Employment

I'm a data and finance bod now but used to be a trainer. Heading toward retirement but sense I'll have to put my trainer's hat back on before I do.

Medical and MH bods have zero understanding of autism, and someone has to wise them up. Sigh! Just when I thought I'd retreat to my garden until I peg it.

Robert124 said:

I've been repeatedly fired and told at both dismissal hearings and job interviews that I'm unemployable.

I am sorry that this happened to you.

I've been repeatedly fired and told at both dismissal hearings and job interviews that I'm unemployable.

The job centre, however insists that I should be in full time employment.

We were making the rockets out of aluminium foil, they weren't dangerous to any great extent. They were just strong enough to direct the thrust out of the nozzle at the base, rather than through the sides. More dangerous was putting pellets of dry ice into sealed microfuge tubes, they did explode quite energetically.

The majority of the DNA of most living organisms (not viruses) is 'non-coding' which means that it is not directly used for producing proteins. Some of the rest is used for important things like control of DNA expression (when and where genes are expressed) and other useful functions like telomeric DNA. The rest is apparently non-functional, like the remains of viral DNA and suchlike. The DNA I was looking for was that coding for known drug targets - looking at the molecular basis of drug resistance - or for potential drug targets. The latter being DNA coding for proteins vital to the growth of the pathogen, but not found in humans, or being sufficiently different in humans that knocking out the pathogen protein (enzyme) would not lead to adverse effects on any human who was infected.

  Cellulose nitrate or trinitrocellulose (gun cotton) is classified as a low explosive yet has 10 times the explosive power of its predecessor black powder. You guys received good advise from the CID. Even well trained operatives handling all sorts of high and low explosives every day a degree of careless apathy sets in. I was on a tempory assignment at a base in North Africa (now gone) where we were ordered to cull loose 20mm projectiles used in the gattling guns of the A-10  aka 'the Warthog', 'the flying gun' and 'the Tankbuster', and extensively used in the Desert Storm conflict. While culling these rounds, out of boredom we decided to remove those loose projectiles from their shell casings. We then crimped the open end of the casing and set light to it. The shell casings took off like a balloon releasing its pressure. The bomb dump was located 5 miles inland well away from authority in the desert, but in hindsight still a dumb thing to do.

My understanding is %90 of DNA is considered junk but more probing is starting to identify usefulness in the "junk". What sort of usefullness did you find.

Wow.. that’s more than a best achievement, that’s great!

I’m retired now but had two really successful careers where I used some particular skills I have, numbers and words. I’m not sure either could be categorised as a special interest but I do feel it was a case of playing to my auti strengths - and avoiding my auti weaknesses. I learnt for example that I was rubbish at manage team I just can’t read people, can’t handle conflict and never got why they all lied to me. Anyway learn this I did and subsequently concentrating on the two special skills I mentioned which required creativity and attention to detail I really thrived. My best achievement was seven years as an external fundraiser (bid writer) for a large local authority where I raised £11M for social inclusion projects. 

I do Youtube videos as well. What sort of videos do you like to do? I do videos on TV/films, music and history.

I do feel that there are appropriate job-specifications for autists, I do believe these jobs are out there, but I also believe that much like how employers have attempted to contort me into the standard, so too is it a matter of time before an autism-friendly role is contorted into a standardised shape.

That is to say that it has been a while since I have been suitable for a role, a role has been suitable for me, and such a role has come under my radar..

10 hours is the norm now.

when i started this job i have they forced me to do 16 hours a day, and one day one of the supervisors got in my face and shouted at me demanding i stay another hour for a 17th hour to finish things up... and yeah thats likely illegal.

but 10 hours is standard now, especially after people stupidly called for a 4 day working week.... the calls for a 4 day working week just made it so employers normalised 10 hour working days, but yet didnt cut the days to 4 kept them at 5 days... so now the norm for work is 10 hour days all thanks to people who thought it was smart to call for a 4 day working week.

Only if you agree to it.

There again in some lines / types of work if you don’t agree to it you don’t have / get any work.

Yes, in my last job (if you don’t count working for the Royal Mail for three Xmases) I only worked three days a week which suited me fine - 2 days on, 5 days off instead of the more normal other way round might be even better.

I volunteer half a day a week in a cafe and it’s great but I can take a break e.g. if it gets too noisy or not volunteer at all e.g. if it gets too hot like this week. It depends what you are sensitive to.

As a student living in a student house, we discovered that the nitrocellulose we used  in the lab. (transfer DNA/RNA bands from gels onto nitrocellulose filters, then probe with radioactive labelled DNA to find bands that were of interest) was the explosive, 'gun cotton'. We then started making home-made rockets propelled by nitrocellulose. That was until the CID called and advised us to stop.

Very well done. For what little value it has coming from a humble stump grinder, I am impressed. You have found your niche. That in itself is a great achievement. I have an admiration for anyone who has had the determination to qualify themselves at an acadenic level which had escaped me during my adolescense. 

Part of my own multi skill set is with explosives learned in the military.  This too is difficult to apply in everyday life although I did consider joining a mining company.  Demolition companies are usually run by tightly knit families. I backed way from those ideas as operations of that kind by their nature require working closely as a team looking after each others back. So that skill wasn't very usefull or transferrable. As a footnote, I found military life very difficult worthy of a lot of masking and extremely tiring.

Away from a lab. skills in things like heterologous protein expression and mass spectrometry are difficult to apply to everyday life. However, I have skills in researching and analysing written material and in writing concise and logical reports, so I edit subjects that interest me on Wikipedia. I have created around 38 new articles on Wikipedia and never had one rejected.

Omg over 10 hrs!

Is that even legal? I used to feel exhausted after doing a day of school. Can't even begin to imagine what 10+ hrs is like...

I do YT videos which is starting to take off. It's good for me, no social contact and I can do it in my own time from home.

middle ground would be part time work i guess.

oh i think id love less hours.... yesterday i went in work late due to a gp appointment so i only did around 6 hours yesterday and 6 hours felt about right.... i feel 6 hours work is enough for a day and the working day should for me be 6 hours for that correct mental ballance.

ofcourse no job is ever 6 hours and everyone wants you to do over 10 per day now. 

I was constantly employed in many many jobs for varying lengths of time (up to around 5 years) until I was 34 years old in 2007. From 2008 onwards I've been unemployed and made my way through the unemployment system '(regime' as I've heard internal DWP staff even describe it), mental health services and now exploring Autism (including services) since I was diagnosed in November 2021. I hope to find some kind of middle ground with all of it in time in my future...

Tree stump grinding for me was a rather boring, repetitive, and mind numbing activity but it was offset by the beautiful gardens I've worked in and at some very interesting locations. Further, each job presented me with an access challange of how to manoeuvre a one tonne four wheeled machine in back gardens to its intended target. I am able to utilize my transferable skills in my retirement. In my direct way ---which hopefully will not be misinterpreted, How do you apply your skills level. What aspects were involved ---CRISPR, AI protein folding,---- etc ?