Am I the only one who don't want a job?

Post Reply New Topic

I know you might not be speaking to the exact motives of the OP, but this is extremely well-said anyway. Maybe because I agree 100%-- you've captured a lot of my frustrations about the job market.

Cheers. I'm an NT happily married to a recently dxd aspie. She is unbeliveably hard working & firmly believes in self sufficency. That's not to say that it isn't hard for her at times, after all, she's AS. But she has learned to adapt & to "deal" with what she can handle & what she can not.

If she could not contribute to our family (and society, she's a teacher) she would just die. It kills her when she's in between jobs & she hates nothing more than those who are parasitic. Again, we're not talking about people who can't work, but rather, those who don't want to work and not only that, expect society to support them.

Hey, it's all cool if someone wants to be the starving artist/musician/free thinker type, I get that. I've been there, done that. But I never got a check from the government while I did it.

BTW I'm over in Missoula.

What?? Since when?
Welfare doesn't even give you enough to pay rent, let alone eat... How much do they pay in Quebec?

Anyways... Get a job you lazy bum!
I'm not too happy with my job either. It's too hot; it has too many things changing too quickly... but no 2 days are the same and there's a never ending flood of things that I need to learn there. Plus the pay is pretty damn good too. I make more in 2 days than I made in a month when I was on Welfare over a decade ago.
If I ever win the lottery I'm pretty sure I'll be retiring, or at least starting my own home business. But until that glorious day comes, I have no problem working and certainly don't find it 'boring'.

Cool I didn't know you were a Montanan. My parent live in the boring town of Ronan and I last hit your city in June after my honemoon when I went there with my parents.

TBH when you first started posting here about your wife, she came off as a b***h and arrogant because I can't stand people who think they are always right and don't listen to other people and respect them and this was before she was DXd and to me it doesn't matter if someone is AS or not, I still think the same of them when they are that way. But I'm glad to hear she isn't that person anymore. And I wondered how can she do her job as a teacher if she was that way. Wow. People are amazing. I would think they treat their students the same way but I figure maybe they change their personality on their job and that's how they keep their jobs.

I know what you mean......nobody's likely to be happy to pay taxes that just get given to layabouts to do nothing but drink and watch TV. But I thought we were talking about Aspies and the way the disabilities make it particularly tough for us to join in. Moreover, I think it's important to avoid the notion that the main problem with the benefit system is fraudulent claims. Of course that happens, but there's a lot less said about the benefit cheats on the other side of the counter, the assessors who use every excuse they can think of to "help people back into work." There was a post on WP not long ago from somebody whose assessor declared that Aspergers syndrome doesn't cause any social problems - if I used similar dishonest tactics to claim benefit, I'd be in grave danger of being busted for fraud. Benefit cheating is a two-way thing but politicians and the media are only interested in the dishonesty of claimants.

Thanks.......I don't mean to belittle the frustrations of those who resent seeing their taxes wasted on malingerers, just that I think there's a bigger picture here.

I hope I didn't stray too far from the original topic. But the question was "am I the only one who doesn't want a job?" and that got me thinking about how the State seems to expect everybody to want one, regardless of how attractive or otherwise the jobs on offer happen to be. It just struck me that if the State wants us to be enthusiastic, it should be reforming the nature of the jobs rather than just assuming that the job seeker just isn't keen enough. I honestly think that all the talk and action about "helping people into work" is a thinly-disguised excuse to claw back public money regardless of the hardship it causes, and that what money they do manage to recoup will not find its way back into the pockets of the plain folks it belongs to.

I think you should watch a friendly discussion presented by the Miller Center of Public Affairs. It was titled "Looking for Work: A History of Unemployment". Gives a good solid history background to the U.S. cultural view of employment, and shows why it is different than non-western cultures, and has a little bit about how America is unique even among western cultures. It points out why "the State" expects everybody to want a job, if you include "the State" to mean our cultural expectations.

As for other posts about malingerers, I think you're only assuming the original poster meant that he was just being lazy, because we can also assume that the original poster meant that he couldn't bare to work in a system that isn't setup for his needs. I mean their are other issues that need to be examined, such as consumerism that separates neighbors from each other, and causes people to think more independently and enables self centered thinking for those around us. And while we've made progress on not being exclusive according to race, we haven't become inclusive towards people who are different than us. If we're excluded in our lives, which includes from work socializing, when people assume we're something we're not because of our disability, we miss out on opportunities to be happy. Not all of us have a good core group of family, and we may not have anyone who is truly close to us in any way, and now that neighborhoods don't help raise people with bad parents, this effects the ability of them to deal with the stresses of life, especially people who have AS. So boring, can be overwhelming.

I think if someone is willing to deal with living off less than $1,000 month, then that would qualify them for having some sort of disability. The few people I've met who do that aren't happy and have lots of emotional baggage from the experience. One even goes as far to live under bridges or out in the woods in the country because he's tired of people making false assumptions about him. He just gave up on people.

Anyways, that video is at http://fora.tv/2009/06/19/Looking_for_W ... employment

I'm the opposite... incapable of holding a job, but desperately wanting one because I know that is what my family needs me to do. It just makes me feel inadequate.

I've been fired for numerous reasons in the past, all definitely seemed to be a last minute excuse to get rid of me.

At my first job, I'd worked there for over 8 months. I was working a really annoying shift-2 morning shifts, 1 afternoon shift, then 2 midnight shifts all in a row, so sleep was horrible to get straightened out. I managed for a really long time. I worked in a truck stop that was really laid back, and the truckers always seemed to have some pretty interesting stories actually. I also liked it a LOT because they were so laid back and accepting of my quirks. I was definitely seen as the eccentric one... right before I got fired, well, a month or so, they were talking about selling the place and new management had come in and was checking us out. They did numerous random drug testing on me... I suppose hoping to be able to use that as an excuse to get rid of an over-excited and very happy employee. But of course, never found anything. I knew they were getting frustrated, as I'd overheard them several times talking about me, and they called me to the office a bunch of times to discuss my "behaviors" (aka. "personality" basically). They said things like "there is something really wrong with that girl"-I'd overhear it from the offices when getting my checks and such shortly after they'd talked to me. I had NEVER called in to work, but one day I finally decided I wanted a weekend evening to do stuff... I got someone to cover my shift and all, and we wrote it into the schedule and showed the boss and everything. Well, at the last minute she called in, saying she could not work... I was out already, and my boss was mad that he had to work that night, so he fired me pretty much on the spot. I still don't understand that, since she'd written down, initialed, signed, and everything that she was going to be there then called in... but he still put all of the blame on me.

My second real job, I was there for quite a while and the manager finally fired me, literally saying "I don't like you" as her reasoning... then she got fired and the place was shut down, lol, but still....

and the most recent one, I was working through one of those job placement places, and was a proofreader for some news type magazine thingie. I LOVED it to be honest, as even though I may not type like it, I'm very much a grammar freak. So I really enjoyed combing through lawyer worded type stuff and catching mistakes, lol. I guess it made me feel like I'd "one upped" them somehow since they always write so technical I could never understand what the heck they were even saying. So to catch a typo was kind of like, "haha Mr. Talking Over My Head... now go back to school". LOL, in some weird way it was. Well anyway, I was being trained to replace this one girl and was doing so incredibly well that she went ahead and put in her 2 weeks notice. Around the same time that her time was up, my daughter became very ill with pneumonia and RSV at once and was put into the hospital. She was just under 1 year old at the time, and I called to tell them that the hospital required that I stay with her to take care of her, so I would be unable to come in until she was released from the hospital. They fired me while I was calling to explain how incredibly sick she was and that the docs were afraid we might lose her at the time... they said "I'm sorry about your daughter... by the way, when she is released, don't bother coming back."

I have developed some pretty bad social anxiety since then... as I really have not left the house, and any interviews I have gone on in this area have never called me back. My therapist suggested social therapy and training in interviews and such, but I cannot afford that so I am rather stuck. I feel awful when I really think about how much I would like to work... and even worse when my case worker starts nagging at me about applying for disability or social security benefits. I mean, yes, I know I need it to take care of my family... but I guess part of me always hopes I would be able to find a job where I would be accepted, and applying for disability I guess crushes the hope that that ever may happen, and I really don't like thinking about that. I've always been a very hard worker, enthusiastic on the job, and have always tried to do whatever they tell me to.... but they still always can me the first chance they get that even remotely sounds like a legitimate reason.

Sorry, didn't mean to go off-topic... just started thinking about it and I guess I just needed to vent essentially.

Basically, I suppose I can see your point. I mean, after experiences like that, I really just wouldn't WANT to subject myself to even more of those situations because they make me feel about the worst I can ever feel about myself... when it all falls apart, not only do I feel like I'm even more of a freak than I realize and don't know how to change it... but also that I'm letting down my family because I can't just up and be normal to be able to do so. It's a very crappy feeling... most miserable ever.

But at the same time, I wish I could at least keep trying or could find a place that would allow me another shot at it. I really do miss it a lot. I've never worked a job that was the same day after day, except for a factory job I lasted about 4 days at because I just couldn't take it anymore-it was FAR TOO EASY.

Oddly, I've always found the more chaotic and random the job is, the easier it is for me to stick with it. I suppose that even though I really like routine and it can also have quite a negative effect on me, the randomness of things always kept me on my toes and it was just impossible to get bored with it because you never really knew what was going to happen from one day to the next.

I'd do just about anything to work for someone like Avalanche Press, Avalon Hill, GTM Games. But Avalanche Press employs only 11 people!

It's interesting stuff, though it's presented rather too quickly for me to really focus on it all - pity there's no transcript for me to scrutinise. I've heard of the concept of the "undeserving poor" before, which as far as I can see is mostly propaganda from above to demonise the have-nots, to justify denying them welfare and to keep the jobs market skewed in favour of the elite.

We've had gender equality and race equality, but class equality is always the one they just don't want to know about, even though without it the other two equalities are almost meaningless. So now we've got migrants who don't want any more immigration, and middle-class women who bang on about the "glass ceiling to the boardroom" while they leave their underprivileged sisters to rot. If we really want a fair society then we need to make it fair for everybody.

Yes, willingness to forego the prospect of (something like) a living wage suggests there's more to the thing than mere laziness. If you have a job, then if you lose it you'll have benefits as a safety net. If you're already on benefit, the next rung down is nothing at all, and the bureaucrats will be only too happy to help you down to that level. I honestly don't know how anybody manages to stay on benefit for years.

They used to class people who preferred to live under bridges as "simple schizophrenics" who couldn't cope with "the world." I always used to see them as perfectly sane....just that they preferred one kind of painful life (vagrancy) with another (wage slavery). In darker moments I've contemplated the same choice.

Good point about the AS disability angle being different from a neurotypical not wanting to work. Having spent most of my life as an Aspie who didn't know he was an Aspie, most of the justifications I have for my attitude to the world of capitalist work come from socialism, anarchism and Marx. Basically, the rationalisation is that work sucks because it's all run by the greedy, amoral elite who don't care about their workers, so nobody in their right mind who is class conscious would have anything to do with it except as a necessary evil - evil being the operative word.

Since then I've had to accept that quite a lot of the pain I've suffered at the hands of employers is actually down to my own autism, and if the authorities had known about that and provided appropriate adjustments right from my schooldays, I might have had a lot less to grumble about, but I still notice contradictions in capitalist dogma, e.g. they'll blame the current recession on bankers, human nature, and anything else they can dream up, rather than just accept what Marx made quite clear all those years ago - that capitalism inevitably goes into crisis. For me, that's the elephant in the room. Many decades have passed since that simple fact was discovered, and the best right wing brains in the world have failed to make so much as a dent in it, but they still hang onto capitalism as the ONLY way to run things. The only reason I can think of for that is that they're all doing very well personally out of the free market.

I certainly don't want a job but I DO want to work and that's one of the reasons I started my own business; that and wanting to eat, having a reason to get out of bed in the morning, achieving my potential.............

To me it sounds like you could have sued all 3 of those jobs for Wrongful Dismissal...
Maybe you need to start kicking some ass instead of letting people walk all over you. If they fire you for some stupid reason like those other jobs, just say "fine, I'll see you in court".

For me there's nothing worse than having a low level job that requires little thinking. It's like torture, being forced to do constant menial pointless repetitive tasks that don't engage my brain and having to deal with a constant stream of people on top of that. I intend to get a high level job once I graduate - at least then I can use my brain.

The OP didn't say anything about sensory issues or issues with people because they were expecting him to read between the lines and stuff and weren't telling him everything he needs to know because they were expecting him to read between the lines and read their bodies and connect the dots, etc. He only mentioned not wanting to have one because he gets bored with it. That's laziness and even normal people quit their jobs because they were bored of it or didn't like their boss or other people and I even had a ex who didn't want to work because he hated his job. We all need jobs to get by in life and work, it's part of life.
My mom was being bullied by her boss and she got so tired of it and got hurt by her one day, she started applying for other nursing jobs even if it meant she would have to drive an hour to get there to work and have to live in the hotel room and then come home when she has off, she took that step. She got hired and they used their RV down there for her to use and now they rented a lot for them to keep their RV at and she lives in it when she has to work. She still works at the old hospital but only when she wants to and she makes more money there. She didn't like the work politics there either so that was another reason why she got another job elsewhere.

My rule of thumb is if you don't like your job, find another job and quit your current one when you get hired. If my own kid quit his job because it was boring and he didn't like the people there (unless they were all bullies), I won't be covering his rent and bills. I would let it be their problem and have them learn from it or else they can keep taking advantage of me and never learn. I am harsh and I would expect responsibilities out of my own kid, aspie or not. I expect everyone to deal with things in life. I had to deal with lazy room attendants at work and their poor English. I just put up with it because I needed the job and oh yes I have had a few conflicts there too and I still stayed. I knew I would have to deal with people and conflicts at work since my late teens so I knew then I better learn to deal with it now or else I would never be able to hold a job. I doubt my parents would help me there if I kept quitting and running away. But when I did work, they helped me through my problems, especially when I have conflicts. Even my dad used to tell me "You need to learn" "You will learn as you get older" and he was right. I sometimes wonder if he had the same problems I had and he got better as he got older. He even said that to me about being literal and he would say "You learn as you get older" and he has said the same about people. In fact he has said about not being able to read people either and he said "You learn from experiance" but I think he still doesn't pick up on it. In fact he even quit his job and started his own business because his job wouldn't give him a raise. He even said he hated wearing these suits but did it anyway.

So if the OP meant other reasons too besides boredom, well he sure changed the meaning of his post then because he didn't put in information we needed to know. I figured he would put in more information if he didn't like my response and Grantalli's but because he didn't I must have read it right. If people make assumptions, correct them by giving them more information you didn't tell them about so they do know more to the story and have a bigger picture. That's what I expect from everyone if I am wrong about them. So either I was right about what the OP is doing or he just didn't care what I thought.

Last edited by Spokane_Girl on 24 Oct 2009, 12:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

First off, I'm not completly without experience of "job". I do had made some "job training" by mandate of the CRDIs to which had been given the mandate to offer services to autists individuals. Currently I working two afternoon by week in the warehouse of a store of office materials. It stop next week tough.

Thanks Maggiedoll, It explain well some things. In my "job training" I never get in job with public contacts, I knew all too well it would had been a disaster... So it leave the rest, which is repetitive and boring tasks. Which for me is like torture.
I can deal with it for two or three afternoon by week like now. But all day, day after day, week after week, year after year... it just too much for me, I can't bear with it...

So maybe I am lazy, and yes I AM a loser , but I learned to accept more or less these aspects of me.

I'm on the fence here. Like the OP, I'm a Quebecer (Montreal!) on the autism spectrum (not sure what the OP has, but I'm in the process of getting diagnosed with Asperger's). After high school, I tried college, but couldn't handle it, so I worked at EB Games for several years. I ended up on welfare for a good while because I was undiagnosed and I couldn't deal with my life, along with a lot of anxiety and depressive issues, and now I'm in a program with Emploi-Quebec where they're paying for me to go back to high school to do my remedial high maths and sciences. I want to go into physics.

OP, I know you don't like work, but no one does. I hated the mundane tasks at EB Games like counting the inventory (everyday!), but I liked stickering things, making the schedules and arranging the signboards. Yes, I had to do a lot of mundane things, but I'm able to do them, even if I don't like them. I had to wear dark glasses because of the bright lights in the mall, I had to speak in French and in English to customers. But at EB, no one cared if I wasn't looking in people's eyes or if I was socially awkward, gamers don't usually really care about that sort of thing, as long as you can talk about gaming and give them the correct change. My boss understood, and let me go for a few minute break or smoke outside when I needed it, as long as I buckled down and finished serving the lineup of customer inside.

When you think about it, welfare in Quebec doesn't afford you very much, even if you're on full disability like I was. It's not other people's job to support you because you don't want to work. Not many people like to work, but it's how they survive, and you have to survive too. You're not any better than them, so the same applies. I think that's fair...