In the 24 years since leaving university with a lower second honours degree in psychology and biology I have had 15 jobs, lasting a grand total of about 7 years; three were seasonal or temporary, four were full-time permanent, and seven were part-time permanent, ( but I didn't last very long in most of them ). The longest that I lasted in any job was just under 3 years as a jobshare/part-time ( one week "on" and one week "off" ) library assistant, the next longest was 18 months full-time in a tax office ( which was the first proper job I got after uni ), and next longest 10 months as tax accountant. The others I lasted between 1 day and 3 months. I have been a full-time stay-at-home mother for the last 11 years. It's the only job that I have ever managed to stick to for more than 3 years. I can just about handle the social interaction involved; the first couple of years were grim/nightmarish, but at least it's usually one-to-one, and I have more-or-less got the hang of it/can make sense of it.
I used to work because I needed the money, and that was what everybody else did, but I was very bad at it; I didn't understand the point of most of it, but loved doing the meticulous pen and paper calculations of taxes etc, which unfortunately the advent of computers swept away. As part of the standard "career progression" associated with my tax office post I had to do at least 6 months of management work, but I was so unable to manage anyone, and fraternised terribly with the "lowliest" of clerks at the pub, etc that noone was surprised when I suddenly decided to move, from London to the farthest end of England, and they shifted me back to pure paperwork for the last couple of months so as to train someone else at the management post. The office was on flexi-time, and I got in late, left early, took the longest lunchhours possible, ( reading a book at the local vege restaurant in an art gallery ), while always planning to make it up at some later date ... which I never quite got round to ... my flexi-time-sheets became so scary ( hundreds of hours in "debt" ) that I hid them and pretended to have lost them.
At the next job, tax accountant, I had a little office all to myself. I used to spend hours staring through the window at the seagulls wheeling in the sky above the roofs, ... and guiltily open a file and rustle pages if someone came to enquire about anything. I simply couldn't seem to make myself actually do any of the things that I was supposed to be doing. Luckily the boss was a financial trickster of some kind, he ended up in prison a couple of years after I left, and his attention to the office was concentrated on the "big" clients, and to keeping up appearances, and I was good at that! :lol Gradually the dozen or so other people in the place began to realise that I did almost nothing, but they were very nice about it. Noone was surprised when I decided to leave to go travelling round Europe ( and supposedly to start an MA at a uni in the autumn afterwards, but which I dropped out of after 7 weeks because my mood-disorder/hypo mania and bouts of depression were becoming uncontrollable ), and the boss was relieved, because he was trying to cut back on staff but was too addicted to being charming and well-liked to actually tell anyone to go.
I lasted almost three years at the library, because I had a week off between each bout, and it was ok to stare into space for hours when working at the enquiry counters. I used to doodle, draw faces. Some of my best artwork dates from that time! :lol
I have generally failed to see the point of most jobs, and/or failed to understand why they were going about achieving whatever the stated goal was in the way that they were; it almost always seemed highly illogical and inefficient to me, paralysingly so.
I almost walked out on the job of mother ( and part-time housekeeper ) too. I thought of leaving every week, sometimes every day, for the first two and a half years, but I've got used to it, and have achieved a reasonably in fact unprecedently good ( mostly affectionate and cooperative and communicative ) working relationship with my son's father.
But it's taken 12 years to achieve this. And mainly one-to-one social interaction, and fairly clear goals, ones which "have" to be met, for fairly obvious reasons.
I remember starting a cleaning job, something really simple I thought, and leaving after half a day, because I couldn't tell how clean they wanted things, and what part exactly of the shop they wanted cleaning, and which cleaning materials to use from the bewildering huge range of cleaning products in the cleaning cupboard, and whether I could wear my own clothes under the cleaning overall/uniform or not, and what to do about cleaning floors near clients, etc.
I have an honours degree in psychology and biology, and a cleaning job was beyond me. Actually I only got the degree because I am a very good waffler and "off-the-top-of-the-head" "exam-acing" person.
I totally agree with the OP about how difficult it is for people on the spectrum to find and keep work, seeing how most work is organised, trained for, disconnected from the rest of life, so that it feels unbelievably alien, incomprehensible, etc. It seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with anything that I was familiar with, after all those years in the ghetto that is school and further ed.
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Last edited by ouinon on 31 Aug 2010, 10:54 am, edited 6 times in total.
31 Aug 2010, 10:25 am
