How Has AS Affected Your Employment/Career ?

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Are you more comfortable talking to people face to face than on the phone?Sometimes it's easier. Just remember, the financial people are there to help and it's your right. Do you have another adult family member or friend who could help you out?

Back in Montana when I worked, I didn't understand personal space so I got massive complaints and I didn't know what was going on. I was getting accused of being rude and I was just minding my own business doing my job and guests seemed to love to complain about me. I was hoping it was them, not me and maybe they like picking on housekeepers. But I asked around at work and none of the room attendants got complaints. So I figured they must like complaining about laundry people then. I figured if I was in someone's way or if they needed me to back up, they tell me. Then there was the flexibility and I get upset if I had to change my route because of my anxiety. Same as if I get told to do something that wasn't part of my job.

At my last job, I didn't get along with my office clerk. He expected me to have a savant memory and be psychic and know where everything is still after they move things. Plus he expected me to read between the lines when he give me directions. I can remember the time he asks me to bring up six rollaways so I brought them up and went back to work. At the end of the shift, he asks me why aren't they made and I told him I don't know and he said what did he tell me and I told him he asked me to bring them up and I did. He told me I didn't use my common sense to make them and why would he ask me to bring up extra beds and not have me make them. I told him maybe someone else was going to do it. He told me if someone asks for a rollaway and it isn't made, our boss is going to wonder why were they never made.
After that, I decided next time he asks me to bring them up, I'm going to ask if he wants me to make them too.


Then back in April, I got put on a job with the PHC at the building my husband works at and because it was on such short notice and the fact they called me that day telling me if I can work that day, I had anxiety and I had an off day and didn't do as well. Also the fact I need someone with me showing me the routes I am supposed to do and because I didn't have that, I was stuck and needed to wait for my husband to come and direct me what to do next. It's just the way my mind works and I can't be told what I am going to be doing without being shown it. Then after that, they never called me in again to work there. I was scared I screwed up and I won't be working because they saw how bad of a worker I was so I thought they might not put me to work ever again. But they put me in another building instead which is where I work now. Last week I was in another building because someone went on vacation so I took over and the rest took over part of her tasks.

Some of the work described here is "menial" work (flipping burgers, making hotel beds, etc), and while it can be a source of income and something to occupy one's time, it tends to be exploitative, and disregarding of the employees individual needs. With our strong systemic thinking and usually high IQ, Aspies are suited for academic or higher-education based employment, where an individual's quirks are better recognized and sometimes valued.

I too did menial work when I was younger, I had a Tertiary level qualification but no suitable entry-level position was available in my area. Only now, after my diagnosis many years later, and after further counseling, do I plan to attend University (which I should have done all along) and I plan to move to somewhere where I can find the work I am suited to.

Generally, Aspies are unsuited to the "menial" work we are forced sometimes to take. Diagnosis, disability support and higher education is the way out of this.

My Asperger's actually helps me in my job. I work in tech support and my aspie mind likes the structure it provides along with the opportunities to solve problems. My clients mainly email me or phone me so I don't have to deal with people face to face.
I do have some issues relating to people in the office, but because I'm known as The Oracle, they overlook my oddness because I can solve whatever problems they are having.

Now if I could only stop one co-worker from constantly interrupting me to ask stupid questions, work life would be pretty good.

I dropped out of H.S due to being overwhelmed, (loud, echoing hallways, banging lockers, getting lost, etc) I got my GED later, and even later, went to college. I entered health care, which turned out all wrong for me. My work history is well decorated with conflicts with co-workers, bosses, misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and flat out being lied to and lied about. My health began to deteriorate in the mid nineties, and by 2000 I was too ill to work. The diagnoses was Chronic Fatigue/Fibromyalgia, Depression, and a suspected auto-immune disorder. I personally feel burned out from all the striving to get by in the NT world, the pretending, scrambling to be something I am not. I do believe that an spectrumite can burn out and never recover. I receive disability, and have to live very simply. A lot of my work problems, as others have said here, were not caused by my actual work performance. They were caused by problems with co-workers and/ or bosses.