My word has no value, period.

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Not sure if this scenario is familiar to you. But so many times it happened to me.

I am sick of it. I am dismissed from jobs, and when somebody tells me I'm blamed for being dismissed, it doesn't matter how much I respond to all charges against me - my word has zero value, anything I say is ignored (and often in a noticeably cold and arrogant manner), sometimes I am taken as crazy, but that's over anyway - I am blamed and fired.

While I was working with them, people annoyed me with a wide range of harassments from gossips to open disdain, not to mention their bad plays, lies, shouts, and it was no secret. But all my protests and complains were downplayed like if I had persecution mania.

Does it sound familiar to you? Have you every heard any explanation on it?

Sort of..? What is the biggest complaint about you at work? Is there a common thread? If you are constantly being dismissed from different jobs the common denominator is you. Therefore there might be something you might need to change in order to keep yourself employed. There are situations where you were just the right fit for the culture of the place that you worked, but that may not be all of the locations.

I was a manager for years and losing an employee (including through termination) was a loss to the company and we did a lot to avoid it. Are you provided with periodic performance reviews? Those are intended to (1) catch areas where expectations of the employee are not being met and to help the employee correct their performance in identified areas and (2) to identify areas of strength and initiative and provide positive feedback on these too. If your employers don't provide performance reviews or feedback, many employers welcome employees seeking that feedback directly. At the company where I was a manager we would interview the employee's coworkers, their lead, the people they led, and generally those other employees who were impacted by the performance of the specific person being reviewed. These interviews would form the basis of the periodic performance reviews. And we had an "open door policy" where an employee could just walk into a manager's office and discuss concerns - many places have such a policy.

I'm autistic, have face blindness, and I have to work hard and deliberately to read people's reactions, and I still have had situations where someone got exasperated with me because I missed something important. It can be something subtle like tone of voice or body language, folding their arms, looking at me with a puzzled or frustrated expression - NTs can read these automatically, but I have to be diligent to catch those signals. When someone would get exasperated or upset with me, I immediately go to that person and talk it through with them. There was a time when I was young when I would get scared or angry and avoid those conversations and it would universally get worse between me and the other person. I learned not to do that - I worked 20 years at one company and 18 at another and burning bridges with people would always come back to bite me, so I avoided it like the plague. (This stuff also applies to family and intimate relationships, btw.) I would have to let go of my fear and anger and then approach people and talk to them...

One thing you mentioned, that "people annoyed me with a wide range of harassments", suggests that you might be interpreting coworker communications as annoyances and unjustified harassments, rather than attempts to get you to correct some particular behavior(s). Interpreting the communication negatively can frustrate others because it makes a person seem like they don't care about or even hostilely reject the communication. It would be nice if they came to you with positive suggestions, but it's best to be receptive, otherwise folks may avoid direct communication and use social signals like gossip, shouts, etc. to try to get through to you. If you're autistic like I am, those social signals can be really hard to understand. A good manager is supposed to facilitate communication of expectations, dissatisfactions, and appreciation as well, so others don't break down and resort to inarticulate and unhelpful escalation like "bad plays, lies, shouts...". If there isn't a manager available to approach for feedback (so things don't progress in a negative direction), then earnestly and openly seeking feedback from coworkers directly should be helpful.

Once a situation has gotten to the point of termination, it is often too late to dispute the decision, because there are legal issues involved in firing someone and employers don't want to get sued so they extensively discuss things internally and then follow a procedure that is blessed by the legal department. It's desirable for both employer and employee to resolve issues before it comes to the point of termination.

I felt like that when I was in elementary skewl. I was bullied aLOT because of my Aspie issues & other disabilities & my peers ganged up on me to get me in trouble. My teachers & principles were NOT interested in hearing my side & automatically believed everyone else over me because I was thought to be the problem kid due to my issues. I never had those problems in the workplace thou but that may be due to my work ethic. I was always working & never took breaks except for the required 1s.

My uncle found out past 50 he had autism because of my diagnosis and also experienced what you mentioned. Not to such an extreme but often being fired for no reason but not fitting in enough. People hating him for no reason. I myself also experience this on a daily basis when I am with NT people and see the contrast of how I get treated compared to them, it's always different.

My opinion is, people smell or sense your insecurity, you being different and like the animals we are they prey on that and start hurting you. It's terrible but it's like an animal who is hurt in nature, predators sense it and that animal doesn't have long. With humans it's mental abuse and people in power positions often are the worst and don't listen at all to you or ignore you because they value the group, not you. Makes me sick!

Really sorry you have to go through this, hear it a lot. Angers me to the core and wish I worked with you and could defend you. Would not stand for that behavior at all. Have defended people like you all my life and it just triggers me to see the injustice done. But ironically, when it happened to me, nobody defended me but isn't that always the story?

Wish you the best, hope you will find a place you truly fit in because nobody deserves this. Good luck!

I too have experienced this, especially at school. It is one of the reasons that I insist on getting the whole story from the school when they call me about one of my kids. I flat out told the principal that I would not take action unless I had the full story of what triggered the behavior. At work I am mostly left alone. I am fortunate that I often work alone doing tasks that few can do. I do not get invited to social events outside of work. This sometimes bothers me, but probably is for the best. I often leave a conversation feeling that it was akward, if I feel that way I can only imagine what the other party felt. The few jobs that let me go are now out of business. These were places that measured you by popularity not productivity or quality.

Fantastic!

Yes, even when I have not a single clue that helps me understand what is going on - my word has no value, I don't understand what's happening, I have poor to no feedback, but just blame it all on me and life must go on.

I live in Brazil, and things are harder here. Wish I had a polite feedback from my colleagues and bosses, but one of the few feedbacks I ever had was a pile of contradictions - for example, "does not know this tiny detail" (something that, seriously, could be explained in 1 minute), and at the same time "he has good technical knowledge". Or, "lacks proactivity" (an absurd, provided that I spent only 1 month working there, which is not enough time to measure it) but later "he has good commitment with job". Project manager was never there, following my daily tasks - he just read this rude feedback from his client about me, dismissed and ignored all my complaints (he always did that, since the very beginning), and bye. I left his office shouting, "this is not a dismissal, this is an affront!". To no avail - He despised me again. "Táááááá..."

You wonder what people around me think of scenes and situations like these - it's a huge embarassment to me. I know I am a competent software developer and I think it's not fair to simply dismiss me, instead of having an honest talk and try to settle everything. I spent only 4 days in my latest job. Worse than that, there was no failure in my developments and key users seemed very happy with what I showed them.

Actually, in my 1st day there was a woman who remembered me from a past project, it was almost two decades ago, and once she recognized me, she began saying bad things about me in loud and clear voice for the entire team to hear. It took me a long time to explain what happened at that time. I thought it was enough but, again, I was misled by my own optimism.

I was accused of "harassing" women there. Now I know it has a name - Asperger stare. Yes, sometimes I am lost in my thoughts and I don't know where I'm looking at, or immediately recognize who's in front of me. Ironically I was about to tell them about my ASD diagnosis but there was not enough time - even after doing everything correctly. Should any disagreement happen, any discomfort about me and my "weirdness", and I was ready to explain everything so everyone would benefit. But getting rid of the "trouble" is much easier...

I told my (now former) employer I spent 5 years being chased by a psycho who was used to hide himself and try to catch me, so this is why I look around me all the time. This is true - but of course I could not show him the whole picture or it would be much worse. Now I prefer remote jobs because it provides me a "buffer zone" so I can avoid human contact.

I have so many stories like these to tell... My ASD experience has been terrible so far. Unemployment, harassment, misunderstandings, gossips, prejudice, isolation. A nervous breakdown 10 years ago destroyed my tiny hopes.

As always, I ask you if it makes sense from an ASD point of view, so please tell me.

When people don't like you, they will use anything you say or do as 'evidence' against you, and no matter how good you are, if enough people complain about you, you're gone.

Employers would rather get rid of one good worker than put up with the complaints of dozens of mediocre workers.

The best answer so far in this thread is the one by Eye-Dash. It offers some suggestions for overcoming this problem. I don't understand how it can be helpful to agree that yes, you are being persecuted wherever you work and most people are jerks.

You don't understand the work world if you think your employer wants to hear your point of view after you have been dismissed. When you have been dismissed, you are shown the door, carrying a box with your personal belongings, and that's that. If anything, you MIGHT be able to negotiate an exit package (severance pay), but probably not.

If you are not being given performance feedback at your jobs, seek it. And stop considering all the friction with co-workers as their fault. You have some changing to do. Be grateful you have sufficient job skills to get employment at all, but you need to work on yourself if you want your outcomes to change.

It's hard to comment when we don't know the whole story. There could have been some specific actions that you were doing or there might have been something else going on but I guess we can't know that right now.

I think we're all willing to give you the benefit of the doubt though. If there's a problem and you really don't know what it is...well, it only gets more difficult. I remember when my ex-girlfriend would criticize me over certain words or actions and just say "the fact that you don't know is the problem" and be angry about that.

I mean...sure...maybe I should create my own list of arbitrary rules and not explain any of them to you clearly and then constantly criticize you if you don't follow them in the way that I like.

Because that's what it feels like.

I did have one boss who was pretty direct with me over some problems and that was honestly a really nice change of pace. One time when I was looking for a job I wondered if I could work at his store again and he was worried because he told me I didn't smile enough or look happy. To be honest, I don't think these should be requirements for working at retail especially since there are other countries where they have staff and waiters who...just do their job, but it's still a common standard in the US that people want other people to follow and he's at least clear about it so I can adjust myself accordingly.

So...yeah, I think the whole thing is that there might be something about you that most people don't like but no one is willing to talk to you about it so you're not sure what it is or what you can do about it. I'm sure if we had the whole story between you and what people were saying about you, we could probably give piece everything together and see what can be done.

Until then, sorry to hear this...it really sucks

(Please read my reply until the end and my ironic outflow will be clear - but the story written below is real.)

Sure, sure, sure. I should seek advice, I'm trouble, I think the entire world is a creation of jerks who've united against me. That is, nothing new under the sun - except for one phone call I got today.

Basically, a former empolyer called me and invited me to perform some tiny maintenances in an important system I developed for him some time ago. Great, except for one detail.

As I told you before, I am a senior Oracle developer who obviously expects being paid as senior in accordance to brazilian job market. But what was offered me today doesn't even reach USD 100 PER MONTH, which is absurd, ridiculously low, even for brazilian standards. Of course there are, sure, lots of advantages - I would work only 9 hours per month, developments and maintenances are few and tiny, I would receive it even if no new tasks came to my hands, and the client - an influential group of professionals, enterpreneurs, etc. - was "unable" to pay me more than that.

Pffff. 1st of all, as senior developer, I know there are almost no "tiny" developments and maintenances. It's a lie. Anything the client asks to the developers requires time, patience and lots of testing before uploading to production environment and I'm sure I will never work less than 9 hours per month because I developed the system and I know its features. 2nd, my boss should be more respectful - this system holds classified information from his client. Besides, who in the world would surrender his/her professional experience and accept such shameful salary - not me, and I am not that desperated.

The situation became an immense joke in my family today.

Now please tell me that again - that I am trouble and I need to seek professional feedback, please have your say.

P.S. I do not blame you for thinking this on me, I realize there are factors such as distance, none of you know me personally, etc., I am only human with my own imperfections, so please don't take my sadly ironic words wrong. I just wanted to show you things like these taste so bad. And please believe me, both the phone call and the job offer were as real as the outrageous salary that was offered.

And I will turn his proposal down. USD 100 per month? Respect is priceless, especially self-respect.

I actually have that issue now because no one takes me seriously worth a crap