Would it be kind to take treats in after an awkward comment?

[ForMerryPinkCat]

I saw the most awkward situation at work today and have to share it because I keep thinking about it.

I work in a small team and we had a new person start today who unfortunately seems to have foot in mouth syndrome.

She's already accidentally insulted the business owner by making a bad joke about his car. (He's a farmer and drives a mildly battered pick up)

She then made a thoughtless remark because I put a spoonful of sugar in my coffee. Fat people shouldn't have sugar, apparently.

The thing that's making me cringe is a conversation I only got the last bit off but it was awful.

The business owner's wife also work for the business. New hire said "sorry, I have CDO. It's OCD but the letters are in alphabetical order like they should be."

That's cringe enough but it was incredibly awkward and horrible because the couple who own the business have a teenager daughter who has been suffering very badly from (diagnosed) OCD and is currently in hospital because of it.

Would it be weird if I took a few treats in tomorrow? They're both lovely people and the family has been through so much I'd like to do something to show them we care!

You would think so; wouldn’t you!

Yes take the treats why not.
To give the new girl the benefit of the doubt maybe she has beginners nerves and its all coming out wrong but time will tell with that.

X

I hate myself for this one and I still loop it in my brain - I worked with a girl from Romania and I clocked the accent but couldn't place it so I just asked her where she was from (maybe 8/9 years ago) she said Romania, I said oh thats great do you visit back home often?

She looked at me perplexed as fuck and said - 'This is my home'

I apologized instantly, I said sorry I didn't mean to be rude and she laughed and said no not at all, she visits back to her parents 2/3 times a year but the UK is home to her after 6 years.

The lesson I learnt in that one moment 25 year old me still cringes to hell.

Surely you must grasp that it's a spectrum & someone will struggle more & have more severe difficulties than you.

Just because you can function in social situations that doesn't mean that anyone else's disability is any less real.

Thinking something but knowing not to say it isn't 'masking' that's normal social awareness. Masking is things like using small talk by copying others because you think that's what you should be doing but getting it horribly wrong a lot of the time especially when in a new social group, colleagues etc.

No one is suddenly diagnosed with autism in adulthood, there were just different explanations and names for the disability eg mine was pervasive developmental disorder.

I think that's an example of over diagnosis when someone in adulthood suddenly gets an 'Audhd' label to explain fairly normal insecurities & difficulties.

Autism can be horrid, disabling & very isolating. The more severe the difficulty the less you can 'mask' your way out of it.

This.
And my first thought reading the post was that the new starter is nervous /shy/socially awkward and saying stupid things as she doesn't know what to say, in a misguided effort to fit in.
And if she's got OCD why is that so evil of her? And she probably doesn't even know the boss' daughter is OCD.
Are you this hostile to all new starters?
But you go ahead and take in your (passive aggressive) Brownies tomorrow.

And the hardest thing with autism is that it doesn't generalize to other situations so you go through life either in a cycle of doing/saying something that you then beat yourself up over & feel terrible & cringe when you realize how it's come across but then make another mistake.

It makes the anxiety , isolation & sense of being different even worse.

The misunderstanding of 'masking' also bothers me.

Masking is copying the small talk you hear others saying, because you are copying that but getting it wrong rather than it being genuine. There always some people who say 'im autistic but I'm just clever at masking' but simply just have less impairment in social interaction.

I would put money on the woman in OP being autistic.

that really sounds Awful. I wouldnt trust her near them and I would proplerly apologise to them. If she's hospitalised that is serious. I can't stand people that use the term as a joke. It's such a cruel illness.

You get that they’re op’s employers too? She’s not their minder.

What? The op doesn’t need to trust her with her own bosses, they aren’t children.

Why would the op apologise to anyone?

Wow.You have no idea about me or my experiences.

I am choosing to assume your post was so breathtakingly patronising and dismissive because of how your ND presents itself.

Have a day.

Oh and don’t bother replying as I’m leaving the thread now. You clearly think I have not struggled my entire life with my debilitating conditions, self harmed, lost jobs etc based on one situation. Well done

The woman in question does not have autism or any kind of neuro diversity. My colleague asked her directly this morning after some more rather nasty comments. When then led to a rant about "wokeness" and "made up problems."

She's NT, just awful apparently.

Oh and for clarity, while I'm not officially diagnosed, I have alllll the symptoms of ADHD so I'm not dismissing people's struggles.

Someone had brought lemon drizzle cake and double cream in today 😆

I still don't understand your angst about bringing in baked goods to the office.

It happens up and down the country every day.

Honestly this wasn't that bad- it's pretty common usage to say "home" to mean "parents' home/place of origin" eg people talking about going home for Christmas etc. "Back home" even more so (when Nina Simone sang about going back home, she wasn't talking about going back to her house). Sounds like this was maybe lost in translation.

Oh I like her even more now! It's nice to have some humans and not PC drones to interact with. Makes the day go by faster.

Okay edgelord 🙄🙄🙄

I find it really hard to believe that anyone in this day and age is having a rant about wokeness and made-up problems at work while still on probation.
She appears to be playing twunt bingo.

Oh, but some people would love to work with her because they enjoy twuntiness and conflict and seeing other people made uncomfortable.

I’ve been an immigrant before and it’s quite irritating to be asked about ‘back home’ and where you are from all of the time by people you don’t know or hardly know. It makes you feel like you have to justify why you are there over and over again. I’ve never asked anyone about their origins since unless I actually know them.

It's true unfortunately.

‘Treats’ are terrible -assuming they are sugary crap.

You don't have to eat them.

Quite inappropriate of your colleague to ask the new hire if she has autism

No, it wasn't.

We're all trying really hard to make her part of the team and to keep things running smoothly and all she keeps doing is being horrible and insulting people. It's making work awful.

She told me today that fat people shouldn't wear colours or have short hair because it makes them look like a weeble. I should grow my hair and only dress in black apparently.

It's especially upsetting to me because I've lost over a stone in two months and having a stranger be a bitch for no reason is incredibly hurtful.