Do you hate having ASD and wish you were neurotypical ?

I remember the workers in the jobcentre acting all bossy and bullying the poor chaps that were down on their luck, especially the old and the frail. The same people became all sweet and caring when they were faced with burly construction workers or chavy ex-cons. I remember one of them bullying me because I had to go to an urgent hospital appointment, she was just pushing me around because she wanted an angry outburst and an excuse to sanction me. Every time I saw a chav kicking a workers teeth in, I silently cheered for the chav. I wonder if DWP makes an effort to recruit only sadistic bullies, or if they do specific training courses for the new hires.

What a dreadfully ignorant thing to say. 

Martin said:

I worked in an unemployment benefit office, I think that was on the front line aggravation-wise and pressure-wise. Chairs were bolted to the floor, so that clients could not hit you with them.

I used to work as a secretary in the probation service.

One day Beryl the Peril was being released from prison (the clue is in the name).

I had the short straw as I was on reception - it was well known that she became aggressive if kept waiting.

Unfortunately for me she was kept waiting.

After a while she decided to grab hold of my head and pull it and half my body by the hair through the reception hatch.

She only let me go when the probation officer was found and came to calm her down.

I was very afraid for my eyes.

The funny thing is a really intense memory of this (apart from the obvious trauma) was that the chief probation officer took me up to his office and gave me a cigarette rolled in liquorice paper.

That wouldn't happen nowadays

Martin said:

Chairs were bolted to the floor, so that clients could not hit you with them.

I am a bit sceptical about that. I have been in jobcentres in some pretty rough areas of Birmingham, and I have never seen that.  I remember that all the chairs were of the cheap flimsy kind, so it would have been pointless anyway. I've seen a lot of unacceptable behaviour from both the claimants and the workers, but just not this.

BTW, working for the government =/ working for a private employee.

I worked in an unemployment benefit office, I think that was on the front line aggravation-wise and pressure-wise. Chairs were bolted to the floor, so that clients could not hit you with them.

LOL, civil service, then academia? Lucky guy, you won't have lasted a single day in a real job.

I'm retired now. Before getting a job in academia I worked in two civil service jobs over two years (clerical assistant, then clerical officer grade). I can't say I enjoyed them very much, but I coped.

I don't think so, from his writing, myself.

hmmm..

More to the point, just how much of a 'sperglord is Admiral Robert Heinlein anyway?

Is the man who fell to earth (from mars) also AD, ya think?

a tragedy.

* I meant 'neurodivergent', not "neurotypical", obviously.

You are asking people if they would like to undo an entire lifetime of getting to know themselves, to reset their personality to zero and start again from scratch as a person with completely new foms of perception and behaviour, and therefore opions and values. I think that would be be harder and more stressful than just learning to cope with having ASD. Not to mention losing all the cool benefits of being neurotypical. Be careful what you wish for. Hollywood movies are very specific about that, it always turns out bad.

That would be a disaster!

But I don’t think that’s a specifically autistic trait.

What if that pill make you too busy or otherwise aligned that you lose the abilty to "Grok" with the cats?

You can!!

Just "identify" as Non-Autistic, and the difference is gone!

I've just had nearly a whole day of being neurotypical!  

(To be honest It has not felt much different to what I was before, but maybe I need to give it more time to kick in)

Tomorrow I'l embrace all those acronyms again, and celebrate having "prevailed" mostly in life, despite carrying all those letters around...  

What they meant was 'I've seen Rainman, and being exposed to a 90 minute theatrical represetation of a more extreme form autism (about whcih I would otherwise know literally nothing) makes me qualified enought to contradict you, what with me being an arrogant, ignorant, ***.'

I once had a guy threaten to beat me up (we very nearly came to blows and would have were it not for others intervening) because I said I had PTSD (I have, btw), even though everything he knew about PTSD could be summed up in 6 words: it's that thing that soldiers get.

Judge Dredd, I was self employed for most of my working life, when I was employed by others I was in the kind of jobs where I was accepted for who I was. I'm not saying it was easy, especially when I was younger, but as I was in customer facing roles most of the time, even when self employed, I made sure I was polite, even when having to listen to some geriatric fascist, I might have wanted to stick the end of my pin tail comb into her brain, but I didn't. I did learn how to gently challenge people, although a few of those never came back. Some you win, some you lose, but I recognse that the problems are about them not me as NT collegues could found them equally difficult

I can’t imagine having a different mind. I know my career would never have been as successful without my autistic “strengths”.

But the social and wellbeing cost has been too great so if I could turn the clock back and take a pill that would make me “ordinary” then I think I would.