Well, it finally happened... shutdown

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I didn't believe it was real until it happened to me. I still have this thing "there's nothing REALLY wrong with me except laziness/workshy..."

So we've got an inspection next week at the care home where I work, and everything's been busy and confused.

People were coming in and blindsiding me so often yesterday that I almost had my first public shutdown. I was already worrying about four separate things I had to do, none of which I was sure about. When the boss came in and wanted to know what I'd found out off the internet for a document he'd asked me to research and write twenty minutes ago (while in the meantime the boss's wife had asked me to find, print out and fill in a form for something else, and I was about a third of the way through both tasks simultaneously), I realised I was answering him very slowly, stuttering, and very likely in a monotone. Everything was all slow and dreamy. I couldn't find the words; I was forgetting the meanings of words!

This must be what a computer feels like when all its RAM is in use and the keyboard buffer's filling up.

When I got home my mother shouted at me something or other she wanted me to do about something else and all I could say was "I haven't got anything left", she said "What?" and I said "I've got to rest" and went in my room and got undressed and went to bed and fell asleep at three in the afternoon XD

I am coming to the conclusion that I need to find a different job.

We all run out of spoons sometime. It is horrible when it happens but I dont believe it is directly related to Aspergers. Having said that you need to improve your assertiveness skills in order to be able to say "I am already working at full capacity. Can you either give this job to someone else or can you ask me later?"


Goodluck.

(I realise that if people are suggesting you are workshy then doing this may be difficult but only you can know whether you are working as fast as possible.)

My boss was talking to me yesterday before a "mandatory" lunch. She knows those things take it out of me. She told me that I'm antisocial when I get home because I have to go home, plug in and recharge. I often get like you did. Writing at night is what recharges me. Otherwise, I couldn't deal with being around people at work. I have to have vast amounts of alone time and actually, for the most part, my job is done in isolation (which suits me fine), but I still have frequent shutdowns when it is just to much. I just take longer to recharge. If it gets to the point where that is happening more than the days where you can deal with it, look at a different company or a different type of work. I've had to do that when they make me a manager. It's just too much people time for me and zaps me. There's nothing of me left at the end of every day. So, I just trade that in for another writer job. It's just money. If you don't have a life, it's not paying for itself.

I certainly relate.This has been an issue for me and I have arranged my life around this aspect of myself.I avoid jobs that require "executive skills" and a lot of "socializing" in groups.I work hard at every job I have so I not it's no "lazyness".I am more then willing to work and try and give my all in even the most "menial" of jobs(while many around me stand around and chat everyone else up or get into work "drama").I do think this is related to AS and think that it is often that we give 100% to each task and have nothing left-over for any following tasks(unless we know them well and can do them by rote memory)

I think the computer analogy is apt.I am computer nieve but have noticed this "behavior" in my computer when I am asking it to "multi-task" beyond it's capacity(it's capacity is a hell of a lot more then my own), when trying to recall "files" when already stressed.....I shut down and give a blank screen.

I have the food and social issue in the store. I just won't go in there. As soon as I go in the store, I end up stopping and staring at something. I freeze because I go into immediate overload. There's just too much of everything! Then, there's all the smells in there from the meat aisle that just make me ill. On top of all of that you have these crazy people who block aisles and stand too close to you. They are everywhere like ants and it completely freaks me out. After all of this, one of these well meaning feelers sees me staring at something totally fixated on it and touches me (they've probably already said something and I haven't responded) before asking, "Are you alright?" That's when I have the total meltdown and walk out of the store without a word and go to bed. Now, I just stay out of them. I haven't been to grocery stores in years. My husband does all that. He knows about food things and I never knew what he wanted me to buy anyhow because I don't cook. So, it's just easier if he does it.


Alaric, I can't believe you look in the refrigerator. Wow. I like the ice that comes out of the door so I don't have to open them. Food just overwhelms me. I don't want to know what's in there. The same with the pantry.

Freawaru,

I am sorry to hear of your “public shutdown.” I have shutdowns at times as well. Fortunately for me I work in an environment in which my supervisors know about my Asperger’s and understand that I’ doing the best I can to function well despite some of the difficulties it presents to me. I wished everyone worked in suc a supportive environment.

PaulW

I work at Taco Hell...er, um..Bell. It's probably the worst job for an Aspie to have but with the economy like it is in this city, I have no choice right now. Not only am I'm a cashier dealing with people all day, I have to make sure a hundred other things are done. If one little thing isn't completed, I get hell for it, even though I'm standing there dealing with a million customers and there's no time to do anything else.

By the time I'm off work, I don't want to even answer the phone much less go out socializing. The only thing that keeps me sane is my daily dose of Effexor and an occasional Klonopin.

Thanks for the comments, all. I was just venting frustration, really, but it's nice to know I'm not alone with this one.

I'm actually still working towards getting the official DX, not that there's any real doubt by now. So I haven't told the people at the care home yet; I didn't want to screw this job up for myself before I even have the diagnosis. It might be a tiny job with crap pay but it's still A JOB.

That said I have come to the conclusion in recent months that office work is simply not for me, so I'm looking at my options. Will be seeing a disability careers advisor tomorrow

Re stores: God I hate supermarkets. Everything's moving all the time, you can't stop, you're hammered by sounds and smells and CLEANUP CREW ON AISLE FOUR PLEASE CLEANUP CREW ON AISLE FOUR and wherever you stand you're in someone's way.

Check into IT careers definitely! Even though I'm a writer, I do Technical Writing and web help. I don't have to deal with people much at all except by email (and even that is limited). Most of the people I work with are Software Architects and Engineers who are as geeky and weird as I am! I rarely have to deal with emotional people, which is my downfall. Also, my job is quiet! If you do something similar like coding, your job would be quiet as well. Careers to avoid in IT...QA testing, technical support and project management. Those all include much heavier people contact. You also do not want to become a Business Analyst because that is people-oriented as well.


In Science, you can look at working in research labs where most of your work is running experiments and documenting results.


For now, what about a job reading meters or something like that where you are out all day, but don't really interact with people. I guess that one would require that you drive though.


You could always post what jobs they suggest or jobs you see and we could tell you if we know whether it is suitable for an Aspie. I know I would let you know what I think. I work in a huge corporation (400,000 employees) so I see all sorts of jobs even though I don't do them. Sometimes just seeing what the people have to do we get a feel for whether we feel we could do it or not.

I worked for a "Marketing Research Company", I won't say the name of it but it's initals are Western Watts. They are probably the most abusive employer I've ever worked for. It was during the summer and I was also taking summer dynamics (which is f'cking hard), and they started doing this survery that you would give people so they could take a survey in the email (that's right, we spend half an hour per person on the phone to try to get them to take an online survey), I finally just decided I couldn't do it anymore.

What is this for, and who are you?

I don't ever remember you posting your introductory thread befire!

I thought you were someone different because whoever this person is was the original poster in this thread.

Back in '97 I made the in retrospect rather strange decision to enlist in the US Navy. Don't ask me why I did that -- I was working at a data-entry company and hoping to find a better way to support my then wife and daughter. I ended up having a nervous breakdown and threatening suicide. The weird thing is that after I'd come home and got past a month or so of spending nearly the entire day in a fetal position, I had an epiphany that actually resolved a lot of long-standing problems I'd had with stress and anxiety. I had no clue at the time that any of it might be related to autism -- I didn't know anything about autism... But it happened for me while I was working a technical support job.

I got kind of lucky with that too because it was a corporate contract for Hewlett Packard and when I started it was during the Christmas season and it was a new contract and the company overstaffed it, so there was a lot of time between calls and I spent a lot of it writing, which is part of how I "fixed" myself. We were also answering reseller questions and it being a corporate contract, most of the people calling were other IT/MIS people being paid to fix whatever they were working on, so that took a lot of the edge off because they usually weren't as upset if at all.

I've looked at other technical support jobs after that and tend to agree that most of them probably aren't a great fit for an aspie -- even for NT people they're nerve-wracking. Because not only are you dealing with lots of different people all the time, the people you're dealing with are generally pretty frustrated before you even answer the phone, which is a bit of pressure to start and then that can turn into "angry" pretty quickly.

As it is I seem to have had a lot of difficulty making a living as a programmer... check out my blog http://people.tribe.net/water_muse/blog ... 250c2739ec -- which I've cross-posted to both http://smolderingremains.deviantart.com and my project blog for my projects on www.riaforge.org ... But the state won't let me do anything else because I can't get this kind of salary (as far as I know) doing anything like technical writing, etc. which is the big reason I'm pursuing an official Dx because I'm holding out the slim hope that I can make them understand that I'm not *trying* to be an irresponsible jerk.