I am so fed up with discrimination in the workplace and job interviews. It's having a massive negative impact on my mental health and my ability to cope and feel like I can keep going.
My manager believes that she understands, which is really dangerous (much better to think you don't fully understand and be receptive) and is also defensive and makes me feel unreasonable if I ask for anything to be done differently.
I recently had a job interview, because I'm trying to get out of my current workplace that is terrible, and they seemed to be understanding about disability. But then the feedback that I got from my unsuccessful interview read like my autism assessment report - they thought my communication skills weren't good and cited a lack of eye contact, not staying focused on one topic etc. I can communicate effectively; I dispute the idea that eye contact is necessary (if I was blind would they expect me to make eye contact or even think there was any point in me trying to fake it? But they wouldn't dare to suggest that a blind person's communication was impaired because they didn't make eye contact), and in any case a formal interview is not a fair or representative way to be able to tell how I could cope with communication in the workplace because it's nothing like the kind of scenarios my work would ever put me in.
I've asked for all the help that I can get to cope with my employment difficulties, but it's all imperfect and none of it has been designed with autistic people in mind so it's extra-exhausting trying to keep up with the various different organisations, not knowing exactly what they can and can't do, waiting for email responses and hoping that they might be able to help with something I'm struggling with. I find waiting particularly difficult because of the uncertainty of not knowing how they will respond - will they be able to support me to deal with the problem or am I going to be left to struggle with it alone?
