Enemies turning into friends

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I started working for my current employer about 8 years ago or so.

My employer is a fairly large company in Wales (where I live) and I experienced an unpleasant amount of bullying when I started until about 4 years ago but thing started to change.

About 4 years ago I had a bad confrontation with middle management of this company and upper management (all three of the company owners/directors) took my side on the matter but their hands where tied by the law. They were desperate to fire an important chuck of middle management as a direct result and I was later told by upper management of their main customer (one of the biggest companies on Wales) that they wanted me to make a complaint to get heads rolling but I never did.

I broke my foot about two weeks ago due to a stress fracture, almost certainly from work. The same people in middle management who caused these tensions let me choose on the spot (today) if I wanted holiday pay, sick pay or carry on working in the workshop the minute I told them I boke my foot. It's blue collar work in a field full of injuries as part of the job description, unless your arm is flopping around on the end of your elbow like jelly, they're pretty generous with letting you continue work. Literal blood trails have streamed down the hallways with no lost days from those leaky workers. They continued to let me work the following day onwards after breaking my hand three years ago. A broken foot is a obviously a lot harder to keep the weight off though.

Anyway. Not only that but they started giving me cat food for my cat (yes for a cat, not hippo), cookies for people on the shop floor and even starting putting me on courses. I've finished a heaving lifting gear inspection course two years, overhead gantry crane course 1 year ago, cherry picker course 2 years ago (fun provided you like heights and basketballs) and will be put on a forklift/s course shortly. A draftsman recommended putting me on an electrical appliance inspection course last week too.

Dunno what really happened. I can't say it's because of pressure from upper management/owners as it even covers smaller things they will know nothing about like my birthday.

No idea what caused this or how common it is for autistics but it's weird and not like the type of workplace problems I see from autistics or anyone for that matter.

I'm on my bed right now after being given time off. Even though I said I wanted holiday pay I can still phone up in three days time asking for sick pay instead and will still get it.

I've seem to have gone from workplace punch bag to mostly untouchable. This broken foot has hammered home how things seemed to have changed with my prior enemies.

It all seems like good news. Sounds like you are a valued employee.
Yes, things have changed from when I first went to work at my first job over 50 years ago.
Hope you heal fast. best wishes!

People sometimes mellow, other times it's not so much a change of heart but some logical factor they've noticed but haven't disclosed. I wouldn't be too quick to label the newly-nice management as friends. There might be a more cynical motive that's driving their recent good behaviour. I'd just make hay while the sun shines, hope for the best in the future, but plan for the worst. It does sound as if somebody is trying to butter you up for some reason. I would think either they've noticed that there's something you might do to them that would cause them trouble they can't afford, or they're about to ask you to do something for them and are seeking to buy your goodwill.

We used to have a departmental services manager who was widely known to be rather a dishonest, nasty piece of work. Eventually he got sick of his job and took early retirement. They say he was surprised how good his pension was going to be, and that during his final couple of weeks when the pressure was finally off, he became quite a nice person.

I don't see the concept of friends and enemies as completely black-and-white. To me there's a whole profile of things about any particular person, some of which I like and some I don't. And people's behaviour can vary a lot depending on their moods and the circumstances at the time of course.

Nope... An enemy is always an enemy. But I have lots of experience with so called friends turning into enemies.