Are fairness and honesty detrimental to us regarding employment and life

[Rocco]

I have a set of morals/rules/personal code that I follow in life, when dealing with others. In my experience I feel as though characteristics of honesty and fairness have had more negative consequences than positive. I have been repeatedly punished/admonished/accosted/set backwards in life for being honest and acting in fairness. While feeling bitter about the lost opportunities and chances I am beginning to see why NT folks are so guarded with words and actions.
I feel like I need to evolve into a dishonest person with a more “cutthroat” style to make it in life, or at least tread water and survive with lodgings.

Do you struggle with negative consequences for following your code?

 

[Hypnalis]

You're not asking exactly the right questions, but there is an indirect answer to this:

If you exclusively use the literal truth at all times with NT's, you will find there are negative consequences.
There may come a time when you can expect NT's to communicate "ND-style", but it won't be soon, and if it happens it will have its own problems.

In the meantime you can either calmly accept the negative consequences, or you can change to accommodate the NT majority. I'm no longer advocating for either approach, but perhaps another poster will do so.

 

[Rocco]

I understand tactful lying, or “white” lies, my difficulty is found in issues of the more serious type. I tend to be “open book” “heart on sleeve” openly honest most of the time. It’s more difficult to describe this concept than I imagined.

 

[Bolletje]

I have had some trouble with being honest, yes. I’ve suffered a burnout recently because I was shouldering a disproportionate part of the workload at work. My boss told me that I work a little faster than the others and I shouldn’t expect others to live up to my standards. I then told him (and backed it up with numbers) that when I’m working with 4 coworkers, I’m consistently doing about 80% of the work and some coworkers working from home just log off when I’m working and let me do everything by myself. My coworkers got told off and written off by my boss, and now they’re mad at me for “snitching”.

 

[Knower of nothing]

There is a movie I really love called "The Fool" where you can see this process of honesty and fairness just crushing a man, but he stands firm regardless. He is a fool in the world's eyes and I've rarely seen someone more noble. It makes me think it's worthwhile, truth is truth in the end.

 

[Darkkin]

A sense of fair play and honesty are not detrimental. In and of themselves, they are part of one's conscience. Essentially they are an inert tool that keep one from doing dreadful things and generally make for better people. Where things get complicated is in how we utilize the tools. Are we using a philips head screwdrive to take a faceplate off or are we just grabbing a sledge hammer and smashing through walls?

Context and communication are everything. I work with books on a daily basis, so last summer and over the holidays when I noticed measurable tracks of books ending up in glaringly wrong spots, I had suspicions and so did others. I started tallying and had tangible proof of a pattern. I was finding linear feet of books in the wrong spot. I have touchpoint memory, I handle it, I remember where it is. I notice, like really notice between one day and another, if one book is out of place. One book, you fix it. This was dozens, and the numbers were climbing and profoundly atypical.

This work was deliberately shoddy, was tripling the workload for the rest of the staff, and costing the shop sales. When I told management what was going on I had evidence as well as observations of what the others had seen. Not putting those books back correctly was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. The source of the errors was removed from any and all shelving and not invited back for the summer.

Where things really get hairy is the source of the issue knew our manager, lived next door, and was hired by said manager. It was the whole I'm friends with the manager issue, but in a twilight zone episode. Our staff was in a quandary, if we say something will we get a reprimand?

If the damage being done were on a smaller scale and easily corrected, I wouldn't have said anything because is it really worth the effort. But this was affecting everybody and our shop. We tallied isbns, location found, receiving date, actual location, and sales before the books were reshelved and merchandised. In the right spots, this books took off. These were new, frontlists from the V-carts that you do not touch unless properly trained and okayed by a manager. Source said, they had been okayed by the manager.

The numbers were omnious. We broached the subject to a non-neighbour manager and gave him the statistics. Source left town to go back to school. We then tracked shelving patterns from August to December. Shelving errors dropped by 89%. We stopped losing sales on new frontlist, and the entire staff was far less stressed because we where not chronically fixing shoddy work.

Source shows up again for the holidays. Within the first three days, huge spike in shelving errors. A dozen missing frontlist titles. Enough was enough. The managers had a meeting. The source was taken off all shelving related activities, allowed to work through the holidays, but was not asked back.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

Similar observations in my 55 years. For one, unlike what some people's childhood was like, where everyone gets a "participation trophy", this concept that competition is something negative, that things should be fair, that you are rewarded for having a strong moral and ethical code,...the real world is not like this at all. In the real world,...remember this,...there is only one winner and the rest are losers,...sorry, no praise for second place efforts. It doesn't matter if you lost the race by an inch or a mile,...you lost. So,...over time, people begin to learn that you can win by truly putting forth a superior effort and achieve superior results,....OR,...you can manipulate, discredit, and/or lie your way to the top,...or some combination. It is extremely rare that the "nice guy" gets the prize,...nor does the person who is actually the best at what they do. Life clearly has no sense of fairness or justice. Upper management at most companies are typically comprised of people with some level of sociopathic behavior,...they will kick their own mother under a moving bus to get ahead,...and if you are in their way,...under the bus you go. Neurotypical or autistic,...doesn't matter,...you have to understand this in life.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Since I was 15 and discovered humanist ethics reading Bertrand Russell, i have always endeavored to be ethical. In most social and public occassions, I am circumspect unless somebody engages in victim blaming, shaming somebody for advocating for their needs, or acting cruelly. The time I will be completely honest is in my work. I used to work in a highly regulated environment of drug and device manufacturing, including radioactive pharmaceuticals. I became known for advocating for best practices and speaking truth to power. Because of successes, I gained a lot of influence.

 

[Callistemon]

I just wanted to highly recommend a novel very close to this theme - John Steinbeck's The Winter of our Discontent, where a nice honest fair guy who isn't getting very far in life decides to become mercenary, dishonest and manipulative in order to advance his standing in the world. It deals with the exact questions the OP posed, but doesn't reference ND versus NT. It's a universal issue. The book is very readable and not at all depressing - in case you read some of his better-known tomes.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Similar observations in my 55 years. For one, unlike what some people's childhood was like, where everyone gets a "participation trophy", this concept that competition is something negative, that things should be fair, that you are rewarded for having a strong moral and ethical code,...the real world is not like this at all. In the real world,...remember this,...there is only one winner and the rest are losers,...sorry, no praise for second place efforts. It doesn't matter if you lost the race by an inch or a mile,...you lost. So,...over time, people begin to learn that you can win by truly putting forth a superior effort and achieve superior results,....OR,...you can manipulate, discredit, and/or lie your way to the top,...or some combination. It is extremely rare that the "nice guy" gets the prize,...nor does the person who is actually the best at what they do. Life clearly has no sense of fairness or justice. Upper management at most companies are typically comprised of people with some level of sociopathic behavior,...they will kick their own mother under a moving bus to get ahead,...and if you are in their way,...under the bus you go. Neurotypical or autistic,...doesn't matter,...you have to understand this in life.

You sound like a baby boomer. Competition was the waters we swum in and for the ND at a time when autism was rarely diagnosed, life was difficult. It was an environment that promoted sociopathy.

 

[Crossbreed]

Are fairness and honesty detrimental to us regarding employment and life [...?]

IMX, "fairness" & "honesty" have not so much been the problem as "inopportune disclosure..."

We need not lie as much as wait for an appropriate time to speak our truth.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

You sound like a baby boomer. Competition was the waters we swum in and for the ND at a time when autism was rarely diagnosed, life was difficult. It was an environment that promoted sociopathy.

So, we understand and recognize the sociopathy when we see it,...we have swam and are swimming in this pond. Life can be difficult if you are one that has the drive to strive for what you perceive as "better" for yourself. There's no handouts, there's no hugs and appreciation, very few words of encouragement,...mostly people telling you all the ways "you can't". Competitive behavior can be down right blatant,...and it can be passive,...but it clearly is a part of our lives. Life can also be difficult for those that are going through life passively, just letting the wind blow them around,...just taking whatever happens to come their way,...but also meaning that others are going to step on them like a door mat. Autism does present itself with its challenges, but neurotypicals are also subject to these same forces.

I am not saying that truly being an ethical, moral person 100% of the time will condemn you to failure in life,...but it often does in today's world. I think it has mostly to do with the company you keep and the environment you choose to be in. If you are dropped into a den of snakes,...you had better become a snake,...otherwise, you're food.

 

[Jordy]

Humans have an instinctive hate for unfairness and it even has it's own special emotion. People hate lies that matter. And keep in mind that what seems unfair to you may be completely fair in their eyes. The lesser treatment of someone lower in a competence hierarchy is completely fair to them for instance, if you are objectively less valuable to the group you get treated as such. The problem is we don't life tribes or close communities anymore, people can get away with so much without bearing any responsibility in our age. Don't think that in a closed community of 50 people they will let you get away with acting in an antisocial way that decreases the chance of everyone's survival.

 

[Darkkin]

The problem is not honesty and fairness; it is rooted in accountability.

 

[Aspychata]

Corporate world is run by greed, competition, disposables (sheep). It's get eaten and spit out. So honesty and ethics aren't going to really matter.

Your day to day relationships hopefully involve honesty.

So with dishonest people, l wear my dishonest mask, l am thinking like them. With honest people, l can be myself. However, you need to proceed with extreme caution in certain matters.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Corporate world is run by greed, competition, disposables (sheep). It's get eaten and spit out. So honesty and ethics aren't going to really matter.

Your day to day relationships hopefully involve honesty.

So with dishonest people, l wear my dishonest mask, l am thinking like them. With honest people, l can be myself. However, you need to proceed with extreme caution in certain matters.

I dislike the modern MBA mindset where everybody is replaceable but them. Under their direction institutional memory is lost, best practices and quality are jettisoned for profit. Look at how private equity is ruining healthcare, treating MDs as contractors, or when the corrupt administration from McDonald Douglas reduced Boeing to a has-been who cannot manufacture safe planes with their technically illiterate, lazy, non-union workers, in their Carolina facility and has savaged their Quality Department in Seattle. Boeing used to be an engineering company that built planes, now they are Airbus wannabes.

 

[Tom]

I don't believe fairness and honesty can exist effectively outside of the groups context. For one, their is a lot of subjectiveness involved. Another is that honesty is often a form of criticism, an emotional response or even panic, and can be particularly damaging when done publically.

In short there are many things to consider in what one says or does. Just being honest (which is really just expressing your opinion) is not automatically the best or even most truthful response. It is simply saying what is on your mind right or wrong.

 

[Judge]

About all you can do in much of any competitive environment is to be vigilant in anticipating all kinds of underhanded acts and behaviors. You don't have to keep your enemies closer than your friends, but it pays to know who is your enemy and who is your friend. To remain being fair and honest, but also be aware of who isn't. Especially in the workplace.

 

[Atrapa Almas]

I have a set of morals/rules/personal code that I follow in life, when dealing with others. In my experience I feel as though characteristics of honesty and fairness have had more negative consequences than positive. I have been repeatedly punished/admonished/accosted/set backwards in life for being honest and acting in fairness. While feeling bitter about the lost opportunities and chances I am beginning to see why NT folks are so guarded with words and actions.
I feel like I need to evolve into a dishonest person with a more “cutthroat” style to make it in life, or at least tread water and survive with lodgings.

Do you struggle with negative consequences for following your code?

There are ways to get the results without lying or cheating, but its not easy and wont work for any possition in a company. Sellers for example are expected to lie while engineers are not that much expected to lie.

Many of those probblems can be solved knowing when to shut up. That is not easy either, my father usually tell me "I just needed 2 years to learn how to talk and it seems Im going to die without knowing how to shut up".

Even if you stay true to your values, I recomend you knowing the enemy mechanics. Best books about the dark side I know are:

• The art of war
• The prince (of machiavello)
• 48 laws of power

After you know the dark side you will be able to better understand when and how to deal with certain things, how to make allies, etc...

Its not easy but it can be done in that work or in the next one. Going against your values is a free ticket to depression and other personal problems.

 

[The Lorax]

My wife has been fired from jobs because of her honesty and not doing political stuff. Over the years she has talked to me about situations at work and how to handle them. She is much better about office politics.

Number one rule I tell her.... NO one at work is your friend. Do not think because you have a cozy relationship with them you can open up and confide in them. It takes years and time to build friendships.