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After a string of largely unsuccessful jobs, I decided to be a stay-at-home wife

Khendra

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
Hi all,

It's been awhile since I was on here. I'd posted back in April about a bad job situation. Well, it's now August, and I've had two more failed employment situations since then as well. :/

In May, I tried a job assisting youth at a residential home. This job appeared promising at first, and it was related to some prior work I've done before as a direct support professional working in people's homes, but I learned during on-the-job-training that lots of cooking from scratch was involved on all three shifts. Cooking hadn't been mentioned in either the job description or job interview; it was only during the week of training that I learned I had to do it. Due to executive dysfunction and a degree of dyspraxia, I'm not able to cook from scratch unless there are recipes literally listing every possible step of cooking. The residential home had some broad recipes, but they didn't list every step. As a result, I lasted at this job for only a week.

After that, in June, I decided to try substitute teaching again. I'd had some level of success doing that before, particularly as a paraprofessional. I'd actually been doing that until February of this year when I happened to come across a bad assignment with a student who pushed buttons, provoked me to a meltdown, and led me to quit. However, a new agency had taken over for this new school year, so I thought perhaps a fresh start would be good, and I also looked forward to assisting at some of the schools where I'd had success before.

Sadly, that turned out to be a disaster, too. I did a few small assignments last week and the week prior, helping out with the district's IT department, which I'd done before. However, on the first day of school, I went to a middle school as an extra help paraprofessional. The day seemed to go well. But I got a call the next day from the district coordinator who told me that, although she received no complaints whatsoever about my job performance, she said I needed to not tell any of the teachers that I had autism. I'd told one, within the context of helping people with disabilities. She smiled at me and everything seemed fine. But after the school day, apparently this teacher had a problem with my disclosure. When I received a call about it, I was very angry. I'd disclosed many times before at other schools during the previous school year, and no one ever had a problem with it. It's not illegal to disclose! And while I was talking to the coordinator, she agreed with that, but she kept insisting that I needed to be more careful about disclosing. She wasn't making any sense, I got very mad and told her that she and the teacher from that school cannot legally discriminate like that, and I hung up because I was about to have a meltdown again. They fired me for hanging up.

I'm 32, have two partial Master's degrees, always did well academically, but my employment history has all sorts of issues. There were some companies where I got references and good reviews as a direct support professional, and also some schools and references where I got good reviews as a substitute teacher paraprofessional, but they were also mixed up with lots of criticism for the things I didn't do well related to my diagnosis. With all this in mind, I got frustrated and threw away my resume and my diagnosis papers a few days ago...it just doesn't seem like I'm employable long-term. Whatever successes I have here and there, nothing ever works out long-term.

I've done voc rehab (with some success in another city), I've been through diagnosis and mental health, I've tried about everything available to me -- but it's apparently time to move on from employment. I'm not good enough at reading social cues, I struggle too much with conflict and responding appropriately to it, my executive functioning issues and visual-motor integration problems make me clumsy and inept in some practical tasks...it looks like it's just time to stay home.

Husband has been supportive, as always. We have been planning for awhile to have a child next year. In the meantime, I like the idea of staying at home while he works. I have to give up some hobbies, like basketball card collecting and cable television, to help conserve money, but I can still read and write on the Internet, read library books, listen to my music CDs, help out in church, play Wii games, keep the apartment clean, and so forth.

Anyway, this is the part about being an Aspie that I hate most. It's very hard to talk to people about jobs because it's so difficult for people to understand how someone with above average cognitive skills can keep failing like this. I'm just glad I'm female in this context because it's at least acceptable to be a home-maker, especially in the context of my faith.

All right, that's all for now.
 
Tell me about it, as a 41 year old British Aspie, I'm currently trying to get a paid job in the Retail trade, but nobody will employ me! It's not my fault my only customer facing experience comes from Charity shops, I've tried for proper work but they don't want me, I got a rejection email from Argos this morning!
 
Sorry to hear. I've looked up lots of stats and sites on this subject, and it appears we Aspies are greatly underrepresented in full-time employment (about 80% of us are either underemployed or unemployed).
 
That is terrible:mad:! No one had any right to complain to you about telling someone you are autistic. Autistics lack empathy and social skills??? It seems like it's the non-autistics missing those things, doesn't it. That was horribly rude and cruel of them, not to mention illegal. Anyhoo, hope though it was just one of those things where it seems the Universe, Providence, or God, or whatever (Luck?) has better plans for you. :)Good luck! And sorry you had such a bad time with the school people:(.
 
That is terrible:mad:! No one had any right to complain to you about telling someone you are autistic. Autistics lack empathy and social skills??? It seems like it's the non-autistics missing those things, doesn't it. That was horribly rude and cruel of them, not to mention illegal. Anyhoo, hope though it was just one of those things where it seems the Universe, Providence, or God, or whatever (Luck?) has better plans for you. :)Good luck! And sorry you had such a bad time with the school people:(.

:Luck doesn't come into it IMO, you have to know people who know people to get you into a job, sadly I don't know anybody, most of my friends all work, and people I know through Mum and Dad, most of them are retired.
 
Anyway, this is the part about being an Aspie that I hate most. It's very hard to talk to people about jobs because it's so difficult for people to understand how someone with above average cognitive skills can keep failing like this. I'm just glad I'm female in this context because it's at least acceptable to be a home-maker, especially in the context of my faith.

Yes, I agree - I am running up against this, always have - but now I think I'm at the end of my rope in term so of landing employment and being able to hang onto the job. My *dream* would be to be a housewife!! :) It would be so much more suited to my needs and personality - I would have so much less anxiety and be so much healthier in general. I know many women feel the need to get out of the home and work, but I take the most pride in my home and would love, love, love, to just focus on running the home. Errands, cooking, cleaning, that would all be fine and good for me. But my husband needs me to work - and I have lots of student loans and debt to take care of, thanks to my last failed stint at grad school and my inability to find work for a long time since, plus lots of medical bills for myself and my dog, coming all at once.

I hope staying home will be healthy for you! :)
 
Hi all,

It's been awhile since I was on here. I'd posted back in April about a bad job situation. Well, it's now August, and I've had two more failed employment situations since then as well. :/

In May, I tried a job assisting youth at a residential home. This job appeared promising at first, and it was related to some prior work I've done before as a direct support professional working in people's homes, but I learned during on-the-job-training that lots of cooking from scratch was involved on all three shifts. Cooking hadn't been mentioned in either the job description or job interview; it was only during the week of training that I learned I had to do it. Due to executive dysfunction and a degree of dyspraxia, I'm not able to cook from scratch unless there are recipes literally listing every possible step of cooking. The residential home had some broad recipes, but they didn't list every step. As a result, I lasted at this job for only a week.

After that, in June, I decided to try substitute teaching again. I'd had some level of success doing that before, particularly as a paraprofessional. I'd actually been doing that until February of this year when I happened to come across a bad assignment with a student who pushed buttons, provoked me to a meltdown, and led me to quit. However, a new agency had taken over for this new school year, so I thought perhaps a fresh start would be good, and I also looked forward to assisting at some of the schools where I'd had success before.

Sadly, that turned out to be a disaster, too. I did a few small assignments last week and the week prior, helping out with the district's IT department, which I'd done before. However, on the first day of school, I went to a middle school as an extra help paraprofessional. The day seemed to go well. But I got a call the next day from the district coordinator who told me that, although she received no complaints whatsoever about my job performance, she said I needed to not tell any of the teachers that I had autism. I'd told one, within the context of helping people with disabilities. She smiled at me and everything seemed fine. But after the school day, apparently this teacher had a problem with my disclosure. When I received a call about it, I was very angry. I'd disclosed many times before at other schools during the previous school year, and no one ever had a problem with it. It's not illegal to disclose! And while I was talking to the coordinator, she agreed with that, but she kept insisting that I needed to be more careful about disclosing. She wasn't making any sense, I got very mad and told her that she and the teacher from that school cannot legally discriminate like that, and I hung up because I was about to have a meltdown again. They fired me for hanging up.

I'm 32, have two partial Master's degrees, always did well academically, but my employment history has all sorts of issues. There were some companies where I got references and good reviews as a direct support professional, and also some schools and references where I got good reviews as a substitute teacher paraprofessional, but they were also mixed up with lots of criticism for the things I didn't do well related to my diagnosis. With all this in mind, I got frustrated and threw away my resume and my diagnosis papers a few days ago...it just doesn't seem like I'm employable long-term. Whatever successes I have here and there, nothing ever works out long-term.

I've done voc rehab (with some success in another city), I've been through diagnosis and mental health, I've tried about everything available to me -- but it's apparently time to move on from employment. I'm not good enough at reading social cues, I struggle too much with conflict and responding appropriately to it, my executive functioning issues and visual-motor integration problems make me clumsy and inept in some practical tasks...it looks like it's just time to stay home.

Husband has been supportive, as always. We have been planning for awhile to have a child next year. In the meantime, I like the idea of staying at home while he works. I have to give up some hobbies, like basketball card collecting and cable television, to help conserve money, but I can still read and write on the Internet, read library books, listen to my music CDs, help out in church, play Wii games, keep the apartment clean, and so forth.

Anyway, this is the part about being an Aspie that I hate most. It's very hard to talk to people about jobs because it's so difficult for people to understand how someone with above average cognitive skills can keep failing like this. I'm just glad I'm female in this context because it's at least acceptable to be a home-maker, especially in the context of my faith.

All right, that's all for now.

Hi Khendra,

I seem to be in a similar situation. I'm 26 and have lost and quit 5 jobs in the last year before any discovery of being an Aspie was made. For the longest time, I blamed my intelligence (which isn't the case). I'm still currently hanging-in at this new job which I've been at since Feb now and it honestly is so difficult. I've recently been struggling because of coworkers beneath my position have been tattling on me about comments I've made to myself or just during small conversation. These aren't necessarily rude or inappropriate comments, but others see it as "weird and strange" and have been reporting me as if I did something wrong. I've since stopped chatting with people, because either they misunderstand/misinterpret my comments or see me as being malicious somehow. I'm so tired of having to explain my thoughts and repeat to others that I'm literal in everything I say. It makes me not want to work with people at all just from the sheer mental exhaustion and stress/anxiety when cornered about my own feelings. Most days I want to hide under thd covers and never leave the house again.

I've told my boss about my condition and he's been extremely supportive and helpful, but I'm having such a hard time with these other girls (who are young in their late-teens, early-20's). I'm concerned I'll lose this job soon as well and I don't think I can tolerate another failure in my career. I'm very good at my job (licensed veterinary professional) and have no problem with clients, but major issues when it comes to social workplace dynamic. I can't connect to anyone and is extremely depressing and difficult just going into work. You think that with how "compassionate" people are with those who are different in today's society, people would be more tolerant and understanding. Good luck trying for a baby, I'm sure it will keep you busy and fulfilled in that aspect of your life. I would love to have a baby or very young child as well. They're too naive to understand social norms, making them easy to get along with. Let us know how it works out.
 
Hi Lorelaine,

Yes, definitely looks like we're in a similar boat. I was diagnosed back in 2014 back when employment struggles -- and a long time of suspecting -- finally led me to getting officially labeled.

I hope you can hang in at the job, but I know how tough it is. Whether it's small talk on the job that seems harmless to us, or even today in a chat...I apparently say things that are construed as egocentric, or inappropriate...I misread however it is I'm supposed to respond, and it annoys people. It's bad enough online, but as both you and I know, it's even worse on the job when someone takes what you say as strange or whatever, because you never know who might take offense at what, and report you for it, and it just crashes down from there. And yes, it's certainly exhausting. It's a sad fact of life that, no matter how good Aspies may be in a certain field, there are various social expectations that are harder for us to understand and meet.

Anyway, hope you have a good support system no matter what happens in your case. I'm very thankful I can fall back on someone else.
 
This is such a good reminder about not talking too much at work. Not that I ever talked a lot, but yes, people would misunderstand and repeat their misunderstanding, or think my comments were weird, and it will all lead to painful social problems later at work.
 
Sadly, the side effect of not talking much, means we often come across as aloof instead. When I try to respond to small talk, I say something inappropriate; when I remain silent, I'm seen as too cold and distant, and am told to speak more.

Ugh, seems so lose-lose all the time. :/
 
The other thing is that responding to small-talk makes me feel included, yet often more excluded for the interpretations of my comments. I swear it's always a lose-lose situation.
 

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