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Has anyone had meltdowns at their employment?

Rob

Rob

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
It has been a long debilitating summer with over five hundred forest fires burning in my province of British Columbia, Canada. We may be in "the great white north" but we in BC have hot summers and lately so many fires have been burning that even my alpine town of Golden BC has been smoked in to a white-out where mountains have been invisible for several weeks from mid July to late August. Many tourists had been around for this time despite the smoke.

Today I worked another busy shift, with tourists coming late, after the close. Suddenly I felt my legs buckle under me, for a fraction of a second. One staff member asked me, "What's that?"

I replied, "Almost collapsed to the floor. A near meltdown." Right away I drank the rest of my complicated amino-shake and felt better.

He called the boss over and the boss checked me out. He asked me if I was doing alright. I replied, "I think I'll be okay; there's just ten minutes left. I'm glad I only work 20 hours a week - any more and I could end up in hospital." I am so grateful that I have the next four days off!

So I managed to function enough to finish my shift and assist with closing out the shift at 9:00 serving a couple of customers and helping new staff clean up their cash till area.

Has anyone else had near-meltdowns or complete meltdowns at their employment area? It seems like a regular job is so demanding that it takes going 110 percent for us Aspies even though it seems like a near cake-walk in comparison, with other staff.

Anyway, it is great to be back on the forum after a terrible smoked-in summer and a busy time tidying up my formerly crowded, messy new apartment.
 
USED to have them all the time when I built houses, but as I get older and changed jobs I haven't had one, mainly because I can't acceptably do it at my job. (I'd lose my job if I melted down).
 
Never had them at work, (retired now anyway).
I had to learn how to contain them when I did work or it would have gotten me fired too.
 
Unfortunately yes... I get overwhelmed easily when there are too many demands on me at once, too much information at once, or when there is a sudden change to me schedule. It's not so bad if I can isolate myself and be left to deal with it in my own time and in my own way, but at work this isn't always possible. I snapped at my boss because she made short notice changes to my schedule, I apologised but it affected my relationship with her and my contract wasn't renewed. I had situations where I felt out of my depth and not able to cope with a new job, and broke down and quit. Another time, something upset me and I went to lock myself in the toilets for 20 minutes while I melted down. Other times, more frequently, I half melt down... what I mean is, I get overwhelmed and not able to process everything properly and I say weird things or act weird... or I don't hear people or ignore people because I don't process them... not a full-on meltdown, but not in control, either. A partial meltdown. Colleagues notice these things and then I get a reputation - might not get fired right away but it leads to my contract not being renewed.
 
Unfortunately yes I have. I managed throughout life to avoid them by removing myself from situations that were overwhelming until a few years ago I was subject to a concerted campaign of intimidation from a small number of colleagues who used strength of numbers
and their popularity as a shield. I snapped and shouted at them to stop, accompanied by a few choice invectives. Needless to say it did not go down well.
Not long after I discovered that there was more than one way I could meltdown. I had forced myself to hold everything in since the first incident and the company had refused to even investigate my complaints. One day, after one jibe too many, I started shaking, became short of breath and couldn't speak. It scared me and I ended up taken to hospital. Eventually it stopped and the doctors couldn't explain it.
It has since happened again and the only common factor has been intense stress.
I had no idea before that a meltdown could manifest as my body literally shutting me down involuntarily.
 
Autistamatic said:
Unfortunately yes I have. I managed throughout life to avoid them by removing myself from situations that were overwhelming until a few years ago I was subject to a concerted campaign of intimidation from a small number of colleagues who used strength of numbers
and their popularity as a shield. I snapped and shouted at them to stop, accompanied by a few choice invectives. Needless to say it did not go down well.
Not long after I discovered that there was more than one way I could meltdown. I had forced myself to hold everything in since the first incident and the company had refused to even investigate my complaints. One day, after one jibe too many, I started shaking, became short of breath and couldn't speak. It scared me and I ended up taken to hospital. Eventually it stopped and the doctors couldn't explain it.
It has since happened again and the only common factor has been intense stress.
I had no idea before that a meltdown could manifest as my body literally shutting me down involuntarily.
Click to expand...
That is scary. I get locked in which is kind of similar. I also do the Walk Out a lot. In high school, I'd just walk out and walk home even though it was at least ten miles. If I get too stressed, I bolt.
 
It has happened to me in the past. It sounds like yours was a relatively mild one. I've had ones that were really emotional. Nowadays, I can usually control myself enough to at least make it home before it hits. The last time I had a meltdown at work was back in June of 2013 and I ended up just walking off of the job. It was my last time in information technology.
 
My job is very high demand and complex, though I usually have pretty much total command over how I prioritise and respond to workload. Sometimes however I don't, and occasionally that results in being pushed towards a meltdown.

I generally use stimming, including a couple of daily walks around a local park, to keep control, and I have wristbands, green for OK, yellow for 'stressed' and red for 'leave me alone'. Most of my colleagues note the color and respond accordingly. When they do, as long as I switch to red, they will back away and let me get on with things, and I can stave off the meltdown as a result. But sometimes even that doesn't work, and however much I isolate myself, it's unstoppable.

Thankfully that doesn't happen often, and the frequency of meltdowns in general seems to have decreased as I have grown older.

The last meltdown at work however was a little unfortunate because it happened during my annual review. It doesn't help that I really hate these performance reviews, because I already know what my work performance is, and I don't need others telling me. Nor do I have any wish to be complemented over my work ethic or commitment. I usually don't bother even attending, but this time I did. I should have known better.

They handled the meltdown pretty well considering, but I doubt they'll ask me to another review any time soon!
 
Yes i had total a meltdown where I was taken to the hospital by ambulance and many of the half meltdowns that i didnt know what they were until just now reading Progsters post.
This was before I knew anything about autism so I thought this was just another flaw in my personality.
I didn’t get fired for my meltdown, it was caused because another employee threatened me.
I wasn’t fired from this particular job, but they wanted me to quit so they made it pretty miserable until i did quit.
 
Only time was the day I told that guy at work who called me a "Deaf C word" what he could do with his low opinion of me.

Pardon my language but I basically told him to get bent.

*Edited unsavoury bad words*
 
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I've had a few. I worked for B&Q which is a large DIY store and i was working the night shift for a while and it got to me. The people i was working with were total numbskulls. Blokes who would whip out porn mags during dinner and talk about cars all the time. I chose the night shift as i struggled on the shop floor during the day as there were too many people about so i asked for a shift change. There was one bloke on the night shift who drove the forklift and who was considered a bit quiet and a bit odd and strangely enough i was drawn to him.

Instead of bragging about how many women he'd slept with or the latest banal dance / techno party he'd been to, he talked about walking. He loved walking and had a vast knowledge of UK geography which appealed to me. I even planned to do the coast to coast walk in England with him but which never came to fruition.

Anyway one night i was working and being ordered about by supervisors not educated enough nor respectful enough to kiss my arse and i flipped. For someone who hates eye contact i stared him straight in the eyes and ordered him to open the doors and let me out as i'd had enough. It was about 2am and the store doors were locked and needed the supervisor to open them manually.

I told him that if he didn't let me out then i'd break both of his legs right there and then which i was fully prepared to do. He let me out. lol

Working for people and with people who are so shallow, narrow minded, rude, lacking in self awareness, self obsessed and who like to talk about predictable men things like women, cars, holidays to magaluf can only be tolerated for so long.

I also worked for the RSPCA caring for animals and i was struggling to catch a guinea fowl who was being rehomed. I was chasing it around the pen like Benny Hill and just couldn't catch it and it had been a bad day when things just stack up. You feel like you have a key in your back and gradually it's being wound up and wound up and something happens and you snap.

Anyway, i snapped and slammed the pen door, got in my car and drove up the driveway shouting i've had enough. I got some stares from everyone in the car park! Luckily the manager of the animal centre i had known for a bit and he sort of understood i was a bit unconventional and short fused but my love and dedication to animals was all that mattered to me and he drove after me and asked me to calm down and come back. I did so and caught that bird! lol

I still had lots of meltdowns afterwards though due to the sheer pressure of that job.
 
Maybe. I've had incidents where I've done things like rip my name tag off and throw it at the ground in full view of the office. Not exactly ideal.

I've also found that, if I'm trapped in a long meeting where people are talking about things that destroy my assumptions about how a problem might be solved and/or completely change my plans for what I think I'm going to be doing for the next while, I might find that I feel kind of light headed and it's hard to properly concentrate and participate in the meeting.

Not sure whether the first one constitutes a mild meltdown and the second a mild shutdown, or if it's just losing my temper and getting overwhelmed.
 
Not many but yes I have. Work can be stressful so meltdowns can be a part of your day. Thing is to learn how to control them and not let them get in the way of your work.
 
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