fast I learned and gave me compliments on my work early on) and I'm not late to work and don't waste the company's time and don't try to leave early or complain about things or change how things are done. The only thing that's left for me to figure that I must be doing wrong is holding my face the right way and making my voice sound the right way and having the right answer to statements and questions. It's indescribably hard work to pretend to be normal and harder still when someone tries and can't quite seem to ever pull it off anyway.

And all the years of trying wear on a person. I can't even do the things I used to do in my twenties any more because all those years of working so much harder than anyone around me (and never having anyone even notice how hard I was working because if I'm doing it right, I come across as dull but normal and if I struggle but don't make it, I come across as . . . I don't even know what I come across as. Angry? Ungrateful? Malingering? I have no idea how other people see me.) all that struggle has really worn me down such that I dread even leaving my house now.

All this is the long way of saying that, yes, everyone fakes it and it makes me feel a small bit better to know that but, no, it's really not the same thing at all.

More and more jobs these days are requiring Urine tests for "A Drug Free Workplace". Employers can use Drug Screening as a means to screen out employees with pre-existing conditions that may cost them money such as Diabetes or Pregnancy. DNA technology isn't too far off from being able to screen people for other health conditions (such as Anton's Heart Condition) with a simple Saliva Test.

That's why I'm taking it into my own hands and doing my own business. I recommend that anyone on the spectrum who is being discriminated against in the employment process do the same, and show those bloody NTs what we can really do.

to Asp-Z can you check out my other thread on becoming upperclass? thx would appreciate.

Wow! You said it!

All this is the long way of saying that, yes, everyone fakes it and it makes me feel a small bit better to know that but, no, it's really not the same thing at all.

I hope I did not offend anyone. The insinuation was never that its the same thing. Not by a long shot. My point was simply that while N/Ts may seem like social butterflies, few are truly surrounded by real friends and very few are exceptional at reading social cues (especially given the deterioration of common decency and manners in our society).

That said, are most N/Ts skills good enough and instinctive enough that life's wheels are greased more than they will be for my son? Yes. Do I worry about my son experiencing the same fatigue you describe below? Yes, everyday.

Done.

Yes! Yes! Yes! And it annoys me to no end. I even find this in the kind of hourly employment I can actually get right now (no degree yet, little experience),

I just watched the first half of the movie on Hulu (saw the last half of it years ago).

It's a scary premise. That by filtering out "undesirable" traits in childbirth, we create a society where the "impure" don't get anything but the lowest options in life.

The scene where they guy gets the job based on a urine sample alone says it all.

As much as mapping the human genome is a nice concept, GATTACA says it all. Who can say it would not happen? We see what has happened already in society, and as the movie illustrates (via narration), a legal "urine test for drugs" can just as easily be used to gain an illegal DNA screen.