At the end of my tether with work.

[thomas mg]

Hi. This is in part a chest clearing excericise and in part a plea for advice.

 

Due to a late ASD diagonosis at the age of 30, it has come much too late to avert much of my hardship. At school I didn't get the adequate or appropriate attention so with modest grades, I skimmed through A levels and into a university foundation course by the skin of my teeth. However due to the sum of all factors, not least the death of my mother I was far too emotionally fragile to perservere with my studies owing largely as well to my then undiagnosed ASD/aspergers. I'm sure i'm not covering any new ground and this is a carbon copy of other people's experiences here.

 

Here I am, 10 years later stuck in a minimum wage call centre job and living a hell on Earth. Being customer service orientated in nature, my work aggrivates my ASD tendencies in completely the worst way possible. My ASD means that my social characteristics suffer and I have advanced creative abilities in lieu of this. I cannot relate to people easilly, especially when they are patronising or condenscending. Everytime I get asked by a customer "why dont you speak like a human instead of a robot" I die a little inside and want to scream out. In addition to the absolute foul management style of the supervisors, the nepotist promotion philosophy there is no way for upward mobility. A scalding last year by my supervisor was the straw that broke the camel's back and after a failed suicide attempt that my wife prevented, I had to take 3 months off on statutory sick pay due to depression.

The annoying thing is I keep getting told by people 'I'm lucky' to have a job in this current economic climate. Am i that lucky, to have a co-erced position without any mobility hope, general job satisfaction or having a neurological condition that is being aggrivated by said job?

 

Not having necessary cash to return to academia armed with knowledge of my neurology, my only hope is to go into business to pursue a career in game development. However being full time employed I do not qualify for a prince's trust subsidy (yet another catch 22) i struggle with the paperwork involved in running a business is something of a deterrent and what i could really do with is help in learning the necessary skills or applying for start up capital with assitance orientated with someone like me in mind.

 

Does anyone know of such facilities? Or if i may be eligible for DLA or benefit to get out of my current job to invest my time into my business?

 

Thanks for reading, and even more thanks for any constructive feedback.

Edited February 5, 2012 by thomas mg

[Tally]

Hi Thomas,

 

Your job does indeed sound like hell on earth. I hope you can find something better. Is going part time a temporary option?

 

DLA is not means-tested. You can get it whether you work or not, assuming you meet the criteria. If you've got any questions about DLA, start a separate post about it and we'll try to advise you. You may be entitled to Working Tax Credits, depending on your wife's income. You're unlikely to be entitled to any out-of-work benefits if you resign voluntarily. It might be worth a trip to the CAB to clarify your position though.

[thomas mg]

Hi Thomas,

 

Your job does indeed sound like hell on earth. I hope you can find something better. Is going part time a temporary option?

 

DLA is not means-tested. You can get it whether you work or not, assuming you meet the criteria. If you've got any questions about DLA, start a separate post about it and we'll try to advise you. You may be entitled to Working Tax Credits, depending on your wife's income. You're unlikely to be entitled to any out-of-work benefits if you resign voluntarily. It might be worth a trip to the CAB to clarify your position though.

 

Going part time is an exhausted option which i did for about 6 weeks after my SSP leave. Unfortunately as a father of 2 I was unable to float my fair share of the bills and it was taking a toll on my wife.

 

I've got an appointment with an autism society NI case worker this month. I'm hoping she can help me out. Failing that, i'll try the CAB as you suggest.

 

Many thanks Tally.

[LancsLad]

Hope I can provide a bit of perspective. Firstly at whatever time our diagnosis comse, 10, 30, 70 or as in my case 44 what has gone before has passed and we can't change it the good and bad experiences. What we can do is try to affect our future and control how we see the present.

 

In my life I have done a few things prior to my diagnosis which might not be well matched to me at a personal level. For a number of years I was a highly successful teacher but was retired early due to ill health after a very nasty 12 months or so of intense pressure ending in an assault by a group of older pupils. I along with my brother ran our own retail business which had to be liquidated costing me 10's of thousand of pounds. I have been a sports coach at regional level as well a a foster career with some very challenging individulas the pressure of which led to a nervous breakdown. I make these points for one reason whilst I do not do those things now the experiences they provided me with helped me to develop my skills, build confidence and importantly meant I developed an excellent set of coping and management strategies to use in my everyday life. If I had the choice I would go through the same experience again because it is what has made me into the person I am and resenting the past whilst it was pretty horrible at times does nothing in respect to moving forwards in my life.

 

My gut reaction to your post was that your work might not be a good fit for you, but more importantly I doubt that you are developing your skillset much at present. It is only you who can decide if the pressures of work are too much for you to take in which case you have your all round health to consider which is more important than work in anybodys book.

 

I would try to take a balanced view of the positives and negatives of your current job and what they might mean in your life. You rightly say you have an income and this makes you able to contribute to supporting your family a very big positive. I would also not be surprised if whilst some emotional customers loose control of the conversation and get personal that your responses I suspect might be calm, constructive, logical, impartial etc... you may be very good at your job but simply do not see it that way. Is your employer aware of your diagnosis and as a result what your strengths are. Within the same organisation there may be better opportunities for you, maybe not at this very minute but in the future, this might be worth exploring and lead to promotion you never know if you don't ask.

 

If you decide you want to change direction then go ahead and do so. You are right to say it is a very difficult climate at present, I am highly qualified and have been out of work now for nearly two years as an indication. Try not to see things as black and white issues, I know I have a tendancy to do so at times, but think about transfaring to another area of work. What could you be doing to develop a skills set for that area now in your own time? Possibly start a project to show a future employer that you have a strong desire to learn new skills in their respective field. The project does not have to be perfect or to their industry standard but simply show a commitment to wanting to learn.

 

My last bit of advice is get things in perspective. AS does push our emotional energies, to the limits at times, but our background thinking really does add to this one way or the other. I know when I get negative about something I can be very negative, but when I am positive it can seem like I have a lot of energy to spare. A challenge might be to simply for the time being see your job as neutral and tread water with it. If you can do this then you might have the energy spare to put into more productive areas of your life without initially taking away something which we all need a lot of and that is stability. Talk things through with people around you and explain your feelings and get their support in any decisions that you make. There are some opportunities out there in respect to support but believe me they are very limited and financial support is virtually impossible to come by I know I have tried hard with a very good business plan which is recieves very positive reviews only to be told sorry but we can't help at this moment in time. When I was forced to retire from teaching I felt a large part of me had been taken away, I have since understood that what we choose to do in respect to work does not define us, rather it is how we choose to see ourselves. I have the same value as a person sat here out of work as I would as a top CEO of a multi national or if I was back teaching. When we can find that real value in ourselves that is when we can put up with a lot of things in our lives which are far from being perfect, this is as much true for the vast majority of the population regardless of anything such as AS.

[matzoball]

Since you have a diagnosis you can ask for reasonable adjustments at work. As such, if being on the phones is the problem, then ask if it's possible to do off phone work such as admin. if you go online and look up the acas work site they will give you a number you can call to get legally sound advice so that when you approach your bosses, they will have to help you. If they don't they are breaking the law. Of course this will involve you telling then you have an asd. But they can't tell anyone else if you specify that when you tell them. I've been in call centre hell before so I know how it works. Chin up.

[thomas mg]

I have asked about support roles (non call taking roles) in the past. The problem is the company is downsizing these and the opportunities to get into these jobs are few and far between, most of which being ringfenced for friends of management. Its very much a 'jobs for the boys' environment.

 

The company offers 'training' courses but the reality is these offer in effect lip service to the company providing meaningful promotion opportunities since the non call taking jobs are so sought after a discoordinated and reclusive aspie like me has no chance against a bunch of NT's with friends in the right places.

 

Besides which, skilling up just to climb the ladder in that place is besides the point. I want to pursue external help, so i can acheive my real ambition of getting into the computer game business.

Edited February 6, 2012 by thomas mg

[Sally44]

It does not matter if these jobs are being ring fenced. You can get someone from the Disability team [usually one within each local authority]. Phone the LA and ask to speak to someone who deals with Disability Discrimination.

 

What you would also need is a diagnosis, and if you have that you may get assistance from them on how to approach your employer for them to make reasonable adjustments to your work, which they have to do by law.

 

The fact that you have been to the verge of suicide and been on medication for depression is also in your favour.

 

There are also organisations that help people start up in business. I don't know if some are free or if you have to pay. Try contacting your local Chamber of Commerce or again ask the local authority, or the job centre etc.

Edited February 7, 2012 by Sally44

[LancsLad]

Thomas what do you see yourself wanting to do in the computer games industry?

[thomas mg]

Thomas what do you see yourself wanting to do in the computer games industry?

 

Designer/artist.

 

I'm also teaching myself programming because its next to impossible to find help when you cant afford to pay anyone.

[thomas mg]

It does not matter if these jobs are being ring fenced. You can get someone from the Disability team [usually one within each local authority]. Phone the LA and ask to speak to someone who deals with Disability Discrimination.

I can't prove that i'm being directly discriminated against. Excluded maybe, but thats different. At the end of the day its their word against little old mine.

 

What you would also need is a diagnosis, and if you have that you may get assistance from them on how to approach your employer for them to make reasonable adjustments to your work, which they have to do by law.

I have a diagnosis, my employers reaction was fairly indifferent.

 

The fact that you have been to the verge of suicide and been on medication for depression is also in your favour.

 

There are also organisations that help people start up in business. I don't know if some are free or if you have to pay. Try contacting your local Chamber of Commerce or again ask the local authority, or the job centre etc.

I've already been through the local enterprise course funded by the European development fund. As far as I'm aware this is the only help available at government level.

 

None of the content was unavailable on the internet and at the end there was nothing in the way of financial assistance.

 

It was a waste of time.

[LancsLad]

The first thing I will say is that as a designer in the architectural field I have yet to find anyone who is any good at teaching programming and I have been through university courses at masters level. I think this is one area where you simply have to do your homework and find out what software is being used in the specific areas you want to go in an then do the hard yards at home. I am not sure how far you have got with this but you have to get pretty serious, and I mean 100's of hours. One issue with learning current software is the limitations of the average home PC. I have a pretty good system at home but it has its limitations compared to what the average studio system can acieve with networked capacity and specific rendering farms when it comes to top quality outputs. My experience is that you can still impress individuals with home outputs as professionally they can always polish them up if compatible on a studio system.

 

I suspect there are a lot of similarities between my area when it comes to 3D design and the games industry though the software platforms will be different. I am 46 and one thing I have had to accept is that there are a lot of individuals in their early twenties who are pretty clued up on the software and seem to pick it up reasonably easily. As we get a bit older I have found it takes a bit of effort to keep up. What is a fact is that at the lower end of the design process the market will be flooded with undergrads who are happy to work as interns in the industry for little in the way of a salary to simply get a foot on the ladder. This believe me is a real obstacle if you have a mortgage to pay, kids to clothe and feed etc.....

 

What I feel is in short supply in all creative fields is inovative and original concepts/ideas. There are technicians aplenty but all creative industries are driven by ideas not people. Have you got any good concepts for games which you could develop in a presentation format? If you have then I would produce a series of storyboards and mock ups of the concept at a level which a layperson would get a grasp of the feel for the game.

 

I am not trying to douse your fire rather the opposite and give you some constructive advice around your ambitions. I have spent my life moving around various design fields, engineering, product design, teaching, garden design and landscape architecture. In this time I have come across hundreds of individuals who want to be designers of one form or another. Many of these have a strong interest in the design area they wish to pursue be it automotives, fashion, electronic products or computer games for examples. In my experience having a very strong interest in an area is not the same as being able to design, I feel it is something you can either do or you can't. If you can through a lot of dedication you can get better and faster at it, if you can't then there is no way you would be able to deal with the pressures of the industry in any form as a designer.

 

The reason i am saying this is if you want to go into this industry and it is a worthwhile aim, then you should be capable of sitting down at a kitchen table over a weekend and generate pages and pages of design sheets for a game concept which will be good enough to present to someone in the industry. If you can't do this then i think you are looking at entering as a technician which as i have said is highly competitive, not that well paid and the work is to be honest quite mundane and very repetitive, this suits some people but it is not the glamour job many kids would concieve it to be.

 

If you are serious then I would invest time at home in exploring your own potential in this area by setting yourself challenges and projects to work on. Use your imagination and think outside the box, no point in developing fantasy storybords or WWII shoot em ups. Far better I would suggest to develop concepts for the teenage girls market or the elderly on a platform such as the DS to give you more structure. Showing flexible thinking is better than saying you can follow a trend if you get my drift. By finding out what you can do and in what time frames will give you a strong feeling of what might be involved but importantly provide the basis of a portfollio. I would then be tempted to digitise what you have produced and burn it on disk and then research some contacts in the industry and send it out there with a covering letter explaining a bit about yourself.

 

All of these things you can do without having to jepordise your current stability. It is good to have ideas as to where we want to go in the future, it is even better to constructivly work towards realising those ideas in reality. Thomas hope there are a few ideas here which offer encouragement.

[Sally44]

The Disability Discrimination Act says that employers have to make "reasonable adjustments" to allow anyone with a disability to be able to carry out or continue working. IF 1:1 interactions over the telephone are affecting you to the level that you attempted suicide because of how bad it makes you feel, then you can ask your employer to make a reasonable adjustment such as moving you to a job where you do not have to interact directly with the customer over the phone. And your employer would be obliged, under the DDA, to make that adjustment. Talk to someone with DDA experience.

[thomas mg]

LancsLad, thanks for your advice. Working for another company in the capacity of a game designer is not something I have overlooked. The reason I am looking more towards the self employment route is because of my geographic location and personal circumstances. In the county Down area where I live there are no development houses within commutable distance (the nearest one would involve a daily 6 hour train commute but they are never hiring anyway). Moving to England is impractical as my wife is fairly rooted here, we have children and getting a new house/intermediate job would create all sorts of upheaval both in terms of finances and stress. I lived in England 6 years, the cost of living is what drove me back home.

 

Besides which i feel I am too far beyond the point of no return to go back. I've made some excellent contacts who are involved in my project, 1 is an electrical engineer and sound technician and I have contacts with 2 proficient programmers however their day jobs undermines their level of commitment. I've also made a network of contacts within the industry through a distance learning course i am partaking in. Taking into consideration all things i feel entrepreneurship is better as it will not undermine my creativity and allow me to dictate my own working terms. I just dont feel i can gel with employers anymore.

[LancsLad]

I can understand where you are coming from, Thomas don't feel the following points are directed at you rather I think they might be helpfull to others thinking about work and working from home and come to this post. Whilst people can talk all they want about equal opportunites and positive discrimination in the workplace, not having a go just being realistic, there is a reality to having AS and the practicalities of working life and we have to make decisions about what are sustainbale working environments for us.

 

Working from home in my experience has its advantages and disadvantages. Personally I think it is important that you have a very strong skillset to be able to compete as often you are not around the general social forces which exist in and between organisations. If your talent is strong enough being freelance can work well though it is the area which fluctuates most when we are in the current financial climate. My experience in my field is that there is little in the way of work to go around so it tends to stay in house. When things start to pick up which they inevitably will I believe strongly that freelancers benefit first because companies are wary of adding to their payrole until real stability is back in place and this is a good time to make a mark.

 

From personal experience you need an awfull lot of discipline to be a home worker. There are a multitude of distractions and reasons not to work around you and having a dedicated space is important, I have a bedroom set up as my office/design studio, if I could have it my own way this would be at the bottom of my garden but there is not enough space. One of the advantages I find is that I can work at my own pace based on how productive I am. I track all my hours on daily time sheets and when you look back through them the hours are pretty erratic and nothing like 9 to 5. I know that when I am in a good mental state I really have to push on and be creative and do the important aspects of a project. I also know that I often have to grind through more mundane tasks when my mental state is not too good and try and get the most out of my time but be realistic. Because this is how I work very short term projects of a day or so are difficult to deal with, which is a problem as a lot of freelance work is like this to get someone out of a hole. Its not a case of not being able to do the work it is a case of predicting if I can in that particular time frame. Over a mid to long time frame I find I am able to predict outcomes and often finsh work well ahead of schedule in normal circumstances.

 

If there is a big problem I have with working from a home base it is there is no one to kick you out of work. By my nature and this is I suspect true for many with AS I can become completely absorbed in a task and don't want to put it down. In normal work conditions they tell you to go home and see your family as they want to lock up, this is not the case when at home and if you are not very carefull family can really suffer and thats not fair.

 

When I was younger I didn't have the confidence in my abilities to be self employed, I think it is very rare for anyone in their twenties to have this. As I got older I began to value my skills more and could see they were transfarable into other scenarios. I think for most of us there is a point where we think what if I was my own boss wouldn't that be better? For many with AS not having a boss seems like a great idea, but we need to understand that we need the positive skills of those bosses we don't like if we are to be succesfull. The truth is that to be self employed we do not have to go it alone. What is so good about your last post Thomas is that you highlight the need to get a support structure around you before making this important step. We all need to realise even the most able will not posses all the skills to go it alone. I for one believe that because of AS my skills are not very well balanced, I am very good at a number of things but the price to pay is that naturally I am equally as bad at others. Being independant means spending more time focusing on your weak areas than your strengths. Often when you work for others thay are reasonably happy for you to simply use your strengths and when you move away from these environments it can be a real wake up call. For someone with AS I think this takes time to find support networks which complement your skills as you need to be comfortable with these people and I believe this means networking for a period of time untill you informally sort things out in this area. This takes patience and I guess this is where you are up to in the process. I wish you well in your endevour remain positive about what you want to achieve in the long term, a lot of realism is required but you come across as having this, and at the end of the day a bit of luck and bravery but I think we can help ourselves in that respect by making the right decisions at the right times.