coworkers who might be undx'd or are they just a*&^%%##@
I recently was called out by a coworker for an unprofessional response, I have no problem saying that I F-ed up in this, however I also can look at it from an analytical view.
To give the short version I was less than patient with one of the persons in the day program I work at after she had hit my 1:1 (mind you this was the 3rd person that day, and her staff couldn't be bothered with attending to her). In any case I cursed loudly at her and was far more rough with a restraint then I would be ordinarily.
After this happened I made some suggestions to make sure that this never happened again, (the 1st of which being to move the person away from my work area so I would not be in the 1st person to intervene position. I even offered to take the one person that none of my coworkers want to deal with in trade (he has his hands in his pants most of the time). However anything that was a change from the current was something she was ready to argue against, weather it was moving peoples seats or having a second person assist her with some of her responsibilities so that she could spend more of her time with the people on her caseload.
You may have just as well suggested that she3 have all of her hair ripped out from the routes. I have been trying to give her the bennifit of the doubt (I know how much I need my routines, maybe she needs hers as much) however, it reaches the point that almost no one wants to work with her. I edon't know what I am looking for in responses but having had 3 weeks off she makesz me dred returning to work
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to be lost I would have needed to know where I was going
"For success in science or art, a dash of autism is essential"
Hans Asperger
It could be AS, but maybe she's just difficult. Lots of people NT or otherwise, don't really like change and lots of them just like to argue. Do you have a boss or manager who makes the final call on disagreements?
The only advice I have about difficult coworkers is to avoid them as much as possible. Just have the bare minimum interactions required to be polite, but always be polite so they can't start any trouble for you by saying you are being rude or anything.
I hope that going back to work goes better than you expect.
Actually, I work with a few people that I suspect to be on the spectrum and they tend to be much more cautious about opening their mouths. When forced into a situation where they have to chime in, the tact can be missing. But they generally take much longer to analyze a situation and the err on the side of silence until they think that they've got it.
On the other hand, the ones that seem to be perceived as the most "normal" have a bad habit of acting on intuition and they happily launch into a situation without assessing it first. They just figure that they have this superhuman ability to read anyone and everyone. If they can't, it's the other person's problem. I find my "partners in weirdness" to be far more courteous and accommodating, while many of the NTs are steamrolling over everyone.
I'm not sure that I agree that we lack tact. Tact is not just the ability to phrase something in a socially acceptable way, but also accommodating people who are different than you. Most of us have spent our lives learning to coexist with NTs, whereas the majority of NTs don't know that we exist. So who are the ones lacking tact?
The way that I cope with the workplace is to just assume the role of an anthropologist. "I've decided to live amongst the gorillas to study their ways. They seem to know that I'm not one of them but they've accepted me and learned not to fling poop at me."
That "living with the natives" thing helps me to remember to act like one of them and it removes a lot of the stress when they behave "irrationally". It just becomes a study opportunity for me to learn to be more like them. It also forces me to not react "naturally". If it's a new situation with this particular group, I watch and take mental notes before assuming anything. No matter how weird it seems to me, I try to adapt what I see and use it or I just fade into the background and observe until I have a better view of what's going on. (Thank you, Margaret Mead!)
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"You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike"
