Coping with people

Thanks for your comments. They are really helpful.

i am glad that I am not alone in finding that it can be very difficult to survive in workplaces. I find it hard enough dealing with people in a peripheral sense but having to work closely with a group of people that I may not particularly like is a real challenge.

i hate conflict also and have never been any good at dealing with it. Whenever I try to stand up for myself it seems to make things worse.

Thank you for the book recommendation. I will try giving it a read. 

Most workplaces have pretty nasty undercurrents. Even the friendliest of people can have hidden agendas. The "us and them" regime of bosses and workers, and the counter-balance of union intervention puts pressures on everybody that leads to everyone playing games.

My impression is that workplaces are bad for non-autistic people. They are that much worse for people on the spectrum, who cannot read motives and hidden intentions so well, are more easily manipulated by people with agendas, and more easily marginalised or cornered or excluded.

I just wish I could get this across to NAS with their chirpy notions that it is just a matter of explaining to managers about the attributes and difficulties of people with autism, exclusively from the triad, and homilies about computing aptitude and good time-keeping. NAS you so totally miss the point.It is the social jungle in the workplace that makes life difficult.

Therefore I don't think you can avoid the conflict, even if moving around jobs you may find a temporary oasis. Sooner or later someone will come along who "gets a kick" out of people less able to defend themselves, or sees someone else as being in their way towards the better job or the management place.

Two things really stand out for me. One is the number of people happy to waste hours quizzing someone "different" to elicit their private life or their insecurities. Maybe these people are themselves insecure. There are just so many total timewasters in workplaces.

The other thing is office cliques. The comedy series The Office so well illustrates these in-crowdy groups - you either join in or try to survive well outside their reach if you can. They are always talking about people outside their circle and goading them or provoking them just to get a laugh. I seem fated to clash with cliques and their leaders. I understand deference, I just cannot do it properly, I just seem to be perceived as being mockingly deferential.

The worst environment for cliques was university teaching - there are so many people in these places who just need to grow up. You get loads of people who thrive on gathering round them a little band of acquiescent followers, and creating a private language and ways of doing things. Being on the spectrum you cannot hope to compete, and certainly are likely to get victimised by these sorts for being different.

You shouldn't have to leave though, and keep having to find new jobs.

Unfortunatel there aren't many good guides. There is one I know of that is useful but hard to read, because it is so peculiar to one individual's contexts you have to follow the biographical bits - "Managing with Asperger Syndrome" Malcolm Johnson (Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2005 ISBN 1 84310 199 8)