I have Aspergers and I am about to fail my probation at work for 'not being a team player'

[hopelessme]

I'm heartbroken really.

I've been in my new job 6 months now and my 3 month probation report went well and I was told there were no problems etc. My 6 month review comes and my manager told me that my 'conduct is unacceptable'.

She reeled off a load of examples including me not offering to help a colleague out when they were overwhelmed with work, not offering to make others a drink when I make myself one, not contributing to conversations, taking the last of the milk and not replacing it among other things. She said that she needed staff to be team players as the team is a close and friendly team who help each other out and they find me very frustrating. She said that I was inconsiderate of others and was not committed to the growth of the team. The general idea of the conversation is that I'm self cantered and not a team player.

I've been told I need to work on my contribution to the team and I shall be reviewed in 4 weeks time. She knows I have Aspergers syndrome and I was diagnosed just 12 months ago after waiting years to be diagnosed. I am female and come across initially articulate and confident so people don't realise I have Aspergers and it is very common for me to be wrongly thought of as arrogant and selfish.

Obviously legally I could take this further but I don't want to and that's my decision.

However I am so sad. All I wanted was to have a job I enjoyed and was successful at and I tried so hard to be the best worker I could be and still failed miserably.

Although the male members of staff have been much more understanding of me and I have found them a sense of support and shall stay in contact.

I have done quite a bit of work around how to behave at work but in reality social norms and especially unwritten office rules are incredibly hard for me to master and it is always going to be something I struggle with. I shall learn from this experience and see where I could work on understanding office culture better.

AIBU to feel that while my actions may have seemed inconsiderate or selfish, a bit of understanding that this is a symptom of an employee with Aspergers should be expected? Surely if you're actively going to employ someone with Aspergers you know that symptoms they have. Or is my manager reasonable as whatever the cause of my actions, the action is still undesirable.

Whatever happens now I do think it's sad she has presumed me to be inconsiderate and selfish when I'm not at all.

The majority of the reasons given for the assertion that you are not a "team player" are ridiculous. I would hate to work in an office with the so called "rules" of your office. I don't want my tea to be made by someone else or feel that I have to make a load of other teas everytime I want one. As for not joining in conversations, unless they are work related why should you. I'm pretty sure that your management would prefer it if people didn't chat on non work related issues. The only thing that could be construed as not being a "team player" is the fact that you are not helping colleagues if they are over whelmed with work. However, if they don't actually ask for help even that would be debatable even without the fact that you have Aspergers syndrome.
To be honest, I wonder if they are just looking for excuses. Perhaps you are actually working harder than them and showing them up?

It's awful, isn't it, OP.

In the past, my carefully-considered tactic to negotiate unspoken rules of being a 'team player' has been to always refuse any cups of coffee offered to me, just in case I might be accused later of taking more than I give to the team, and to put myself in charge of doing the washing up at the end of the day.

I would speak to HR. Most of the examples you give are not reasonable. As a manager, I would not care who made tea or coffee for anyone else. I personally never liked people making drinks for other people because it means you end up having drinks when you don't really want them and they aren't made the way you like them.

The only example where she might have a point is helping others out when they are overloaded- but it would be quite easy to come up with a method that would help you to do this.

Hmmm. I get why you don't want to fight this o.p. not wanting confrontation often being part of aspergers.
In these circumstances you should be able to ask someone from H.R. to advocate for you, or if they have no-one who has an understanding of the condition then they need to get training.
This is a reasonable accomodation.
No criticisms which can be leveled at you for acting normally within your condition are acceptable.

Another aspie here, just checking in so I can reply properly later.

I think you are in a team with quite a narrow set of expected social interactions.

I would suspect that people within the team may get overloaded because there is a high level of social obligation within the team on individuals, but the interaction is not explicitly aimed at worksharing.

The best performing teams I have been in have a mix of social and intellectual ability. Some are highly focussed and can achieve loads. Others can make the team cooperate as a whole.

The worst teams for performing were ones that had to do a job requiring focus and attention to detail, but the manager was obsessed by social interaction, chatting in the kitchen, having to reply to emails within 5 seconds....

There will be jobs that you are supremely well suited for. This may be one but she is over concerned about superficial social interactions. Or it may genuinely not be the best match for you - maybe that is still to come.

What everyone else said, but it's striking that at 3 months you didn't get any negative feedback. So either these issues are minor niggles, or they now don't have funding/enough work to keep you and are looking to get rid.
Either way, it's not personal and is a sign of a poor manager.

Is there a colleague who you work with or feel you could talk to, to ask for advice on this team's ways of working, like some offices everyone gets own drinks, others everyine gets together at set times, you get the impression you haven't quite understood how things work here. And could say you are terrible at noticing subtle hints so if someone goes 'ooh, I'm so overloaded, what are you working on?', you wouldn't realise they thought they were asking for help, but of course if someone asks you'd be delighted to help where possible...

Anywhere I ever worked people just made their own drinks and didn't offer to make them for everybody else.

Sorry only got to page 3 but my blood is boiling on your behalf, OP. So many things ring true for me as well. In particular:

She did criticise my work. Said that I lack initiative and stay too long on one piece of work when there's other work to be done.

I have been told off for spending "too long" on papers which subsequently get glowing reports. I'm sure that if I rushed it and produced a poor-quality piece of work I'd get a bollocking for not spending ENOUGH time on it!

I was once told off for spending "too much" time on preparing for a 20 minute presentation I had to do in front on c.100 people I'd never met but would be working closely with over the coming year. I hadn't done any public speaking 3 years prior to this so I wanted to get it right.

She also said that I take long lunch breaks but this isn't true.

I always take my full hour for lunch. My line manager tried to pull me up on this once, saying it looked like I was never at my desk because I was in meetings or on lunch "all the time". Simply not true.

She also said that it looked worse because she and the rest of the team ate lunch at their desks. I flatly told her that I would continue to take the lunch I was entitled to and eat with colleagues from other teams in the cafeteria.

It was so, so stupid, frustrating and micro-managerial.

I really resent the way people use NT nowadays as if the over-socialisation is the only normality and only possible requirement in the world of work

The difference here is that most NT people would have picked up on the fact that it is the office culture quite quickly and tried to fit in enough to stay in with the boss.

Many NT people don't like all that and there have been plenty of threads on MN about how shit it is when you just want to get on with your job and not hear about Stacy's weekend plans and make a massive round of tea every 5 minutes.

I'm really angry on your behalf OP. You sound like a lovely, hardworking person and the manager sounds like an idiot.

None of the things you mention would be issues in my office, partly because it's the office of an academic department at a university and we have lots of academics and students who are not NT and are perhaps used to a more diverse range of ways of behaving and interacting. Partly because we're not dicks. Some of us in my office make drinks for others, some of us don't. It has no bearing on our performance or how we get on.

For what it's worth, dismissal based on aspects of Aspergers would most definitely contravene our Equality and Diversity policy here. Could you ask for the manager's points in writing so you can forward to HR? You say you feel supported by some male colleagues, could you ask any of them to vouch for you? Because it effectively sounds like the manager's word against yours as tea making and chatting aren't exactly formally assessable tasks. I really hope you get to stay if you want to because this is not fair.

Indeed, what is "normal"? I don't work with anyone normal. Everyone has their foibles and quirks and different ways of doing things, and no one in the entire office makes tea or anything else for anyone else!

Can anyone suggest appropriate reasonable adjustments that the OP could ask for? I've no experience of ASD so I've no idea.

This has made me so so sad. Most of the fuckers in this office use the last of the milk- and I guess they are NT.

hey OP, i’m sorry this is happening to you.

i don’t have any diagnosis of autism, but i do have a range of mental health issues including BPD, anxiety, OCD. my care co-ordinator signed me up for an Emotional Regulation group, which had 6 of us meeting on a weekly basis for 8 weeks.

on the side, my peers set up a WhatsApp group. i can’t do group chats - i can’t keep up, i don’t think group chats work unregulated for peer to peer support, and so i just didn’t involve myself.

i told my care co that it seemed highly likely it would crash, and hard. people were going and getting tattoos with each other, offering bad advice to a group member whose children had HUGE behavioural issues due to domestic violence in a relationship she couldn’t break away from; basically doing things that peer to peer support very much shouldn’t be involved with.

i was bullied out of the group. i had a personal message from another member saying they were sorry i couldn’t contribute to the group, and therefore wasn’t invited any more. a thanks-but-no-thanks for something that wasn’t part of the actual therapy group at all. fair enough, except it also earned me a very stern talking-to from the lead psychologist who confirmed that it was my fault, because i didn’t send sad emojis when someone said they had stuff going on. we ALL had stuff going on, or we wouldn’t have been in the bloody group to start with.

my care-co eventually confirmed that the group chat had indeed crashed and burned, that other people had been excluded and it had basically gone to shit. the whole experience has been hugely damaging to me. to be told i deserved exclusion and bullying because i didn’t do a sad face while other peers were giving terrible advice to others and didn’t leap to meet up outside the group, which meant meeting people’s children and group outings. if i could do all that, once again i wouldn’t have needed to do the group in the first place.

i still don’t get why this makes me a bad person (and bad in the context of a peer group with personality disorders and emotional problems so severe that none of us were able to work or live ‘normally’).

i met the lead psychologist again last week. she still insists i brought this down on myself by ‘not integrating or engaging with peer support’.

i don’t understand it at all. i keep telling them i don’t know how to ‘be’ around people. i don’t know who i am. i watch other people for cues, i mask my feelings, i just don’t fucking get it.

OP, i’m probably not helping much, i just very much want to say that i understand. i’m sorry people are shits. it does sound like you are being managed out - get in touch with ACAS, and if your town has any disability rights organisations, contact them too.

not a good fit for not making the tea? utter bollocks.

Hi OP

I also have Asperger’s and I’m really angry reading how you’ve been treated.

I have a job I love and I’m really fortunate as my workplace have been very supportive. Asperger’s is classed as a disability and you are well within your rights to ask for reasonable adjustments. I do get why you wouldn’t want to make a fuss - especially if you want to leave - but in my case I wanted to be open with my diagnosis as it allowed my colleagues to understand why I reacted in certain ways. I have had several adjustments which have helped, but of course nothing beats hiding away from people and focusing on special interests (in my case Excel, Lego and reading)

Anyway, what has helped me is

• mindview software which allows me to organise my workload more easily
• two ours of “quiet time” in our office every day where talking must be kept to a minimum (8 people in my office)
• people leave the room to have long conversations (rather than someone coming in, standing next to a desk and going on and on and on)
• having a room I can go to when I get overwhelmed or have a meltdown

But here is just general understanding that I’m a bit different. I do chat if a topic comes up that I’m interested in (Excel, Lego etc etc) but I don’t go to the social things unless I have to. I do make the/coffee because generally it’s o it for one or two people. I wouldn’t if it was big rounds.

You are being treated appallingly - they are probably in breach of disability act - and you would be very within your rights to go to HR.

Ps nice to see some general understanding and support on this thread for autistic people, there have been some hideous comments on MN (particularly in relationships section). It’s quute heartening to read that not everyone view us as nasty manipulative people!

I am Aspie- and told my team right from the beginning that I don't make drinks and that I don't expect others to make mine- I am VERY fussy about my tea.

But I was bullied at a previous job for very similar things. And I feel strongly that it IS bullying and prejudice- dressed up as 'culture'.

@DogDaysAreRover could you tell us more about the mindview software please? Sorry to go off topic, but I wonder if it's something we could use here.

Sounds awful, I’m so sorry you were treated so ignorantly

@drwashout

This is the software www.matchware.com/upgrade-features

It’s very visual (I just use the mind maps) and I am so much more productive now I use it. But it takes a bit of time to work out the best way to use it (I now have a weekly template I fill in but that may not work for everyone)

I got it via Access to Work which is an EU funded scheme implemented by the government so my company didn’t have to pay. That’s also a scheme worth looking into. (Though it may not be available in 100 days of course)

Many NT people don't like all that and there have been plenty of threads on MN about how shit it is when you just want to get on with your job and not hear about Stacy's weekend plans and make a massive round of tea every 5 minutes.

This! I'm NT and I hated working in offices with this sort of enforced socialisation. I also fucking hate making hot drinks. What a complete and total waste of time. I used to just bring a flask in to avoid these silly rounds.

I don't care to make friends at work, either. Work is for work and I have my own friends outside of it.

These people sound like complete and total twats, OP.

I challenged a previous employer about Disability Discrimination and ACAS did it ALL for me! ONE phone call was all it took and I got compensation through within 3 weeks!

Hi everyone. I just wanted to update to let you know that when my team asked me how my probation went and I showed them the written report they were ALL appalled. They said that they all thought I was a lovely, beautiful woman and an asset to the team. They said my work was absolutely fine and I'd done very well. Several people took the time to come in especially to say how lovely I am and inviting me to sit with them.

It's so nice to know I am not hated like the manager made out me to be.

There must be a reason why the manager thinks so little of me. I guess I will never know.

However judging by the huge amount of presents I've been given by my work colleagues for Christmas compared to her solitary mini bottle of wine, I think I know who the team prefer ☺️

I'm still deciding to leave though as I don't want to work with a manager like that.

Thank you for all the replies. I didn't expect to get so many.

Oh that is very good news and shows there are some decent people on your team! I hope this and the helpful advice on this thread has helped you feel more confident for the future even if you don't stay in the job.

Oh that’s nice at least