How are you treated in the workplace
I'm treated OK, however my co-workers don't know that I have Asperger's. My work environment isn't typical; I work at a home health agency which means that I work as a nurse in someones home. I only interact with my co-workers at the beginning of my shift, at the end, or if I am transporting my patient out of town. Now the only person that knows (if she remembers) is my patients mom. I don't know why I told her I kind of just blurted it out it was during a time when needed to tell someone. Everyone comments to me how laid back I am, but the thing is that that is the only work environment that I can work in with out having a lot of anxiety and stress.
I never received any special treatment, good or bad, related to Asperger's because no one knew I had it, not even me. Looking back now I do realize where all my shortcomings came from and can be attributable to autism, but I didn't know it then.
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In my previous jobs (because I'm more severe than Asperger's and can't 'pass' at all), people would be warm at first and then after all they notice more and more things and I get treated weirdly, like I'm not smart or something. Usually this is the time I 'come out of the closet' and people either choose to take or leave me. It is often at this time that I try to move on to greener pastures.
With my current job, because it's in an eccentric profession as it is I came out to HR at the 9-month mark and people just treat me as simple, but I get to contribute and have built relationships there that protect me from getting 'canned'. I've had friends save my @$$ many a time.
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With my current job, because it's in an eccentric profession as it is I came out to HR at the 9-month mark and people just treat me as simple, but I get to contribute and have built relationships there that protect me from getting 'canned'. I've had friends save my @$$ many a time.
What type of job do you have? I want a change.
I do fairly well. I work in a position where I assist management in running a group of call centers. I mostly communicate by email, but do face-to-face communication as well. I'm transsexual and seem to pass well by voice--judged by how people treat me on the phone--but not by appearance. Then again, I don't pay much attention to my appearance due to my negativistic tendencies and executive functioning issues. I seem to be effective in my communication at work.
As for how people treat me, I don't know anything about me to my face. Maybe they do things behind my back, but I don't know. I don't even bother to suspect it.
They do restrict me to using only the unisex bathroom until I can have sex reassignment surgery. My company's insurance policy does not cover sex reassignment surgery and I don't have nearly enough money to pay for it, and I have lots of medical debt. In my state, I don't think any insurance plan on the exchange will cover sex reassignment surgery. It sucks I have to use the unisex bathroom, because I have to walk a while to get to it. Also, there is often someone for 5 minutes or longer doing God-knows-what in there, so I must stand and wait for the person to get done.
This last paragraph is why I'm not that happy with this company and am looking to jump ship.
I was just about to post a topic about this. I have a work from home job and I do actually need to communicate to coworkers frequently. But I'm not good at it. I mean, I'm pretty good at asking questions, getting info I need and talking about work stuff, but sometimes I get the feeling that they think I'm rude or something, or weird. I mean, I used to talk to my one co-worker more, like when I started. But after awhile I just was getting stressed out a lot, and seeing his IM's all the time stressed me out. So I kinda just chilled out from talking to him as much, and for awhile we haven't talked really much at all. Just sometimes I'll make a little small talk. But I have a problem trusting him and like being more laidback with coworkers at any job. I don't like giving out like personal info, I'm also afraid if I say something weird it'll come back to like hurt me somehow. My coworker comes off kinda like a dick sometimes, or at least he did for awhile. So I didn't trust him enough to like, be friends. But it's a very odd situation anyway, I mean it's work from home, I never see them, so it's very awkward for me to chat with them and plus I'm terrible at small talk. I'm bad at conversations too. This is something I only realized a year or two ago which made me look up this aspergers stuff more.
I have worried that I'm being looked at or judged more closely than the other workers maybe because I'm so private and come off that way, so when I feel that way I work harder, but it's a pain. I shouldn't have to feel that way. Not sure what to do. Because of that I frequently think I should get a job in an actual office so I can see the people and stuff. I also feel like I have to be in a really good mood to talk for some reason.
i think it's half and half at my work place. at least my boss and her boss are TRYING to help me.
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*Christina*
It's like someone's calling out to me. Writing it all down...it's like I'm calling back to them.
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My ASD AQ score is 42
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#DemandCartoonDiversity
In general I don't believe I'm treated well. Both my bosses treat me well and like me. However, I work within an environment where the "corporate culture" (after some new people started) have became very social and outgoing internally (i.e. going to lunch together, bar, etc....). A lot of "smooth talking" non-technical business people are around. They tried at first to become social with me and try to involve me in their "pact". After a year or so they don't even say "hi" to me anymore. Almost like i don't even exist.
I'm treated as an eccentric, and don't deal much with my employees. People know not to knock on my office door, and instead to go to my wife for what to do in the warehouse. Unplanned meetings trend to stress me out and puts me in a unproductive state.
I wish I could just bounce back, but I can't when it happens. So I'm mostly left to myself during the day with my wife as my secretary,warehouse-manager, and overall handler. I'm mostly an idea man, and my wife helps those ideas become real.
I would not change my career for any-other on the planet. Heck I'm in my office now getting ready to close for the day goofing off on a forum..I like my job.
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I shouldn't complain really....but, since basically everything stresses me out to some degree, I still will complain about something.
I was unemployed for over 4 years, but I finally got a job exactly a year ago this week. Somebody we knew worked there, and so she put in a good word for me, and so they were pleased to give me a quick interview. I had a mentor to help me to look for work, and so he had to come to the interview with me, and he had to tell them why he was here, which was because I had Asperger's. I didn't mind the manager and the assistant managers knowing, but I wish I hadn't forgotten to tell the manager not to go around telling the whole workplace that I have Asperger's. But it was too late. The word was spread around among the other workers that I have this precise disorder, and so now they all know my shameful secret. I'm an adult, I don't need somebody else to tell everyone about my special needs, if I wanted other people to know then it's up to me to tell people the way I feel most comfortable with, like telling them that I just have a stress disorder or something, which is the only trait that shows up on the surface and so I know I could get away with saying that to people.
Some of the workers don't know anything about Asperger's, and just assume I'm who the stereotypes they heard of say I am. When I say something like ''I can't find a hoover, do you know where one is?'' some of them act like I'm going to start collapsing to the floor and having a fit or something. That is not what I do when I'm stressed. I just act like any NT would, except I stress about more things than most NTs would, but that doesn't mean everyone has to treat me gingerly. I want to be treated like everyone else (including spoken to), but just maybe have some understanding or support when I tell someone that something is making me anxious. I do almost always open up to people about these sorts of things, and some people have figured that out already. I like understanding, but I do hate being treated like I'm 5.
Some people seem to think I take offense to everything (but they don't mean it in a nasty way). But I don't. I like humour and jokes.
I do wish my deep, dark secret wasn't spread around the whole place. I even got a girl questioning me about my Asperger's. She wasn't being nasty, she was just curious. She asked me what I was like when I stressed about things, and I said ''well, sometimes I may be a bit fiery, but otherwise, just like you when you're stressed, except I stress about more things''. She then asked me what I was like at night. I just said, ''like you'', meaning I don't wet the bed or sleep-walk or scream manically in my sleep or do any other unusual things in bed. I just hate people assuming that just because I've got Asperger's it means I'm some kind of incontinent freak who puts on an act when at work. Yes I put on a bit of an act to an extent, but not entirely. I mean, when I get home I don't suddenly take all of my clothes off and dance around the house naked for the rest of the day, then pull on an adult diaper and get into bed, and have seizures in my sleep, then wake up in the morning and need to be assisted with dressing. Um, no.
If everyone was just told I have a stress or anxiety disorder, I think people would take me more as they find me, and just look upon me as a normal person with some emotional issues what don't make me seem ''mad'' to them. I think that people who don't know what Asperger's is just assume that you're ret*d or something, even when it's clear that you're really just like everybody else except with a few social issues, some sensory issues, and some stress issues.
It then makes me ashamed of showing myself.
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Female
When dealing with other coworkers (and formerly classmates) throughout my life I feel like I've been on an emotional roller coaster, depending on where I've been working at.
Although I can carry a conversation, I sometimes appear weird to people. I've had some jobs in which I've been treated like a family member among my coworkers. I've also had jobs in which I've started out being treated well, and then later on have had coworkers snap at me, or have excluded me, or I've heard them laugh at me or talk about me behind my back.
Although, I've rarely revealed to anyone in the workplace about my AS diagnosis, I decided to reveal that information upon leaving my last job. My coworker who I told it to said she could guess it, and said that if I had revealed that to the rest of my coworkers they'd understand me more. Though, I'm usually reluctant to reveal that information to coworkers because I fear either getting judged negatively or getting more help than I need from them.