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How do you deal with a fellow Autistic Colleague?

Kittera

Hi!

So, I have been diagnosed on the autism spectrum for about 5 years now. But since everyone on this forum are adults: I would love to hear your advice and experiences.

I work in service and have this colleague (let's call her Marianne) who is autistic and a nightmare.

Her behaviour is highly aggressive towards me and other staff members. Criticises everything we do and cannot tolerate when someone challenges her behaviour (aka me). Here is an example.

So for some context: the restaurant we work at is divided into "sections" and each section is handled by a single waitress. If you deal with a customer in a section, you must explain to the waitress in charge what you did at which table. Simple right? Once, a customer (who sat in Marianne's section) approached me and asked for the bill. Marianne was taking an order, so I handed it to him. He then explained he was in a hurry because he had a baby. And I see his tired-looking wife breastfeeding a baby with their young child beside him. Being a considerate human being, I skip waiting for Marianne and hand him the machine so he can pay and leave. I finally crossed Marianne and explained that the customer paid because he was in a hurry and she lost it. Lecturing me that it's not my place to take of someone else's section. If you paid attention, you know that's not true.


Situations like these continued until I no longer believed her until it turned into a shouting match. She said I was being "rude" while I responded I did not take her seriously because she is always wrong (as demonstrated in the story above). You can imagine my surprise when I found out from a colleague that she is also autistic. He figured out I was as well and to just deal with her behaviour because she still works the way they did two years ago. I said we are equally stubborn and I was relieved to hear she only works during holidays.


Now the winter holiday is coming very close, and I fear she is coming back, and my first reaction is going to be "Oh Jesus! Not you!" Outload. When I found out I was autistic, it guided me to change. But Marianne seems to have no mind talking the way she talks to our team (and she is not in charge). I know there are different people on the spectrum, but Marianne is the first autistic person I have met and worked with. I never actually thought that my first interaction with another autistic person would be like this. And I am not 100% convinced that her autism "excuses" everything. But please tell me what you think and if you have better experiences.

Parents

  • tbh waitresing isn't a good job for most autistic people. It requires flexability which most of us have in short supply. So she is operating on the rules and you are trying to apply rules + common sence. That won't work. Trying to pivot over your comone sence interpritations of the rules is going to confuse her and stress her out. Also as an autistic person yourself you might be suprised to find your work coleages actually often probably find your 'comone sence' to be not that common. You need a system where she knows what to expect from you consistantly.

    As for the way she talks as far as she sees it she is probably just stating facts. Eg, 'you got this customers order wrong.' It might seem agresive to you as if she's giving kitchen staff a dressing down but from her point of view its just a statment of fact. She's probably quite problem solving focused, many autistic people are, and when her coleages make misakes that cause problems for her in her job then her coleages become problems she feels she needs to solve. Again that's just the autism.

    What she really needs is a job that more self contained with well defined boundries between her and rest of the team and more focused on problem solving. A job that plays to her strengths.

Reply

  • tbh waitresing isn't a good job for most autistic people. It requires flexability which most of us have in short supply. So she is operating on the rules and you are trying to apply rules + common sence. That won't work. Trying to pivot over your comone sence interpritations of the rules is going to confuse her and stress her out. Also as an autistic person yourself you might be suprised to find your work coleages actually often probably find your 'comone sence' to be not that common. You need a system where she knows what to expect from you consistantly.

    As for the way she talks as far as she sees it she is probably just stating facts. Eg, 'you got this customers order wrong.' It might seem agresive to you as if she's giving kitchen staff a dressing down but from her point of view its just a statment of fact. She's probably quite problem solving focused, many autistic people are, and when her coleages make misakes that cause problems for her in her job then her coleages become problems she feels she needs to solve. Again that's just the autism.

    What she really needs is a job that more self contained with well defined boundries between her and rest of the team and more focused on problem solving. A job that plays to her strengths.

Children
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