Why do NT's often not take us seriously?

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I have noticed during the course of my work, which involves (among other things) investigating complaints customers make about businesses, that if the customer is obviously autistic or otherwise "different", that however justified his/her complaint may be, neither the business nor some of my colleagues take him/her seriously.

I have dealt with a few of these complaints where the customer was obviously in the right, but I got the reaction "So what? He was only a crank anyway!" and "Don't waste your time on that!"

I also find that if I am the person making the complaint and am heading towards a meltdown, the person dealing with me just "switches off" as soon as I have presumably crossed some invisible line that marks me out as weird.

Has anyone else found this (either as the customer in question or a witness to this behaviour?)

Is it because we make the NT's that do this uncomfortable, or do they just assume that, just because we think differently to them, we are automatically deluded?

Could the person have a co-existing condition such as bipolar and be off his/her meds? That could be scary. I think I would have a tough time with out of control, angry people, whether they have ASDs or not.

Actually I think NTs have taken aspies much too seriously, far too often since 12,000 BC. They agreed with them when they said "wouldn't it be much simpler and more efficient to plant these buzzy cereal grains ourselves rather than leaving it up to inefficient vageries of nature, and settle down to live permanently nearby "and when they said " round huts are so impractical ; you can't build lots of them all together as easily as if they were rectangular" and when they said "look, rather than messy transactions involving goats , lets translate each goat into a number; each goat = 3 , and to represent the 3 lets have little clay tokens....."
.............
So it's good to see that NTs have become increasingly wary of aspie ideas!!
Maybe!!??
But actually I don't think they have. NTs still find aspie thought processes so impressive , simply cos it wouldn't occur to a lot of them to want to change anything, or ask questions about it, or imagine alternate possible realities, that they are still far too likely to think there must be something in it. So long as it doesn't disturb the NTs way of life in the immediately foreseeable future.


Maybe in face to face confrontations like that the reason that the NT simply shuts down is because they KNOW that things taken to their logical conclusions have by definition nothing to do with most peoples lives ( NTs, and lucky them!!) apart from the fact that it could take all day or longer to arrive there!! They don't want to waste their time.

Last edited by ouinon on 05 Oct 2007, 9:33 am, edited 5 times in total.

As one of the "out of control, angry" people myself, all I want from the person I am yelling at is for them to understand why I am angry.

i.e. if they said "Yes, that would make me really mad too!" or "I totally agree with you! Leave it with me & I'll sort it out," it would calm me right down straightaway.

But people just don't do this. They genuinely seem to think it is unreasonable for me to be angry and that I should "just accept it".

To me "just accepting it" is being a wimp, & there is no way I would ever do that!

Other times they will not even listen to me until I can "speak calmly & rationally." Sometimes they even hang up on me, which I regard as totally unacceptable. In a work situation, I would never hang up on a caller just because they were angry. I would regard it as a failure to do my job if I couldn't deal with them.

Face to face may be a different story, if the person is physically aggressive or has a weapon, but otherwise all they want is to be understood!

My experience would tend to indicate that, at least in the UK, customer service is obstructive and unhelpful to everyone, regardless of their status of NT or ASD. The excuses may change, but the unwillingness to do anything to remedy the situation is the same.

For the weirdness.. I'm guessing part of this, though, may be due to the lack of eye contact and difficulty communicating. For NTs, what normally provokes this kind of response is lying, so if a customer service rep sees someone who's talking slowly and not making eye contact, plus putting out the wrong body language and facial expressions, they'll not consider the possibility that person has an ASD (very unlikely anyway) and go with the likely explanation that they're a liar who's just trying to scam some money or free product.

In my last job my colleagues never understood why I bothered to help out any customers we had that they perceived as being a bit odd. I think its because your colleagues know they won't get in trouble for not bothering to deal with the autistic person's problem. They are far less likely to demand to speak to the manager, if they did, the manager would probably write them off as a 'nutter' too.

As one who worked for phone tech support for a year and a half, I feel the need to remind you that not everyone thinks like you. Nobody that yelled at me wanted to be understood. I know because I tried hard to be understanding, and it didn't change anything. They just wanted to vent. If it helps though, I understand how you feel. If I raise my voice at someone it's because I'm desperately trying to make them understand, and everyone misinterprets this as anger. That, in an ironic twist, makes me angry =P

When i started my job at first great western da NTs thought dat how did i know more about da models of trains n da timetables by lookin at once dey thought i was a one trick pony but i prove dem wrong n now dey fink i could b manager in 1 or 2 years tym funny innit after slaggin me off.

Me too. And, actually, being "too" understanding, i.e. faking it with meaningless platitudes, would annoy me too. When I said "be understood", I meant that the person would have to genuinely, from the heart, feel angry along with me, not just say the right words.

And well done for surviving on a helpline for that long! I'd probably get fired within a week for saying "Yes, you're right, this company is s**t; I should know because I work here!"

When I'm frustrated about something, people push it off to the side anyway. It takes forever of talking about it and venting about it before they realize it really is a big deal to me. From the start, they usually just see it as "over emotional", or they say it's a female thing to gripe about stuff, which is just silly but that's what it is pushed off as.

I think this is just symptomatic of the fact that Customer Service is a thing of the past.
My experience was to take the Missus car to the dealer for a minor repair. They opened at 8AM, and I was there shortly after 7 to wait in line. 8 'o clock comes and goes, the gate opens, and almost no progress is being made. The cars go through at a pitifully slow rate. I get angrier and angrier. When I finally get up to the gate, it's past 8:30, and instead of yelling at the chap who writes up the service request, I ask what is taking so long???
He blithely tells me that the boys who were supposed to drive the cars from the gate to the shops were let go. Translation:We have a problem, and instead of solving it, we're going to dump it in your lap.
There is no Customer Service these days. Shop owners, even Car Dealerships just don't care. They could have had anyone who worked there driving the cars back to the shops, buuuuuuuuttttt nnnnooooooooo, they made us sit there while the two middle aged service reps did it one at a time!! !

It doesn't matter if you're NT or not. There Is No Customer Service!! !

Believe me, beyond the first two months when I was simply ecstatic over being out of McDonald's, I hated that job. I have an understanding of computers that nobody else I know (in person at least) does, and stupidity annoys me. Seriously, how can you not know how to turn on an iMac? It's one stupid button!

Anyway, I think what you mean then is sympathy versus empathy. We weren't allowed to be sympathetic, only empathetic. I had a hard time being sympathetic with people who yelled at me when I had done nothing wrong. A few times I had to tell people that they can either keep yelling, or calm down and let me help them. Tech support isn't there so you can yell at them, they're there to help, and as much as people like to ignore this fact, tech support people are only people, trying to do their job. It's not like you have the president of the company on the line, only a person who needs a way to support themself.

Sorry, that started to turn into a rant. I guess I should make a point before I hit submit.

Wanting sympathy is easy, but I think empathy needs to be enough. I find with most people, if you can manage to convince them that whether or not you feel the same way, it diffuses a lot of arguments to let someone know that you understand WHY they feel that way. You can empathize but disagree. Sympathy requires agreement.

I do feel often I have a hard time being taken seriously by others. Especally at work, if im angry about something (i find more that angers me then others possibly because the majority of the ppl I work with are idiots) I feel like people just blow me off or say the right thing to get me to chill out and then its over in their eyes.

I am the only person where I work with a collage education, many dont even have a high school diploma. Not that that means anything, but when I have an idea about how to do something more efficently (im 1 of the top producers, not cause im super fast, but because I can do things efficently, whereas I see lots of time and energy wasted by the others who dont seem to 'get it') people do seem to turn off thinking ill forget about it. It really ticks me off cause im supposed to help them after im finished with my work because I did it more efficently.

Sorry for the rant... i hope i did not get off topic. I find that even tho you are angry and want to freak out, if you approach people calmly more can be acomplished, I dont know about you guys, but for me that is often VERY difficult, but something to work on non the less.

I feel many of us are SMART SMART SMART, and many of our peers may not be as logical, or even efficent as us, and that will freak us out, the fact they can just blow us off even tho we may do things, well... better. Its hard to deal with, and yet this will occure thru our whole lives