getting mocked/bullied without realizing

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Does anyone else recall any instances from high school where, in retrospect, you were (in all likelihood) getting mocked/bullied, even though you didn't realize it at the time?

I have a story.

Shockingly, the cool kids let me sit at their table during lunch. One day, the cool kids gathered up all the trash from our table. Then they dared me to go dump our trash on the nerd table. I obliged.

At the time, I thought the cool kids were laughing with me. Looking back, it's more likely they were thinking "Look what we got the socially inept kid to do. Let's laugh at him."

Being on the spectrum, I know you're probably surprised I didn't sit at the nerd table. I can explain. I was such a misfit, even the nerds wanted nothing to do with me.

Then, in retrospect, I'm pretty sure the cool kids only let me sit at their table so they could mock me.

Lots of situations... Especially in work where looking back it was terrible, but at the time I was gullable so people took advantage.
Example was I worked for a few years at a large retail store not realizing I was off their books. Even the manager didn't know, but the guy in charge of the pay knew. And I was working far harder than the rest. They took advantage of me so they could relax. I did three peoples work and had to do many extra unpaid hours to do their work for them! They took big bonuses from what I did and bought fancy cars and things, and I got nothing! Not even the pay I was due, other than very low hours pay where I was forced into doing at least double the hours.
Almost walked out once and the staff stopped me. Found out later if I had walked out, it would have exposed their schemes and they would all have been right in it as the manager would have had to explain to head office and head office would find out I was not on their books. They would give me the dwy off every time the area manager or head office came down for a visit as they were scared they would meet me.

This is awful. You shouldn't have had to experience that, this makes me so mad...

i hadda put up with $#!+ such as peoples talking smack about me not behind my back but in front of my back, right in my presence as though i wasn't even there. i wonder how many of my fellow spectrumites had to put up with similar to this?

Not a lot I could do about it at the time. Actually found similar in a few jobs I was in but was not taken advantage of as bad as that. On the railway I usually people swapped shifts "Claiming" that they needed a day off for this or that when I would find out on the day there was some big event on such as a rugby or football match and as a railway conductor I would beright in the middle of it. Got caught out so many times! I eventually handed in my notice because I was getting so many sleeping issues and fatigue and went through burnout etc... I once cashed up early, got my bags in order, and just wanted to walk away from the situation so I opened the back door of the trainand was working out how to jump safely (Train was doing 75-80mph) by rolling and was going to walk back (40 miles?) but just in time abpassenger hammered on the cab door as some youngsters were playing him up, so I shut the outer door, went back to him and they immediately behaved. So walked through towards the rear of the two coaches to find large group of drunk pensioners dancing on the tables and almost breaking them. (Drunk pensioners were far harder than drunk youngsters as they would answe back etc! But I forgot all about jumping off the train. I know God set up thatsituation to save me as I wasn't thinking logically ... A few weeks later I had handed in my notice. Things sort of happened at once so it wasn't just the one thing why I left the railways. My mind was jumping through time so I messed up with a work collegue etc. I knew it was time to leave. Took me well over a year before I could sleep properly after the railway shifts and that burnout. Could not work when I left so had no income and demands on me elsewhere as we had to feed my Grandmother in the hospital as the NHS didn't have the staff to feed her (She had cataracts so could not see the food. She actually died of starvation due to that. She only went indue to a fall as she had been on NHS lists for knee joint operations for 16 years and by the time she was seen they could not do anythingas her knee joints had worn too far to put new joints in).

I sometimes hear classmates laugh around me and joke and whisper. I usually think it is about their own stuff but sometimes another classmate warns me that they are talking about me or I overhear things being said about me. I tend to overhear things because classmates seem to think I cannot hear them very well. Maybe because my eyes or face don't have a physical tell to them that says I can hear them? So classmates sometimes talk as if I am not several feet away from them.

It's weird that it is happening to me more in university than it did in high school. Maybe because in high school, most people already knew me. Everyone knew everyone so bullying was less tolerated there.

Still weird that these 18-24 year olds are being so strange around me. A couple weeks ago a woman in her 30s with two children made fun of my behaviors to her friend. Ugh.. she is my classmate for the rest of the semester unless she drops. Which she might because he was talking to professor about how much she would need to be gone from class for her special needs child.

I can't know what other people's actions mean, so I often get caught up in the cycle of guessing the meaning. I believe most of them are playing tricks on me.

Setup: I am NT and this happened to me in college right when I was studying sociology but before my concentration was in autism.

My friend and I used to sit on one side of the room. We probably appeared pretty stupid, because we did a lot of giggling and joking around, but we were actually both high performers and were both paying close attention to the lesson and the work.

These two other girls, who had autistic mannerisms, sat across the room from us. After awhile, we noticed that they were noticing US, and seemed irritated by us. Uh OH, we'd whisper to each other. We're gonna get in trouble for being silly. So we'd look up, they'd be looking at us, we'd try to look serious, but it was just a silly scenario to us and it'd make it harder than ever to not giggle.

Until they started actively bullying us. They'd make comments in class that were directed at us. They'd whisper and gesture at us. It hurt our feelings. We didn't know why us having stupid jokes to each other before class would be such a big deal. Why did they hate us?

It was only after having a couple of classes with these girls that we began to suspect what had happened. THEY thought WE were talking about THEM. We were laughing, looking at them, seeing them look at us, and then trying to quiet down. It was all a big misunderstanding.