Your toleration of labor.

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I don't mean labor unions or the Labour Party or the "proletariat" in general.

I mean... having to work a damned job.

I'm going into academia. I envision having a tenure-track professorship at a university, preferably back in my home state of California. *knock on wood* People with half the education make twice the dough working for some corporation - and many say they have to put up with a lot less crap - but this is just about the only kind of job I'm willing to tolerate. Not because I'm elitist... but because... I think it's the only job that won't mentally murder me. Not because other jobs are banal or ignoble, but because... well... you know what I'm saying, don't you!?

- I remember when I was 19 or 20 and just starting out in college, my dad demanded that I get a summer job. So I became a dishwasher/barback at an "English pub." Yes, it was an American simulacra thereof, but it was owned, operated, and patronized by honest-to-goodness British ex-pats. Mainly from Newcastle, with that Geordie accent... "I'm goo'in doon to take th' doog for a woolk." It wasn't bad. I only had to interact with whoever was doing the cooking, to any significant degree. And I didn't have to act all polite and courteous (or rather, not more than normal) because everyone was too drunk to care, and when they were sober there was no shortage of worldly, cynical candor to go around. It wasn't bad. I did just fine for a year and a half, mainly because it required next to no concentration... I could just go on auto-pilot and daydream or think deep thoughts. I left because my family was going to Wyoming for a few weeks and I had always wanted to see the place.

- When I was about 21 or 22, my dad demanded that I get yet another summer job that I was supposed to maintain well into the next fall semester and beyond, just like a "normal" college kid. So I went to work at a Fatburger, which is a burger chain peculiar to the Los Angeles area. (Better than In-N-Out, if I do say so myself.) A bunch of my buddies were working there (poor twentysomethings in dead end wage slave hell), more or less as managers running the show, so I got hired right on... and they soon regretted it. I was the biggest screw-up ever and just sucked at everything. Everything was always going wrong and it was always my fault. If I would have been forced to keep that job for a solid year, they would have found me swinging from the rafters with a note in my pocket and the post-mortem reeking remains of a Fatburger in my drawers. I hated it so much, and I was so much worse at it than everyone else. I knew I had hit bottom when 15 year old kids were ostracizing me and and persecuting me for being such a sorry, pathetic [bleep]-up.

My dad had zero sympathy and would blow his top. And I quote: "if you can't flip a godd*** burger at a godd*** f***ing hambuger stand, how in the F*** [dramatic pause] do you think you're gonna work a REAL... MOTHERF***ING... JOB!!?!??!?!?! !?"

Well, he changed his tune when he saw me working 14 hours a day for two months straight with no days off to finish my Master's thesis. "I've never seen anybody work so hard" he beamed with astonished pride, and he also knew that he had nothing like the capacity to do what I was doing. He had always thought I was the laziest, most useless and incompetent bum ever, up until that point.

But I still am.

Academia is my refuge. I can't imagine even functioning at anything else. This is the only thing that staves off destitution, or abject dependency on the rapidly diminishing American welfare state.

I can't even wrap my brain about doing the daily work that someone with an MBA would do, or someone with a degree in something like hotel administration or public management or whatever else you got. I just can't even fathom it.

I'm so glad I found my niche. I was deathly afraid of ending up as a piece of human wreckage until I found this niche. I shudder to think....

So, what about the rest of you? What types of jobs are you psychologically incapable of tolerating, and how much of this intolerance has to do with AS?

Anything with human interaction; it's all due to the supposed autism. (I abhor academic pursuit as well; autism again.)

Luckily I've never been one to seek [and want] money, power and/or recognition. A minute peaceful (if that) existence is enough for me.

I've worked in all kinds of jobs. All of them drove me round the bend after not too long! Getting the level of stimulation right seems impossible. I've worked in shops, offices, reception desks ( yeah, I know!), a laboratory, warehouses. I got sacked on my first day at a Saturday job as a waitress in a vegetarian restaurant (because I wasn't charming enough with the customers and got too stressed) .I was a psych nurse for four years including my student nurse days, which I was just about able to get through because I moved to a new ward/unit every 2-3 months, with periods in school and breaks between. I left the profession after 4 months as a staff nurse on an adolescent unit, as I was completely overloaded and burnt out. There are problems for me with just about any work situation. I now have a voluntary job working with wild animals, which I do 2 days a week. I've been doing that for over 2 and a half years now. I love it but it doesn't earn me any money.

One thing I learned from that fast food stint... I can't do what we sociologists call "emotion work." Where you have to be all polite, "have a nice day", all that crap. Retailers and many others in the service industries have to maintain this.

All I remember is grinding my teeth, balling up my fists, and wanting nothing more than to jump the counter and beat the living dog [bleep] out of the angry man cussing and threatening and hollering at me.... while forcing myself - bending every last shred of willpower I had - to play 'submissive suck-a**' for the benefit of the verbally abusive customer and, by extension, the business that I was in the employ of. And I remember it happening... frequently.

I'd rather be a cop. In the face of such verbal abuse they stand there with grins that just say "go ahead, give us a reason to slam your face against the hood of your car and slap on the cuffs." They also get to be impassive authoritarian jerks when giving some screaming mad yuppie a speeding ticket. Sort of the inverse of "emotion work."

Hey, my dad's a grizzled old detective so I got nothin' but sympathy for 'em. Well, the good ones, who are of course the majority in most big city departments.

And no, I don't wanna be a cop. My dad made my brother and I promise to never become cops. And I quote, "it's the most thankless job in the world."

Last edited by WildMan on 16 Apr 2007, 5:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

My problem is procrastinating at anything I do. I have a decent job, and I survive generally because I have the skills to do it. But I spend most of my working life stressed over what I'm doing, because I put things off and end up firefighting all the time.

I don't think it's being lazy. I would like nothing better than to make a real success of my working life. If I didn't have my lack of social skills and my lack of decision making ability, I ought to be earning double what I do now.

As it is, work is very stressful, and I won't be sorry when I reach retirement age.

Anything with human interaction, anything with hard physical excercise, anything with tedious long tasks. Hate it all.

Great Scott, that's exactly how I am! And academia is so unstructured... no real schedule, just scattered long-termish deadlines for projects and stuff... that it's the perfect arena for such procrastination. I'm procrastinating major big-time right now, in fact... one of the most flagrant instances thereof in recent memory, in fact.



If you don't have a family or a big huge mortgage or anything, if I were you I'd hoard obsessively and live like a miser. Then, first chance I got, I'd retire to Mexico or Costa Rica, the Philippines, or some other such place. (I'd pick the first one because I'm Mexican-American.) Your stash would go a lot further down yonder... if you're in your twenties now, you could conceivably fly the coop by your early forties.

And I think that it's sickning how all the girls and women tend to talk with their special high-pitched voices. If I had a job like that, I'd keep spiking my hair, and I'd scare the young, fashion conscious NT customers away, with my gritty, mannish Cockney accent.

I worked in a Co-Op supermarket from the age of 15 to 18, looking after the Bread department. I didn't enjoy it, the customers were frequently rude (ever been threatened to have your "head smashed in" because you didn't have one chaps preferred thick-sliced Hovis in stock?) and demanding, and my management were not all that bothered about me, as long as the work was done. I wasn't keen to find an alternative as modern interview techniques don't mix all that well with me, as well as the fact that living in a small town meant there were very few jobs available.

After I finished my A-levels I took up work as a storyboard artist for a small animation company in Cambridge, which I absolutely loved as I finally had an excuse to sit in my room all day and draw, the money was bad though and when I was made redundant in May last year after less than two years I had reletively few options, so I applied for Uni, where I still am now.

I find all the work something of a struggle, I slip in to my dreamworld far more easily as i've grown older, meaning my lecture notes are somewhat sporadic and work does have a tendancy to be rushed and, as my old school teacher once put it - 'waffly'. I prefer to go on hideously long walks and take photos of trains and trees and things. As for how i'll manage after I graduate, well I don't really want to think about that. But i'll keep my fingers crossed for some good to come of things.

Yes, academia can be a "dangerous" place to be in. I got as far as doing a Masters at university, and did fine at the exams, because I'm brilliant at cramming information. But I blew the dissertation part, because I just couldn't plan the layout or schedule it. So bang went my masters .

I now work in a university as a member of support staff - still difficult, because the academics have this rather loose idea of deadlines, until it's suddenly extremely important and I end up firefighting like blazes. There are plenty of things I could pre-empt, but I always leave it until the hazy deadline is suddenly firmed up.

My life is a history of stressful situations which I have all the skills to deal with successfully, but only when I stop the procrastination.

this is the area of my life I have not worked out, I cant stand jobs, I cant stand being around people, I cant stand having to do somethings I could not care less about, labor, that is what made me hate human society, I was generally indifferent towards people, but I hate the idea of work.
I would like to go to university, but the local education system is so screwed, it discriminates against people like me. Germany never changed.

Yep, me too.

I like lonely jobs where I can get on with it and not have to think too much - strimming, for example. But outdoors jobs don't seem to pay much money, so I'm doing an office job which I hate.

I am fortunate that I have enjoyed all of the jobs I have had, and all have been progressively better. I don't mind hard physical work, and am surprisingly strong for someone of my small size.

I wouldn't tolerate anything that required intense and/or frequent social interaction, or putting time & energy in something that may have meaning or value to NT's but not to me. This rules out 99% of all possible jobs, so, like you, I'm in college and aiming for scientific work (biology in my case). It is quite obvious that this intolerance of social stuff (fake appearances, selling illusions, etc.) and of doing things that don't interest us is related to AS - it's a big part of what AS is, in terms of functioning in environments dominated by NT's.

I believe you mentioned you're a sociologist and you teach classes... Sociology would seem to be the one science that is impenetrable for an AS mind - have you found that not to be the case? And how do you go about teaching a class? I find it quite impossible to talk to/with multiple people at the same time (while I'm very good at tutoring individual students). Do you not have this problem?

I'm about to start a course to work at an old folks home as a CNA... If I like it I'm going to continue my education and go to college to get my RN. Most of the people at the old folks home arn't mentally present. They just kind of exist (there are some exceptions but most of them just seem to exist). So far it doesn't bother me, then again not much does bother me. Sadness surrounds me.

oh bro i hate working, as im sure everyone here does. i wish i could just sit on my butt all day and wackoff and look at porn