Autism and the Workplace

When I told the job centre I had High Functioning Autism they wanted to know how it affected my ability to work. It’s not an easy question to answer. I don’t know really – it makes every job stressful because you’re dealing with people. (Are there any books on autism and the workplace?). I usually tell people I wouldn’t be comfortable in a client facing job because I have difficulty dealing with people. The thing is, they are expecting straightforward bite size answers, like it should be obvious to me. It isn’t, I’m still learning about my symptoms. For so long I thought that I was NT and my faults were down to me not trying hard enough.

Since my diagnosis I’ve had the lengthy task of sorting through all the things I do, and categorising them into autistic behaviours and non autistic behaviours. That’s really how this blog came about. I don’t think there are any simple answers. I’m not sure a professional would even be able to give one. What it really boils down to is how much stress you think is acceptable. You are very unlikely to find a job that doesn’t involve dealing with other people. You have to decide how much interaction you can handle and stick to those boundaries.

Everything I know about autism comes from what I’ve read and what I’ve observed about myself. People don’t ask someone with borderline personality disorder to be able to talk in detail about their disorder. There really should be information available to employers about people like me. Another difficulty I find is that because my disability is not immediately obvious (people don’t look at me in the job centre and say – oh, she must be autistic) some people can’t see why I wouldn’t be able to do the same jobs they do. It’s a similar attitude to that which some people have towards mental health problems like depression. They think it’s all the mind and you’re not trying hard enough. I told one friend recently I had autism, and she didn’t believe me. I told her I’d been diagnoses but she still questioned what I was telling her. Of course not all people are like this, there are some people who are very sympathetic.

It’s very difficult telling people I have autism. I don’t like doing it. It’s a bit like a gay person deciding to come out of the closet. And it’s not something you only have to do the once, like having a big coming out and then everyone knows. You have to keep telling people. And then even when you’ve told them and they’ve accepted it, they still forget ten minutes later when they say ask you a question, and you give an honest answer, and they get offended. I don’t blame them, I’m still working out the ways autism affects my interaction with people. An NT person has even less knowledge than I do.

At the moment I am unemployed. I had a temping job for about a month but I lost that last week. Before then I was unemployed for about five months. It was all a bit of a disaster really. I told the agency I had High Functioning Autism and that this affected my ability to deal with the public. I had been worried that telling my employer would put them off, but it didn’t. Maybe they hadn’t read my application form fully, or maybe it was just because the job they were offering me was so menial they didn’t think it mattered. Anyway, I assumed that they would tell the company they wanted me to work for that I had HFA, and that I didn’t need to anything more. This turned out to be wrong.

After being there for about a month, the company said they wanted me to take a temp to permanent job in their finance team. I was unsure about taking it. I didn’t have any relevant experience. I’ve worked in accountancy, but this was mostly in private practice and I’d been out of it for about five years. I told them this but they seemed unconcerned. They said they were sure I’d pick it up quickly. The next day I reported to my new team leader and she explained briefly what they wanted me to do. Basically they had all these unallocated cheques and they wanted me to call up their clients and find out which invoices these cheques related to.

You can imagine my horror. They have about forty-five thousand clients and tens of thousands of pounds of unallocated cheques. After about half an hour watching another girl do the job (if this was my training it was totally inadequate) I knew there was no way I could do the job without my stress levels rocketing. I told the girl this and went to find the team leader I’d been working for before, to see if it was okay for me to go back to what I had been doing – which didn’t involve any client contact except occasionally by email.

My new team leader came running after me to ask what I was doing. I explained I wasn’t comfortable with the role, that no one told me what the role would be and that I wanted to go back to what I’d been doing. She looked cross and said she would go and talk to the HR manager. When she came back to me she said that even if I went into transaction processing (the department I’d been in before) I would have to be using the phone and so either I took the job they were offering me or.... I didn’t.
So I didn’t... So they called the agency and said I’d walked out! When I called the agency to explain what had happened they told me they hadn’t told the company I had autism. She then asked me what High Functioning Autism was and I had to try and explain in the two minutes before she decided she stopped me talking. She said she would call the company and explain to them, then get back to me. But she didn’t, so I guessed I couldn’t go back to my temp job, even though they were calling the agency asking for more people. (Sounds like sour grapes to me).

Even if I hadn’t been autistic I think the company’s behaviour was unacceptable. Two people had just left the finance department, and they tried to fill those positions with temp staff, one of whom (me) didn’t have the relevant experience and without offering any proper training.

However I have learnt some valuable lessons. Firstly to make sure that my future employer knows I have HFA. Secondly that they know what this is. Thirdly, that I find out exactly what a job entails before saying I’ll do it. Fourthly, not to rely on other people to do any of this for me; if they don’t know what HFA is, they won’t know how important it is in finding the right role for me.

I think the reason I didn’t talk to the company myself about autism is because it embarrasses me. I don’t like admitting I have this thing wrong with me. I so want to be like other people! I fought very hard against what I knew was true. I hope I’ll be strong enough to do all of what I’ve just said above in my next job. I just wish I had more attitude about me.