Concerned About an Aspie at Work, How They're Treating Him

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This is a long one. I'll break it up. I don't expect too many to read it all, but I want to share this story. It's partly an Aspie-NT thing, partly a male-female thing, possibly even an age thing. I'd love to hear people's take on it.

Too Long, Not Gonna Read: I went from being the bad guy, to this other Aspie being the bad guy, all in the course of a week. And I'm worried about him.

I took a second job working nights (only seasonal) in late November. It's at a department store. What they have me doing is shipping and receiving all night. Anyway, the girl who trained me was pretty thorough, and I got the hang of it. They only have overnight for the holiday season, this girl agreed to work nights, but she's normally a daytime worker/trainer.

In the mornings, they have a team of guys who come in to unload the delivery truck. One kid from the truck team expressed interest in working overnight, so they brought him over to nights. The trainer girl seemed excited about bringing him over, though she mentioned he has some sort of "mental condition." However, the girl was off for his first two nights he worked. He was "trained" one night by the manager guy who stayed that night. The next night, he was effectively handed off to me.

He seemed like a nice kid. Only 20 years old. Told me honestly he was too physically weak to work on the truck. In observing him, I got bold and asked him flat-out if he was Autistic/Asperger's. He said, yes, he was an Aspie. I told him I may be one, too, but they didn't diagnose those things when I was a kid.

Anyway, I liked him, but I realized he wasn't very good at completing tasks before starting another one. At one point, he found an expired coupon on the ground when we were putting away customers' orders in a storage room. He wanted to walk off and try to find a garbage can. I told him I'd put it in my pocket, and throw it away later. Another time we were getting some items, and he rushed off to "bring back the carts." These being the supply carts we'd emptied, but we hadn't finished putting the supplies away. He wanted to return these empty carts to their designated space before completing the task. We hadn't yet finished the task at hand, but off he went. And he didn't even bring back BOTH carts, just one, saying he'd forgotten there were two.

Anyway, I like the kid, but it's obvious he needs a little more direction. The girl came back after her two days off. When I asked if she was going to train him as thoroughly as she trained me, she said, "He was trained by the manager." Odd, no one can be trained for this in just ONE night. She was training me for a whole week when I first started. She had other tasks to do, so once again, it was him and me together.

Then toward the end of the shift, we were "building boxes." Taking flat cardboard boxes, masking tape, sending out items. (Stores are like warehouses now. If someone in Indiana orders a pair of socks online, and a store in New Jersey has the item, it's shipped from the store, instead of from a warehouse. The modern world, I guess.)

Anyway, the trainer girl had told me during my training that it's a good idea to double or triple tape the bottom of a box. When I saw the kid making a box for a bunch of heavy porcelain plates, and only using one layer of masking tape, I suggested he do the same. (Seeing as he was never properly trained, not his fault, he didn't know.) Now, the trainer girl who had been absent all night came back to where we were working, and she shot me a hostile glance when I said that to him. Shortly thereafter, he took a box, realized it was too small for the order he was shipping, and went to get a larger one, leaving the smaller box on the ground beside me. I told him politely, "Make sure you put the first box back if you're not gonna use it." And I did this to give him some direction, knowing how easily he gets distracted. The girl heard this and immediately said, "No, it's okay, you can leave the box there!"

The next night when I came in, the girl took me aside and gave me a lecture. The main message: "I'm the boss, not you, how dare you step on my toes! I was back there when you were building boxes. It was up to me to tell him what to do!" I replied I'm not one of these people trying to be boss-man, I'm trying to help a fellow co-worker. The kid was never properly trained. She insisted he was trained, even though the manager who trained him doesn't specialize in shipping-and-receive, and is leaving the company after New Year's for a better job (that manager has effectively checked-out).

Over the next few nights, I worked well with the kid, but I could feel the hostility from the manager girl. She's only 27 by the way. She would say things to me like, "We have no power over keeping seasonal employees past the holidays, it's all up to corporate." The manager guy told me it's the opposite, corporate tells the store how many of the seasonal hirees they can keep after the holidays, it's up to the store to select. She would say to the kid, "You're doing a fantastic job, I'm going to suggest we keep you after the holidays!" So, she was blatantly lying to me...Not that I really want to work this second job permanently, I just value honesty and hate games...

Now, here's where things changed. One night, the three of us were working together, and the day workers had left a mess. They'd gathered a bunch of items that needed to be shipped out, but there was no rhyme or reason to it. Stuff was spewn about everywhere. It was a mess, and the kid was getting noticeably tilted out. So, at some point half-way through the night, the trainer girl was out on the floor gathering items to be shipped out. The kid and I were in the back sifting through the mess the day crew left and shipping it out. Apparently, he couldn't find an item (it turned out it was back there, but he didn't look hard enough). The computer system won't let you skip the order. Once started, all items for the order must be located. He had 4/5 but couldn't do anything until he found the fifth. So, he went out on the sales floor and found the trainer girl, looking for her help.

He said something to her like, "I'm so frustrated, I could bash someone's brains in!" This scared the girl. He then proceeded to follow her around. I was oblivious to all of this that night, she told me her version of the story the following night (he wasn't working the next night when she told me this). She said she walked away from him to send the message that he should go back to work, but he kept following her. She was making plans to find an exit.

I'm not sure how things ended between them. It was mid-shift when this incident happened, I was in the store, and I didn't pick-up on any weirdness between the two of them for the rest of the night (then again, I suspect I'm an Aspie and may not be able to pick up on those things so readily). Regardless, the girl told me that morning, after the kid and I left, she stuck around and spoke with several of the morning ladies. One lady said the kid was probably just venting and it was no big deal. Another lady who also works as a teacher's aid with special need students disagreed and told the trainer girl to take the threat seriously. The girl herself said the company has a "zero tolerance" policy towards threatening language, that she didn't know what sort of mental problems he had, and obviously, that this kid isn't meant for shipping-and-receiving, because messes like those happen often. She then informed the manager.

When she told me her story, I didn't say much. I simply said, "I had no idea. But if you felt threatened, perhaps you should have come to the back room where I was working, then there'd be three of us."

Here's my synopsis:

*I knew the kid wasn't cut out for shipping-and-receiving post-holidays, simply from working with him, but I got flack from the trainer girl for trying to help him improve, accused of playing boss-man which wasn't my intent (NTs and hierarchy).

*The kid is weak, frail, short, I don't think he was a threat to her. Even if he could overpower her, I don't think that was ever his intent. I feel, in his mind, he was trying to make a connection with her, sharing his frustration about the daytime workers' incompetence.

*I think he was on the verge of an Autistic meltdown, but not a violent one. He seemed to be shutting down to me.

*When the trainer girl told me "she walked away from him" and he should have known what that meant, I thought, "I might not have picked up on the meaning either. You may have come across as multi-tasking, and perhaps he thought you expected him to walk with you, walk-and-talk as you completed your gathering." (I didn't actually say this to her.) She is the one in charge, as she made clear, yet she didn't give him any direction.

**Plus, since she was so adamant to me that she's the one in charge, as the self-aggrandized boss, she should have told him directly, "Go back to shipping and receiving, keep looking for the missing item, if you can't find it, I'll be back there in a little bit."

*I understand that oftentimes women are more timid around men they're unsure of, safety and all. The trainer girl told me once she hid a female customer in a changing room when the woman's stalker showed up. The man asked the trainer girl if she'd seen the woman he was stalking; trainer girl sent him to another part of the store, while the woman was right there, like something out of a movie.

*But it also seems like being the outsider for once and watching a (presumed) NT completely misunderstand a (diagnosed) Aspie, and assume the worst, and demonize him.

*Plus, the trainer girl "got me wrong" as well, so I'm not impressed by her judgement or leadership skills.

This was only a few days ago. Not sure what his fate is or if he even knows. I'm positive he's oblivious to how he made her feel and will feel blindsided if he's reprimanded for this. But I think she's part of the communication-breakdown, yet it'll all be thrust upon him. He was off for a few days and I think they have him back on the truck in the mornings.

END

Well, I don't see how that qualifies as a threat especially with the physical description you give of this co-worker.