working alongside people in group work

You are so right there. Every time something like that arises, it always feels like more often than not everybody sorts themselves out and you're just standing in the middle all alone. Can't I just partner with myself?

Also, the big fear-inducer for me.  In a training session or something similar...

'I'd now like you to choose a partner...'

That's completely wrong.  You never use a finger to test temperature.  You use a food probe or a thermometer.  Likewise, you never blow on food to cool it down. 

You're right.  It's not only disgusting, it's unhygienic - a health risk, especially for people who most probably have lower immunity to infections.  I've witnessed similar, though.  People not washing their hands before handling food.  People picking their noses whilst preparing food!  I kid you not.

The problem is, if this kind of laxity is allowed to go unchallenged, then it becomes accepted practiced.  Institutionalised, in other words.

I'm a 2 or a 3 - depending on the complexity of the model. 

I usually go through the instructions thoroughly first, to get an overview and to think about where complications are likely to occur.  Sometimes, this enables me to plan for those complications by doing something in the early stages that can ease the complications.  Then I do the thing, step by step.

It's probably why I prefer to work on projects alone - although I welcome the creative or technical input of someone who's on my wavelength and maybe has more experience.

One of the most complicated folds in Origami is the 3-dimensional Jackstone.  It takes over an hour of patient work to complete.  There's one point where you are required to completely open out the model until it's a flat piece of paper again, then make some additional folds, then kind of push it all together until it starts to fall into shape.  I fell down at this stage several times.  But that enabled me to see where I could make it easier by putting in some of those additional folds earlier on.

As Edison said: 'I've not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that didn't work.'

I've also learned to be dogged and have faith in myself.  If I'm good at something - I know it's good.  If someone else disagrees with me, I'll take their point.  But oftentimes, I'll just think they haven't grasped the full extent of what I'm trying to do.  That may sound like arrogance - but not everyone shares the same vision.  I once wrote a short story that won a prize in a competition - but one of the judges took issue with one of the characters, saying that the character served no real narrative function... not even a symbolic one.  That character was one of the most important characters in the story!  She simply missed the point.  Even 'experts' don't know everything, and can be wrong.

Witness the autism 'experts' at my place of work, who have had to learn from my example how a high-functioning autistic person behaves, responds and processes information.

I was in a very similar situation working in groups in a support work environment.

What I learnt as a beginner was that to be part of the group I had to do as the group does without questioning the group norms or their way of doing things.

Unfortunately I didn't fit in because I took certain things too literally, as Autistics do.

When I read written instructions stating that certain things must be done I took it seriously.  Other group members thought I was strange or nuts.  The group selectively followed some written policies and totally ignored others.  I couldn't work out which policies and procedures to follow and which to ignore.

I ended up doing questionable things because that was the way everyone else was doing it and I didn't have a better way.

An example is cooling hot drinks.  Some of our clients had learning disabilities and when giving them hot tea or coffee, they would drink the whole cup down without hesitation.  So we had to cool the drink otherwise they would scould themselves or choke.

The accepted way of cooling was, adding cold tap water and then sticking a finger into the drink to check if it was cool enough to drink.  If not, more cold tap water and finger check again. My reaction was, DISGUSTING, and people have to drink coffee after someone had stuck their finger in it.  And cold tap water!!!

Which is what I'm doing.  In some ways, the bullying was just the extra shove I needed.  And it gave me the perfect excuse not to be there at all.

The problem is our overblown sense of social justice. We just can't function in a place where rules are not enforced and followed equally.

We slowly log all the mounting inadequacies until our brains cannot make sense of what these NTs judge to be right or wrong.

Then it's time to change job before the inevitable melt-down occurs.

I mentioned before about being the only staff member who hasn't signed the facility's general Infection Control Risk Assessment.  I refuse to, because it gives both an inadequate and - most seriously - a false account of conditions at the place.  It says that 'nothing needs to be done to improve conditions'.  Oh, really?  The cleaning isn't done properly.  The kitchen is often in a disgusting state: people never cover and date food when it goes in the fridge, never clean out the microwave, rarely check and record food temperatures.  The kitchen hand-wash basin only has a cold water tap!  We're always running out of PPE, and some staff never use it anyway.  Soiled laundry is often left lying around.  The toilets are often left dirty for lack of time to clean them.  Service users aren't encouraged to do hand-washing.  The whole place is a disaster waiting to happen.

But everyone else has signed the Risk Assessment.  Some without even taking the trouble to read it!

Yes Tom - This is exactly why I hate teams.

I don't like 'teamwork' for that very reason.  It's not that I always feel that I have a better way of doing things than anyone else.  But I just prefer to work alone.  I'm also not very good at pointing out where others' thinking or planning might not be such a good idea, or could be improved upon.  In my current job, we have to work together as a team for handover of information, coordinating activities, managing cleaning and cooking duties, etc.  It invariably, though, leads to some people either being sloppy or not doing the job properly at all.  We have team meetings where this kind of thing can be brought up.  I've made suggestions in the past at these meetings: how we could do the recycling better, how we should all be doing the paperwork properly, how we should be taking our rubbish out of the vehicles when we've used them, how we need to order more PPE.  These all make the service more efficient and professional-seeming.  Also, some of the things- like paperwork and cleaning - are mandatory requirements.  All I seem to get, though, is resentment from other members of the team.

Exactly - but 1&2 and 3&4 should never work together - it will end in tears.

It depends on what the project is.  For small and not desperately important/critical projects 1 & 2.  But I may also do some variant of 1 & 2 on a prototype to learn what's going with something before deciding the best way to do the thing "properly".

But for anything "production quality" a mix of 3 & 4, depending on exactly what the project is and how complex and interrelated the various components are.  If the project looks complex this is often prefaced by a "lash up using 1 & 2" to get a feel for what's required.

There are 4 types of project workers - I'll illustrate with the exapmple of building a little Lego model:

Type 1 - bash, bash straight in without direction but may accidentally build the model.

Type 2 - flicks through the instructions and quickly & correctly builds the model.

Type 3 - meticulously builds the model step by step

Type 4 - takes the instructions away for a few days and will only touch the parts when they fully understand what they need to do.

For quick projects, 1 & 2 will get great results - the enthusiasm of 1 and the control of 2 make a great team.

For long, slow projects, 3 & 4 work well together, steady but slow.

1&2 cannot work with 3&4 - the very best you could hope for is they don't kill each other.

Which one do you think you are?

My main examples come from university.

1) I didn't know the people that well, which wasn't a good starting point. I tried to pretend that everything was fine but anxiety chose my path for me because I basically couldn't cope with the group dynamic. I avoided the group and avoided doing the work out of severe anxiety and stress so that was clearly not going to work out well. Of course I didn't know of my condition back then. The rest of the group saw me as a slacker I guess and told the lecturer who then pulled me in for a private conversation where I ended up dropping out of the group project and instead I just got to work on getting the credits for the rest of the modules I was taking for the rest of the year so that I could always carry them over to a different course if I wanted.

2) Just for reference, I dropped out of my first university course, took time out to reconsider things and then went to a different university to do a different course. I formed a group with three friends from the course, which was a helpful start in a way. I was seen as a good and reliable worker in the group, which was good. Again, this was before I had a diagnosis for my condition. I was a key part of the group in helping to lead it and ensure the work was assigned, people knew what they were doing and that the work was to get done. Unfortunately, there were 2 issues. The first being that one member didn't want to admit they didn't know what they were doing until we were getting much nearer the deadline so I stepped in to start offering some assistance on books to read, websites to look at, ideas for what to write, but it kind of ended up with myself and the other key member of the group finishing off his work as we didn't want his poor work to lower the group grade. Secondly, another member of our group was found to have plagiarised his work by the other key member of the group, who found everything through google. We scrapped his plagiarised work and then the rest of us had to do his work because his work commitments prevented him from sorting out his group assignment work, which took a lot of work and all nighters. So, we had stayed up all night the day before the work was due to be handed in, so the two I was with at the time agreed that as I was the most reliable one in the group I would make sure I attended to hand the work in. I did attend the lecture and handed the work in.

So, I feel the differences in these examples really came down to who I was working with, how confident I felt with the work that was assigned, what I needed to be doing, so I suppose the second project felt more structured, which made me feel a bit more comfortable and more at ease with what needed to be done as well as knowing the people I was working with, which also helped to make me feel a bit more at ease.

well...I've had lots of problems with group work at university, but it's the other way around. I always try to put the group ahead of myself. I've done work while being away. Once someone even messaged me saying that there was something urgent (and I was at the airport going for an interview!), but I still took out my laptop and finished the extra work at the airport (even though I has done my part...I was asked to do an extra part because someone dropped out of the course last minute). I thought it was quite unfair being given such short notice and while I was away. But the thing is, the grades affect everybody, so I made a sacrifice. How come you can't do some of the work during Christmas period? Give away some leisure time for the team? It sounds like your group member is willing to give up his holiday, as he has gone ahead and done his own edit as a backup (he is clearly sacrificing his holiday to do group work). Sorry to be critical, but I've had lots of bad experiences the other way around having to wait for others. I guess it doesn't matter if you are in a group with another person with autism or not, because I tend to a perfectionist when it comes to school projects, and don't like delays. I think what Windscale has said makes a lot of sense, trying to work with the 'right' people for you, someone who has the same views about projects and holidays as you. Another way to sort this out may be to ask your teacher/professor if you can do the project as an individual assignment instead of as a group. I have successfully requested that from a few professors before, and it turned out great. It does mean that I will have to do extra work (I have to do the whole project myself, whereas people in groups only have to do a fraction), but it also means that I get to stick with my own timeline, and I often get better grades than those in a group.

What is is that the insurance dog says?  "OOOOOOoooohhhhhhh yyyyyyyyeeeeeeeessssss!"   It may differ for different people but these are some areas here I've had problems:

* If I've decided I'm going to do something I tend to be fairly perfectionist about it.  That doesn't play well with most NTs who seem to abhor such things and can't be bothered.

* I often find myself suffering from "imposter syndrome" where I feel what I've done may not be good enough.  The previous item often tends to make this somewhat fallacious but it doesn't make the feeling of thinking I'm not good enough go away,

* I have ways of doing things that I know work for me, and if I do things in that way I can usually get good results (assuming it's something I'm interested in).  A lot (most?) other people however seem not to like to work the way I do  (see item 1), and prefer to work another way.  I won't cast aspersions about right or wrong, but often the way they want to work doesn't work for me.

Often I find myself thinking it'd be quicker and better to throw the other people in a skip and just everything myself.  That doesn't tend to be an overly scaleable solution however.

I would say however that it's very much dependent on the people.  My preferred method of working is collaborative with the right people, because I think the checks and balances and different ways of looking at things can produce a better outcome.  I've worked in several groups over the years where that worked out, although it has been fairly rare.