Published on 12, July, 2020
I have recently been told by my employer that I sometimes respond sharply to my colleague, this is normally when I'm trying to do other tasks. I dont mean to be rude is this my Aspergers or am I rude I am trying to alter my behaviour but find it difficult.
If someone asks me a question I answer it as quickly and concisely as I can. That just seems like good manners to me. It drives people nuts for some reason. Also if I don't know the answer to a question I'll say "I don't know". Would people really prefer me to talk rubbish for a while rather than saying " I don't know "? I try very hard to fit into the neurotypical world but I draw the line at wasting my own time talking a load of *** (he said abruptly).
Ah, I've noticed that sometimes there seems to be another game afoot:
somtimes people might want you to own an issue, including taking all the blame if things go wrong.
The game seems to run like this:
They ask you about something.
You talk **** like so many NTs do
They are pleased that you are now on the hook, having declared that whatever it is shall be possible /delivered on time etc.
Later, they can say it's all your fault if things go badly.
But by telling the truth rather than telling lies, they can't as easily make you responsible for something that is full of risk. Typically it means that they themselves are stuck with carrying the risk, (maybe because they already, stupidly, declared the thing to be possible to someone else?). Until they can find some other gullible sucker to pin the issue on, it is them in the cross-hairs, not you.
I'm actually not bad at talking a load of ***. I've noticed other people doing it, so assume it's acceptable to speculate, mouth off, and so on merely to fill one's niche in the conversation.
I probably do find it hard to juggle two claims on my attention at once, so yes, I may be sharp, but rarely get complaints.
Stevie, do you have examples of things you have said that people thought were rude? Sometimes it's not what you say, but the way you say it, or the context.
It's the 'reciprocal social interaction' that they look for in tests, that sounds so simple and obvious that I can miss it.
In my case, I've noticed I can kill a conversation with people I don't know well. I may change the subject to something I'm interested in, and that's usually accepted. But sometimes I throw something directly relevant into a conversation, and anecdote or obscure but illuminating bit of information, and there's a silence, not because of what I've said, but because I didn't leave 'conversational openings'. This is a type of 'bluntness' that might cause minor offence or people putting one down as a bighead. I should probably have an open-ended question in mind when talking to avoid that awkwardness. (An objection to that is if it's something you're really interested in, you've probably already investigated the answer. That cannot be true all the time though, particularly about personal stuff, unless you're a stalker.)