Social role noncompute

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So I just ran into my work supervisor on the weekend in the next town.
We get along well together at work (at least, it appears so to me) and she is a nice woman, so when she saw me she came to say hello.
I had absolutely no idea what to do. I had her highly contextualized. I can adapt to seeing her in specific work circumstances, and can understand how to interact with her in that setting. But we aren't personal friends outside of that work. It just scrambled my brains, I literally stalled and had no roadmap as to how to respond to this event. I was lucky I could speak at all in this instance, and didn't just stare blankly. It's hard to articulate but it was a bit jarring that I really could not operate under those conditions, because she was out of the context I understood her in and I had no idea what else to do, and how to respond to her socially without the structure of being at work.
Is this related to autism, do you think? Or do others have troubles with crossed contexts?

^ I'm exactly the same when I see someone out of context.
My mind just goes into headspin and nothing computes.

I've had the same experience when people at work retire and come back to visit.
Can't relate to them.
Don't know how to categorise them.
Wtf?

Probably autism related.
We need things in their neat little boxes to know how to relate.

Seeing people out of context really throws me out. Seeing people from the past, like someone I used to work with years ago is even worse. Even if it's someone I got on well with... I don't know what to say and it's like a feeling of rising panic. I try to hide, if possible.
Do I go to reunions? No!

From where I live, professional life, and personal life isn't cut and clear in most cases.

In my case, the divide is a bit clearer than others. Yet still not as separated.
Kinda why I have little problems whenever encountering my coworkers (and my boss') outside work. Even it includes and involves their own peers and family.
There's little or no change of context required other than obvious stuff like certain relevant/irrelevant stuffs, jargons, and confidentiality.


Same goes with my mom's coworkers, along with other parents (in both mainstream and SPEDs, and my sister's). My sister's. My coworkers' and my boss, WITH my relatives. And so on, and so on...
It's a confusing tangling web of connections of social networks that is hard to describe. Sometimes I'm their common link, then they make their own, then another to each other. It endlessly grows.

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^ Ick, that would completely screw me. This was actually a lot worse because I was with my relatives, and my worlds never collide. At the moment I have relatives, work, people from interest groups / class, study. People from those discrete worlds never meet in the same space at the same time. I would ordinarily never be around, say, my relatives as well as someone from an interest group or class. It noncomputes me because I have different roles to play depending on the group of people I am with. I can't be two people at once, in the same place at the same time. Forget double life, I have about a quintet life.

I'd say yes, it is autism related. Some call it face blindness, but it's really more like an information overload.
It happens to me a lot. People think I'm a snob, or they tell me I 'look straight through' them in public. In actuality, I just don't recognise them till well after they've seen me and stopped to talk etc.

It's because my brain is busy processing all the new/changing data from the current environment. Their unexpected presence in this environment is still sitting in the data buffer.
Work is familiar, not much processing time needed for that and so, I can focus on relating to people much faster and easier.

I believe it has to do with the more direct and to the point structure of conversation in professional settings (work and school), which in my opinion would be easier for people with autism, and the indirect and more random structure of social interaction, which by contrast would be more difficult. You are right about the different contexts in different situations causing issues, and you shouldn't feel discouraged in any way because of it. I see it as a strength, because you can separate your professional life from your social life, meaning that the two won't interfere with each other. The reason NT's have it easier in this regard is because they intertwine their social and professional life; ie: socializing at school or work while they should be focused on their priorities. It seems the lack of social skills comes from the fact that the main way of meeting people is through professional settings, and by cutting out the social interaction from those settings you would effectively lose your best chance to learn how to socialize. And now when you do attempt to socialize, you have to learn how to do so at the same time.