Hi. I'm 28 and struggling to find full-time work. I also have Semantic Pragmatic Disorder (SPD), which basically means that I process information slower than others and I struggle to communicate at times. I mainly have experience in Animal Care but it's mostly been zero hour contract jobs. I used to have 2 jobs, one at a kennel and cattery and another at a dog daycare. I got fired from the dog daycare suddenly in the wake of them opening a new branch somwhere in London for a number of reasons, some were my fault and also a result of my exhaustion and losing motivation and enthusiasm in the job (there were A LOT of things wrong with the way this company was run) and some were complete nonsense (they accused me of being the reason why there were so many incorrect product orders being packaged when I'm too autistic to get those wrong). I'm still to this day technically employed at the kennel but they rarely give me shifts anymore. It's as though they have fired me except they do very occasionally ask me to come in for a shift before going silent on me again. Even when I ask for my more shifts, they don't give me any. They once said that there'll be more shifts around Easter time only for it to turn out that there weren't that many dogs after all. It's a shame because I REALLY liked this job. I consider it the best job I ever had. I just rarely get to DO IT anymore.
The closest I ever got to a full-time job was in a high-profile dog grooming salon. Earlier this year, I took a dog grooming course for 3 months and got a certificate. Shortly afterwards, I got hired at that grooming salon for a 3 month probation period. Everything seemed okay at first. It was me and one other colleague at first. Then another person joined so there were now 3 of us. I was also doing the salon's own dog grooming training programme to get me from an assistant stylist to a regular stylist. The training was in 3 parts: prepping, clipping and snipping. I had to make a portfolio of photos of dogs before and after the groom and other details, like how I did certain parts of the groom and how I managed the dog's behaviour. I would also go once a week to another further away branch of the salon to do some training with the head of training. However, after some time, it became increasingly clear that my 1st colleague was getting sick of babysitting me. She started snapping at me a lot, especially when it was busy and stressful (she only apologised the first time this happened) and that made me not want to ask her for help with anything unless it was absolutely an emergency. My 2nd colleague was thankfully much nicer to me (she also had a cute Pomeranian that she would bring in) and I had a far easier time talking to her (she even checked on me once after getting snapped at, saying that I didn't deserve to be treated like that), but unfortunately, she ended up injuring her and going on sick leave while I was away at the other branch, so I was now stuck with the other colleague that would keep snapping at me (despite this, I still didn't tell management about it because I figured that only make things worse and more awkward between us). A bunch of other uncontrollable things happened as well. For example, we managed to get the broken stand dryer fixed so we had 2 stand dryers, only for some phone maintainence people to start work on cables in the ceiling and their ladder fell over, breaking the fire alarm switch (which we had to cover up with a taped-on dog poo bag) and one of the stand dryers again, so we were back to having 1 again.
In the end, my contract was terminated at the end of the probation period because I wasn't able to keep up with the fast-paced environment, wasn't able to finish the 1st part of the training in time and basically, they wanted someone more experienced because we were down one team member. I did also make a lot of mistakes. I was late a few times and even when, after hearing the feedback, I went into the building and got ready on time, management still weren't satisfied because they wanted me come in 10 minutes early to check the appointments for that day. Another time, due to an attempt to get things done as quick as possible and not make people impatient (a reflex from past jobs) and also my reluctance to ask that colleague for help for fear of her getting angry at me again, I accidentally let a dog in that had A LOT of problems. He had smelly, sticky ears, a skin condition (dry itchy skin and hair loss around the rear) and, according to the owner on the phone, a HEART MURMURR, which she DID NOT tell me when I asked her when she arrived. I had seen dogs come in before with conditions that looked concerning, e.g. overweight, blindness or arthritis due to old age, skin conditions, and yet they were still allowed to be groomed. I guess I ended up assuming that this dog's condition was acceptable and let them in. Asking that colleague for help would mean she would have to drop everything and clip the dog she was working on to the floor before coming out to help me, which would definitely annoy her, so I decided against it. Doing this ended up being a critical mistake and it ended up on my record. I had also submitted the first draft of the first part of the training, but the head of training wanted me to make some changes, as I had used a lot of the same wording for dogs that were groomed similarly or acted similarly. I hadn't been able to make the changes by the time my contract was terminated and also, I was told not to go to the training days anymore because of my 2nd colleague hurting her arm, so I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to show my portfolio to the head of training again. Finally, one of the managers was away when my 2nd colleague injured her arm. When she asked the people who were present during the incident, she for some reason ended up with the impression that I DROPPED a dog and my 2nd colleague catching it was what hurt her arm, which was COMPLETELY incorrect because I WASN'T EVEN THERE WHEN IT HAPPENED!! Even when I told her that was untrue, she went on to tell my dad this when he returned my uniform.
Management tried to be reassuring, saying that I would be better off working in a smaller salon that didn't focus on KPIs and that I would be fine because I'm living with my parents, but I don't know how much of that was sincere, was corporate-speak or was just plain condescending insincerity to get me to leave the building. This incident led to the conclusion that my disability may have played a part in me losing all of these jobs. Up until that job, I had been told NOT to mention my disability in any job applications. However, now I'm being told to mention it in great detail and I worry I'm not gonna get another job for a while if I keep mentioning my disability and even if I do, I might get treated differently from others (specifically special treatment that makes things easier for me that might make others resent me). I was quite self-concious about my disability when I was at school and always tried to keep it quiet. I also ended up opting out of having a assistant teacher help me in class because they kept pointing out the obvious (I admit I was rude about it back then. I feel really bad and I should've acted calmer about it), leading me to believe that I didn't need extra help after all only to struggle throughout primary school, secondary school and college. Despite that, it never once occured to me go and request an assistant again. I don't know if mentioning my disability with potential jobs will mean that I might get an assistant to help me at the job but if it does, I'm worried it will look weird to others even if I do need them.
I'm sorry for this giant ranty word vomit (This is a lot to write for my first post on this site. I have a lot more to say but I'll end this post soon). I'm getting pretty desperate to find a full-time job. While I would prefer an Animal Care job, I'm also open to other kinds of work. I love animals but I feel if I get screwed over by this industry one more time, I might just swear off Animal Care entirely (I haven't even gone into detail about how bad it was at the dog daycare). The problem is I'm not sure what else I can do. I just hope that there is something I can do. This past year and bad luck with my jobs has seriously knocked my confidence by a lot. Regarding my disability, I have applied for a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and are waiting for a repsonse.
Does anyone have any advice regarding where I can find autism-friendly jobs and job support? Both for Animal Care-related jobs and jobs in general? Also, interview techniques because I'm quite shy and I suck at them (I got my kennel and dog daycare jobs via job trials, which I feel I'm better at because I can demonstrate my abilities through actions instead of words)? I'll greatly appreciate it! Also, feel free to share your own stories too!