AIBU to struggle with having to hide my genuine opinions about colleagues at work?

In your case OP I would ask her to stop commenting on my desk and say it's how you work. If you want to avoid the chat about handbags, put headphones on. Or just say you need to get on with work and pointedly turn away.

As for asking people about their weekends, I thought it was like asking someone if they are well, you say "yes thanks" and move on, but where I work now, people go on for about half an hour about everything they did.

I need to have more interesting weekends, clearly.

But I also don't get all this "bring your whole self to work" thing. Nope - come to work, be pleasant and get the job done effectively. Professional and polite, as another pp said but that doesn't mean you have to be best friends. In fact, the less you know about your colleagues, the less likely you are to fall out with them!

Do you not think everyone struggles at times to work with certain colleagues? , They may find you irritating and there will be some there that don't like working with you just like you don't like them but just have to be nice, just like you need too. It is what grown ups have to do.

As above, ND does not have the monopoly on having to put some effort in to coping with colleagues.
If everyone is polite and considerate of others it makes it a lot more pleasant and considerably easier all round

Yep, we all struggle with that - autistic or not, but that's just life.

I hate the guff about being your authentic self to work

My authentic self eats cereal for dinner and has a huge pile of clean washing on her bed to be put away but instead of doing so, slept in the spare room last night.

My work self advises on contracts worth millions of pounds and juggles multiple projects.

I don't think people should have to hide having a same sex partner or their religious beliefs or having a disabled child or the sort of thing that "bringing your whole self to work" meant originally.

But I'm very much in the camp that your bring your professional self to work and the other bits stay at home.

So that means you smile serenely, zone out, nice the conversation on and then grumble to your work friends later.

Unless you want to be a hermit, you have to be able to rub along with other people in life. Just being polite is fine.

Perhaps it would suit you better to get a job where you can work from home.

Did you read the recent thread about someone’s son with ADHD using a blue light all to stop people he thought were drunk driving, because he believed he was right ? A version with initiative.

Your DH could try studying ethics and discover that ‘what is right and why’ is not so universally agreed upon. Might blow his mind, or he might have and gain some insights. Probably just find new ways to argue he’s right, with longer words.

Lol

This isn’t an autism thing, everybody struggles with this . Nobody rocks up with their true authentic self to work, nobody. You just have to internally eyeroll and stick 2 fingers up at their back , most people do that ( 2 fingers) bit in the toilet. Smile or scowl and nod and count down the hours until it’s home time like everybody else .

Really interesting thread OP, given this topic affects around 90% of us (some people don’t work). I’m enjoying and gaining from others’ tips.

I am too nice and don't like conflict so I have no advice for you sorry. ❤️

He doesn’t really consider what other people might think about him, as he is doing things right and this should be obvious to everyone. Anyone who doesn’t see this is objectively wrong, misunderstanding the facts, or being a nasty horrible bully for no reason.

He doesn’t understand that ‘rude’ is in the eye of the beholder - that if someone’s feelings are hurt by his behaviour, it won’t make anything better to argue with them vigorously until they understand they are objectively wrong.

He feels genuinely traumatised to this day by the fact that his teachers at secondary school said his behavior was ‘rude’. To his mind, he said please and thank you, and ate with a knife and fork, and that’s the sum total of what it means not to be rude.

It’s tricky because he really does mean well. He doesn’t wish anyone harm, never behaves out of malice, and can’t abide cruelty. In many ways he is scrupulously moral - because morals are clear rules. He is very invested in fairness where it can be objectively measured, but has no sense of emotional fairness, reciprocity, consideration.

He’s described it as though there’s a chapter in his manual of human emotion that’s written in invisible ink - it’s there somewhere, structurally, but it’s blank. Inaccessible in himself and incomprehensible when he encounters it in others.

He would much prefer if other people were robots programmed to anticipate his needs and meet them automatically; in standby mode most of the time, but instantly responsive should he require something.

He is also in standby most of the time. He is not able to take initiative. If someone needs him to do something, they need to tell him exactly what it is, justify why it needs doing at all, justify why it needs doing now, justify why it should be him doing it and not someone else, give him a very detailed, step-by-step breakdown of exactly how to do it, when to do it, and how to prioritise it within his current schedule and workload.

He needs advance notice and many, many, many reminders. He needs to be told every time that the thing needs doing - he can’t just take responsibility for it and fit it into a routine.

And if he doesn’t agree with any aspect of the way he’s been asked to do the thing or the timescale on which he’s been asked to do it, he will argue relentlessly as though his life depended on it, rather than just cracking on.

He finds social events draining, exhausting, and painful. The idea that other people enjoy one another’s company doesn’t seem to him like it could possibly be true - it’s just another example of how other people are disingenuous hypocrites who inexplicably endure objectively tortuous things.

I used to wonder why he was so keen to get married. I realised too late that he imagined marriage would be like having a carer or assistant or indentured servant, whose role was to be endlessly facilitative and understanding. Not much sense that this person might need or want anything from him. And if they did, they’d have to spell it out in granular detail, and it he wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t convenient to him.

ASD/adhd here.
With great difficulty.
Im often confused when my politest most considered and diplomatic response is met with “ooh, tell it like it is why don’t you?”
You can’t not offend them even if you try really hard so just accept people will either love you or hate you.

Yes it does read as depression. Reactive, passive, snappy, no feel-good insulation, exhausted.

Unfortunately teachers have to tolerate encourage everyone's little darling to be their 'authentic' self at school so its a bit of a shock to get into the workplace (private rather than public) and find out every imaginable concession is no longer at your disposal. Social skills are being gradually eroded in today's society - introspection and consideration are becoming all but lost.

OP I now take the stand that colleagues are not friends and that I don't need to share any kind of deep social interaction with them.

I do my job and I collaborate with people when needed. No more, no less. I could not care less if they like me but I expect them to respect me.

In my last organisation I was working with a bunch of passive-aggressive backstabbers who reported me a couple of time for being 'rude' for standing my ground when people who knew sod all about my area of work though they could criticise my work.

The whole organisation was toxic, with the worse staff turnover I had ever seen and I think for the first time in my career there wasn't a single person I liked or respected in that workplace, so I feel your pain.

If you are a woman as well too many people expect you to be 'nice' and 'flexible' in the workplace and now that I am older I have zero tolerance for this as well.

I don’t know who all these employers wanting ‘authentic selves’ are. Sounds like a short-lived trend in a self-referential London-creative-industry bubble. Bean bags, table tennis and performative authenticity.

@VoltaireMittyDream and @MxCactus posts are quite the juxtaposition. Thank you.

@VoltaireMittyDreamdoes your DH never have the experience of voicing his opinions out loud and discovering other people not only don’t agree with him but have completely different priorities, frames of reference (often wider and deeper than his) and values? Is he surprised? Or just dismissive? Does he recognise he is not omniscient, other people hold knowledge he doesn’t?

And can he not somehow insulate himself with a shell of don’t give a damn, or comfortable self-satisfaction, to protect himself from all this feeling about other people? His emotions sound off the charts out of control.

The worrying thing for humanity is that so many people who loathe other people currently hold power, and can pay underlings to do the cooperating to enact their misanthropic desires.

You can't say what you think of people like that in the workplace. You have to keep your lips zipped if you want to keep your job. There is no other solution.
You don't have to like or agree with everyone but you do have to have a friendly attitude and be polite.

Hello. I use a framework of bullshit that I say to people and a structured set of questions and responses. This significantly reduces the mental load.

For example. One of my huristics is 'compliment' then 2 questions (questions, then reflect back they said, then another question then reflect back).

An example:
'I just picked up this new designer bag'
'Wow look at you. Is that your first foray into designer bags?'
'No I blah, blah blah'
'Oh so you're experienced in blah blah blah. What's the best one you've got'
'My blah blah. It was from blah'.
'So blah is a standout in the bag game. Ah well looks good on you'

The mental load is reduced because although the words are different the structure is the same.

Practice responding with "Okay", "That's nice" and "Cool." She isn't interested in your honest opinions and doesn't need them.

If you really desperately need to vent, find some anonymous online community and don't use your work device.

@Redflagsabounded

Perhaps you could also think about the difference between 'not liking someone' and 'disliking' them. Two very different things. The first sounds like your feelings for this colleague from what you say. You don't have much in common and you wouldn't be friends with her outside of work. That describes 95% of us with our colleagues at work. It doesn't make them bad people or difficult to work with, even though it can be irritating at times. You go in, do your job, go home. Same as them.
Disliking someone is a more active emotion. They have done or said things that are nasty or unpleasant towards you (messy desk observation is really not enough for this).

This is a really good point.

Workplaces are difficult. You won't have a huge amount in common with most people you work with. You might find they have irritating tics, opinions you disagree with. You might find them occasionally wearing to be around.

That's a very different thing from actively disliking someone and thinking they are a bad person.

I think we would all help ourselves quite a lot by being a bit more tolerant of people in the first category. You are perfectly entitled not to like everyone you work with, you don't have to give up your weekends to hang out with them etc but they have a right to be who they are and to go about their day without being needlessly put down.

I think everyone has to filter themselves at work and yes, it's absolutely exhausting.

If it helps you to understand why it's necessary, the ONLY reasons humans have developed so much further than other animals is their ability to co-operate and work as a team. There are some highly intelligent animals who can't get a handle on their emotions in order to co-operate and haven't achieved anything like what they could without this co-operation. It's what makes us unique as a species, not our intelligence.

That helped me to understand the importance of socialising/team work a bit more when I understood that. Basically all intelligence requires a level of co-operation. The most intelligent humans imo learn how to galvanize a group of people to a similar aim to achieve something, which is very very difficult to do as people naturally are self interested and find other people annoying.

If you want to get ahead at work, you need to master the pleasantries and small talk. Your career will stall without it. And I've known people be fired from jobs because they can't fake their emotions and be pleasant to people they hate.

It's unfortunately part of work - unless you go self employed, but even then, getting the work will often rely on social skills - so I'm not sure that even gets around the issue.

Employers claim they want people to be their authentic selves but that's not true.
Really? My employer wants me to do my work and get along professionally with my co-workers. My co-workers are interested in me on a surface level but they don’t care about my authentic self and that’s fine

Christ how do you tolerate this?

Does he think he's the only person in the world who has ever had to accommodate other people?

OP, on the off-chance you come back to interact, can I just ask how you managed at school?

Or were you home schooled?