How do you cope with the intolerance and misunderstanding?

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I have high functioning aspergers. I do really well for the most part. I'm in college and make good grades, and I have decent social skills.
However, sometimes simple things are a challenge for me. I have poor fine motor skills and suck at doing anything with my hands. And people just dont understand it. For example, the other day I was struggling to unfold a table and my boss said, "I guess that table was designed by Chinese Phd students." That is the way it always is. When my aspergers causes problems, people are condescending and treat me like crap. It hurts my self esteem and makes me feel like a failure.

I imagine a lot of autists get treated this way. How do some of you cope with it? It is a terrible feeling.

Where was the insult to you?

The way I read your post, the insult was directed toward "Chinese PhD Students"; and unless you're one of those, I just don't see how you are entitled to take personal offense.

I believe the employer person was saying to the OP that "this isn't rocket science," that he should be able to unfold a table easily. Sometimes, in truth, it's not so easy.

My wife does the same thing. She expects me to be able to do "simple" things, and she gets upset when I have trouble with these "things."

I can identify with the WP in this instance. It can get irritating at times when people don't think beyond the box.

The employer person should just have shown you how to unfold the table, rather than act in that condescending manner. That's what I would have done.

Please don't put the weight of the world on yourself because of some condescending idiot.

Intolerance and misunderstanding, alas, is part and parcel of the world for both autistic people and neurotypicals.

Over the years, I was subjected to what you've been subjected to. I have learned to just slough these things off, and think about what's important in life.

In other words: In order to survive in this world, one has to develop a pretty "thick skin."

It gets pretty dang annoying for me, too.

I have lots of experience with this sort of thing. I would say there's at least a 99% possibility that the employer was saying, in essence, "this isn't rocket science." That it shouldn't be difficult for the OP to unfold the table. I feel like the employer was expressing irritation by making a snide remark, saying, in essence, "it's not like the table was designed by Chinese PhD students."

People who have good mechanical aptitude frequently do not understand that others don't have the same aptitude. They get irritated with other people finding things difficult when they, themselves, find these things easy.

The OP assigned his struggle to "poor fine motor skills" - in this context, I would suspect "Chinese grad students" to be an allusion to stereotypical small and skillful hands of the Chinese.

I guess it would have been nice to have known the specific context.

But I sense condescension on the part of the employer, based upon similar experiences with my life.

There used to be an advert for Castro Convertible couches which stated that it was so easy to convert the couch to a bed—that “even a 4-year-old could do it.”

The table was not designed by “Chinese grad students”; hence, anybody could figure out how to unfold this table.