a LITTLE respcts goes a LONG way...

[macgumerait]

Question for aspies who work...

 

Do you ever feel like your aspergers traits cause you not to be taken seriously? This could eminate from anything; appearance, mannerisms, etc. Anywhere Ive went, or done, Ive always felt a distinct lack of respect/credibility from colleagues, and I am really frustrated at this.

 

My main traits are the following:

 

1. Speaking very quickly

2. Limited eye contact

3. Looking "young" for my age

4. My use of vocabulary (my natural speak consists of long, fancy words)

 

How can you correct this? How do you work around this issue?

 

For me, the problem of a lack of personal respect is compounded by the fact that most of the colleagues I have are of similar age. I dont talk or act like them, and as a result, find myself isolated in a lot of ways.

 

We have a Senior Personnel Adviser, only about 2 years older than me, who treats and talks to me like a child. She ignores weekly work-related emails I send, doesnt acknowledge me when in company, etc. She also, in my opinion, abuses her management role and expects me to dump everything on the odd occasion she needs me. Part of my role also involves visiting her office about three times a day to pick up mail. Instantly, the atmosphere changes as I enter the room, silence descends, until I leave.

 

Aside from a lack of acknowledgement, we have also had our run-ins as well.

 

1. I am denied an opportunity to pass on tips/more efficient ways of doing things after a trial spell assisting her department.

2. As soon as a new employee starts, and I take on lead training role, I am ostracized by the Adviser and the department. My hands-on training begins raising friction.

3. My core duties list, from my first day there, is asset-stripped....all to the benefit of the Adviser and her department.

4. A problem arises from a task I had been doing, but it is kept from me. I offer to assist in finding a resolution, but am frozen out by their department. To this day, years later, I am unaware of the problem which did arise in first instance.

5. Feeling really anxious and nervous at a Xmas brunch, she thought she would comment sarcastically to me, seeing I was uncomfortable - "Dont worry, we will soon be out of your hair."

 

Today, the Adviser was looking for a number of letters her department had produced. I am in charge of the departmental filing systems, so would be the individual best placed to locate and identify such material. Due to a strained workload in subsequent weeks, the filing has had to take a backseat. The Adviser decided to interrogate the current filing status in order to recover content. I spoke and offered to help assist, but she refused. Then she had the audacity to contact my line manager, and whinge about content I was organising on her behalf, being taken from her department. Thereafter, she took the rare opportunity to come to our office, and question me on the current status of the filing duties. Bottom line, the material she was looking for was not there, but rather than return to her office, decided to scrutinize and criticize the system. The lack of respect hit peak level when she decided to take custody of MY filing aid,an expanding file, without asking. In realtime, this now means that I have to sit and organise her filing in her office, then put it away.

 

She is just an extreme example of the lack of respect I feel I generate in work. I am not treated equally, and find a lot of marginalising goes on, behind my back. To make matters worse, we had a skillseeker, just out of school, working with us. As well as the department in question isolating him (coz his face didnt fit), I had to end up taking informal tutor role and delegating work to him. Rather than try to resolve the issue of having a skillseeker officially unsupervised, they revelled in the position that I went out of my way to keep this young guy busy, and working, justifying his participation with us. It built up and image in colleagues' minds that myself and the skillseeker were inseperable, and became a "running joke". Colleagues had the cheek to mistake me for this person, who is 11 years my younger, as we were both quiet in personality. I found this very insulting.

 

I am mostly annoyed at myself, as its my traits and mannerisms which is constantly causing this hapless perception colleagues seem to have of me.

 

Any advice on how you handle a clash of personalities, or how to correct mannerisms which can address respect issues, would be handy. Alternatively, if you feel Im being paranoid, please feel free to comment.

[KarenG]

Hello

 

I am not an Aspie so probably of no help at all, but from what you have said..you got the job in the first place because you were considered capable and it sounds like the people you work with are just unprofessional and downright rude and a bit bullyish. Thats not really helpful is it? Are they aware that you have Aspergers?

[coolblue]

Not formally an Aspie either, but have a lot of experience of work environments.

 

It sounds to me as if you and your Senior Personnel Adviser have very different expectations of how people *should* behave. You feel she is disrespecting you, and from what you've said, it sounds to me as if, rightly or wrongly, she finds the way you behave very annoying. She is sending 'don't behave like that' messages - ineptly and pointlessly perhaps - but that's what I think she's doing.

 

You make a number of references to age in your post. Age isn't often a key factor in organisational hierarchies. Position, responsibility and ability are. I couldn't work out how the Adviser's status and yours compare. She might be only two years older, but if she's in a more senior post and therefore has more responsibility, she might have a very different perspective of the degree of respect she owes you. She might also feel that you - again rightly or wrongly - disapprove of her and others. The 'we'll soon be out of your hair' comment suggests that she thinks that you don't like her and are behaving in a way which makes that clear, and which she finds uncomfortable. Which sounds as if it might be true. Albeit with good reason on your part.

 

The way to tackle this, in my view, is via your annual job appraisal. Assuming you have one. And assuming that the Adviser isn't the one doing it. The reason I suggest an appraisal as an appropriate forum is that then you can raise the issues you're concerned about without making an 'issue' about it. If you don't have an annual job review, ask the most appropriate manager for one, because you're are clearly very unhappy with work at the moment. I think there are three key issues that need to be tackled: some clarification of your role and agreement between you and the Adviser about what you are expected to do; how you are perceived by your colleagues - it's quite possible people are completely misinterpreting what you do; and how your colleagues are perceived by you.

 

If you pitch this from the perspective of 'I feel as if this, that or the other is happening' rather than assuming that this, that or the other is actually happening - even if it's patently obvious that it is - you are likely to get a more sympathetic hearing from management.

 

Essentially, although your AS might be the root cause of the problem due to the way it affects your behaviour, this kind of scenario is not uncommon and it's probably best to try to get some help with clarifying the specific issues before trying to second-guess what other people are thinking and changing your behaviour in a way you hope will help.

 

Hope this helps.

 

cb