Being Perceived as Scheming?

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I'm deep in the process of deconstructing myself as actually autistic, and part of this is examining my interactions with people and relationships that have gone wrong in the past. One of my frequent scenarios is that I will have someone I care about come to believe that I've done or said something as a way to scheme or dishonestly gain some sort of advantage.

One example for me was that as part of my work, which is software engineering, I came to be obsessed with a new technology that solved a big problem for my project. As part of this obsession, I did tons of reading, experiments, etc, which only made me more excited to talk about it with people. This thing became my special interest all on its own. One of my work friends happened to be in charge of the team that I would need to help me implement this, so I prepared a pitch to her, and gave her a huge dose (probably too much!) of my excitement, but she was completely lukewarm. I'm sure she had lots of logical reasons to not take on extra work, but to me, it was deeply frustrating. So I attempted to sell her on the idea some more.

She got very upset at me, and accused me of trying to manipulate her by using our friendship as leverage to get something I wanted. And I felt extremely confused by that, since that wasn't it at all. In fact, I was so happy I could talk to her about it because she WAS my friend and I felt like I could trust her with my obsession.

So this isn't to see if I was right or wrong on this, since I can clearly see that the way I approached her made her feel bad. But I think if she knew then what I know now, that I am autistic and I get special interests that feel so powerful and obsessive that I can't let them go until they burn themselves out, then maybe she'd have just seen it for what it is and communicated it to me. Shaken me out of it, or just ignored me until I got ahold of my exhuberence. Instead, she told me I'd ruined our friendship and we never spoke much again.

Has anyone else had their autistic traits mistaken for malice or conniving?

Not malice or conniving, but annoyingly misunderstood. At work I was often labelled as blunt or arrogant. Also as someone who is idealistic and who won’t accept sub-performance as they believed my aims were unrealistic (not a good trait from them as I work in social care and quite rightly have high standards that aim to achieve policy and guidance) Sometimes I was thought of as a know-it-all too, even though what I was saying was right and made sense!

I later learnt to mask it, and be much more aware. But that comes at a personal cost too. Now I balance it as best i can really.

Now I’m diagnosed (this week) I’m glad I can talk to colleagues about being on the spectrum, and possibly being mistaken in my intentions, as they’ll have a good ideal what it means luckily.

I think I have the opposite problem. With me, I learned to mask my bluntness so well that people perceive me as "nice" and "soft-spoken."

I think that perception is what leads people to rightly figure out that my outward niceness is not exactly genuine, but they assume that it means I'm putting on a nice face as a way to manipulate instead of as a defensive mask based on childhood trauma. That it's conniving instead of a very common autistic trait.

So hey, at least it's progress that I know this now!

Lol, you’ve just described how I am now since I learnt to adapt, honestly, just the same!

^^^ In addition to my comment above, I do it to be a good person and get good results at work for the people we support - so it feels like for good reason and good intentions.

Yes.

Thanks for giving me an excuse to rant. Lol! Here is my long story.

One particular lady supervisor would accuse me of lying ...when I would tell her things that are ...to me...like saying "water is wet".

Work for a company that counts inventory for retail stores.

One of the smallest jobs is counting greeting cards in stores. A low level supervisor lady who had the job of supervising the small crews that would count greeting cards would always do things in what I considered to be the dumbest and most inefficient way possible. namely switching back and forth between the displays (easy part) and the back stock hidden from view below and behind the displays (the hard part). Not only is "the low stuff" harder and more complicated, but its easy to forget to do (cause its out of sight thus out of mind). And this particular lady was frankly rather scatterbrained and more prone than most to forget to count it.

I would tell her NO...dont switch back and forth. I would suggest to her to "do one thing or do the other and finish that first...break the task down like an assembly line". AND ...the thing to do first IS the low stuff (because its both harder and easy to forget). Do the hard part and the easy to forget part first. Then relax and do the easy high stuff last.

She would never take my advice.

Later on I ended up working for other supervisors doing the same greeting cards stores. And I noticed two things . That the supervisors would split the crew in two...have one half do only the low stuff, and have the other half do only the high stuff. I noticed a further thing...that who they pick to be in each half is not random. The supervisor himself, and the top guns are all crawling on the floor doing the low stuff. And the greenhorns are all standing up to do the high displays. AND...I am always stuck with the greenhorns. I felt a bit slighted but..I get to do the easy part of the job, and more important...I approve of the general overall strategy. Its what I would do myself if I were a supervisor.

Then after a long time I worked with this lady again. It was just the two of us. I assumed that she would count he bottoms and I would just count the tops. So I went at it ...counted the tops with dazzling speed. But instead of praising me for my speed she said "hey you forgot to count the bottoms".

I got pissed off...the bolded words are the words I bit my tongue did NOT say:"you stupid f*****g idiot I obviously did not forget anything...I choose to ignore the bottoms on purpose as part of my counting strategy. Its obvious that my way is better and we have talked about this many times before you stupid f*****g idiot".

We argued, and then I explained to her what I wrote above ...that "most supervisors split up the crews and that most of the time they put the high ranking people on the low stuff, and the low ranking people on the high stuff".

Dial ahead a week later. She I happened to be working together (both as subordinates to another supervisor)doing a big department store. She was still sulking about the above incident and said "I dont believe you. The reason I dont believe you is that ...there are people in the company who are much fast counters than you are". She was sniffling like holding back tears) when she said this.

She didnt explain to me WTF the fact that "there are folks who count faster than I am" has to do with anything.

We never got back to the subject. But what she said was (to me) like saying that "I dont believe you when you tell me that water is wet because Joe Biden is not ethnic Eskimo". I know he is not an Inuit, but what does that have to do with it?

She is upset ...thinks I am lying when I inform her about thats almost self evident common sense...and thinks that the proof that I am lying is something that has nothing to do with the topic at all.

+++++++++

So now its my turn to be bothered. For a long time I "obsessed" with wondering WHY she thought her evidence that I was a liar was ...that...because to me it didnt have anything to do with anything.

Then finnally I realized this...that when I said "the high ranking people do the low stuff, and etc" she assumed that I was implying that I myself was "high rankng".

And that maybe the misunderstanding was partially my fault because I didnt explain to her that I deduced from observation that...they divide the crews that way on the task AND I deduced (no one told me) that I was always "one of the low rankng people".

But even if I give her THAT...its still kinda dumb of her to put reams of words into my mouth that I never said. And assume that I had motivations I didnt have ...to tell a lie I wasnt telling...about a subject that I wasnt even talking about!

I work in a job which requires me to be coercive and, I suppose, scheming, on a daily, if not hourly basis.
I'm very good at my job precisely because I have an autistic, problem solving brain and I can see how to gain leverage where others can't.
So if my colleagues call me scheming, that's a compliment!

I’m usually not, but people do seem to see me as manipulative when I ask for advice on social stuff. I guess I could be seen as “manipulative” when all I want is for things to go more smoothly and look socially competent.

This is funny, because in my 20s I had a job selling the LA Times door-to-door, and I was really great at it. I quickly saw patterns of what worked and what didn't, so I made a lot of sales. Still a tough job, though!

Yeah, this is what I'm talking about. In my mind, I am working with good intentions, but because of my masking, it comes off differently and there's nothing I can do about that. Well, except more masking, which is becoming impossible for me.

Yeah. I guess people don’t like it when I ask for advice on how to mask better. I need to get better at being sneaky about it. I slowly am. What people don’t understand is that I mask to make it easier for everyone. When I mask well I actually use less energy than I would if I didn’t mask. For me not masking makes people impossible to deal with.

I think I'm about 10 years older than you, but there was a time when masking was almost effortless for me. I was never neurotypical, just more able to blend in. But I'd say a few years ago, when the pandemic hit and I was working from home and getting less direct interaction with folks, my skills dropped off a cliff and now I just find it really stressful and difficult. I wonder if my more visible traits are going to change the way people judge my intentions?

Either way, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I think I mask enough to not be visibly autistic. Maybe people can tell I’m not feeling all that great or I’m a bit different, but not straight up autistic. I’m still not the best at interacting with people. I’d say I’m the best at masking if I’m around someone outgoing. Most of the time people aren’t outgoing around me, so I have to settle for coming across as slightly shy and awkward but not autistic. I’m not exactly happy with where I am socially because I’m not exactly attracting any friends or dates.

That sounds tough, I'm sorry. And I misread your age. I'm actually more like 25 years older than you. When I was in my 20s, I met my wonderful wife who actually likes my quirky brain and gives me all the grace and love I need. It can happen!