I've chosen not to work for the last 3 years. Ostensibly I've been following other avenues that could have made me validly self-employed if I'd truly applied myself. I'm just beginning to accept that the problem I have with 90% of the people I've had to work with is most likely a problem with me. I've been trying to dig deeper into the help autistic adults can get in the UK, and find myself looking at a 'needs assessment' from my local council, which focuses on people who can't turn taps or get out of a chair. Did I take a wrong turn?
I've put off getting a diagnosis because I'm not sure how it helps me to be officially autistic. I've read lots about ASD (initially because of my son) and have figured out that we're all different and we all relate to the world and all its situations differently. What I haven't figured out is how to get more neurotypical people to understand this, because that's what would help me and anyone who identifies as neurodivergent.
Background:
I have a tendency to stick with a job to the bitter end, so I've been fired from 3 jobs (out of 6 permanent roles). Each time I got fired was because I called out the boss - twice for dishonesty and the third time for unbelievable stupidity. My last job (#6), I quit within a year because I felt it heading south. It was a toxic workplace (another guy was negotiating his exit when I resigned and we agreed on this), where lying to the company owners was a daily occurrence. I had everything beautifully figured out in that job in terms of the day-to-day - even the routine lies were manageable - I'm an honest person, but the lies were temporary and in the right direction (I was an accountant). The real killer for me was that they wouldn't listen to ideas - I probably did a poor job of communicating them non-critically - and it drove me mad at the inefficiency and error they perpetuated.
Although my prior job lasted 13 years and only ended in redundancy, I often found myself on the brink of some kind of meltdown because of similar attitudes from colleagues. I survived because I was borderline indispensable, because of a deputy who understood and sympathised, and because for part of those 13 years I had a boss who recognised my value and did a half-decent job of protecting and mentoring me. I realised in this role that a lot of my pain came from caring about things to which others seemed indifferent (your 'jobsworth' type), so I tried not caring. Couldn't do it.
So my fear comes from a reasonable (I think) expectation that any job will have these human complications that make my life miserable. I'm tired of being labelled as rude or arrogant (I don't mind blunt, I'll take that one) when I'm only trying to help.
One other little thing I should mention is that I've got cancer, which I say not for sympathy but for the added dimension in a job interview of saying, "Oh and as well as being autistic, I've got cancer."
