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When you get 1 or 2 people that treat you differently at work?

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Right, it's not in a rude way or anything, it's good their treating me like that and it isn't if that makes sense, I'm one of the lucky ones I feel that I even have a job with aspergers and OCD linked together with me. I am a apprentice their and dealing with administration and I'm 22, it's just that I know someone who also started roughly the same time as me, she isn't a apprentice though, but it's just one or 2 people in the workplace treat me differently like being in a really soft pitch tone of voice to me, it's like they treat me as if I am not my age like I'm years younger! I do appreciate the way they support my disability and all that understanding that I can't understand what people mean and what they are saying easily but I don't want to be told like today to calm down, don't panick, don't run etc, I find that quite annoying because I wasn't panicking or anything, I just like to get the job done and I am always full of motivation when I'm doing my job cos I love it so much. I don't see that lady speaking to the other girl who's a simular age group as me, she's 23 but I notice the tone of speech is different like she gets treated as a adult. I know they are doing this to reassure me and keep my anxiety down, but it's really hard for me not to be quite annoyed with it sometimes.

Ever since I found out I have aspergers, I do understand that the way I understand things isn't as good as normal people, and I just find it hard to understand mostly everything else that I don't know about, like when my colleuges talk about events like bike rides, my brain just gets lost cos I don't know what to say back as I couldn't take in all the information. It's just difficult for me to fit in and understand things if they are not explained as clearly and slowly as possible.

Parents

  • I think people fill silences with anything they can find to say. Sometimes it will be pet phrases, particularly ones copied off television personalities or characters in films ("don't panic" is Clive Dunn's line in Dad's Army for example).

    I think you've got to allow for a certain amount of extraneous patter in the workplace. People say things for want of anything else to say, don't mean much by it, and forget they've said it.

    It's tough if you are on the spectrum hearing these "sound bites", because you are looking for cues that you might be expected to respond to, and not wanting to miss an instruction or mess up. It is hard to not analyse this displacement activity.

    At the same time if you assume it is all just patter, how do you spot the one sensible bit?

    With a situation where a colleague is disabled (or in a lot of other situations when a colleague is distressed, maybe family problems, bereavement, split up with the girlfriend) work colleagues don't know what to say constructively. So they may alter their tone in an attempt at compassion (or this thingy called "empathy" we're supposed to lack).

    I think up to a point you've got to tolerate this as just everyday behaviour. The point you don't want crossed is when it becomes disrespect or harassment. Inappropriately changed tone, exaggerated to imply your disability entitles them to treat you differently, that is bad and needs addressing.

    But some low key changes have to be put down to the fact that neurotypicals seem to need to fill the gaps.

    I'm reminded here of a thread in which someone new to the community forum assumed I was just a vulnerable kid (who'd managed to get past the age threshold for registering on here) who referred to me as "my lovely". I took offence, but there were immediate defenders from parents that this was just normal banter, like "chuck" or "duck" (South Yorks I think), so I suppose i've got to stop and think - yes I've seen this sort of thing before.

    "Don't run" by the way is good advice in any shop floor environment. There are just so many things you could collide with. I used to work in an aircraft hangar. Fighter jets wing tips are near invisible and razor sharp. I've seen someone who did run into one, and plastic surgery hadn't made a lot of difference to the result.

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  • I think people fill silences with anything they can find to say. Sometimes it will be pet phrases, particularly ones copied off television personalities or characters in films ("don't panic" is Clive Dunn's line in Dad's Army for example).

    I think you've got to allow for a certain amount of extraneous patter in the workplace. People say things for want of anything else to say, don't mean much by it, and forget they've said it.

    It's tough if you are on the spectrum hearing these "sound bites", because you are looking for cues that you might be expected to respond to, and not wanting to miss an instruction or mess up. It is hard to not analyse this displacement activity.

    At the same time if you assume it is all just patter, how do you spot the one sensible bit?

    With a situation where a colleague is disabled (or in a lot of other situations when a colleague is distressed, maybe family problems, bereavement, split up with the girlfriend) work colleagues don't know what to say constructively. So they may alter their tone in an attempt at compassion (or this thingy called "empathy" we're supposed to lack).

    I think up to a point you've got to tolerate this as just everyday behaviour. The point you don't want crossed is when it becomes disrespect or harassment. Inappropriately changed tone, exaggerated to imply your disability entitles them to treat you differently, that is bad and needs addressing.

    But some low key changes have to be put down to the fact that neurotypicals seem to need to fill the gaps.

    I'm reminded here of a thread in which someone new to the community forum assumed I was just a vulnerable kid (who'd managed to get past the age threshold for registering on here) who referred to me as "my lovely". I took offence, but there were immediate defenders from parents that this was just normal banter, like "chuck" or "duck" (South Yorks I think), so I suppose i've got to stop and think - yes I've seen this sort of thing before.

    "Don't run" by the way is good advice in any shop floor environment. There are just so many things you could collide with. I used to work in an aircraft hangar. Fighter jets wing tips are near invisible and razor sharp. I've seen someone who did run into one, and plastic surgery hadn't made a lot of difference to the result.

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