I am autistic and work in a call center, not because I love it, but because I have bills to pay and also I would not survive in many other environments if I'm being quite honest.
Employers are not very clued up on how autism works.
They don't understand that autism means that you might require a strict routine or schedule, that you may have issues with executive function be that task initiation or task completion or both, they don't understand that because of rigid thinking it can be hard to switch between tasks, and they don't understand that what NT people can do as routine or a singular task flow we see as individual tasks ie. Answering the call, answering each individual query, writing the notes, completing the notes, placing orders, visiting individual tabs, swapping between talking to typing and typing to talking. They are all tasks. They also don't understand sensory overwhelm. We use our 8 senses every day. Touch, taste, smell, sight, sound, interception, proprioception and vestibular. Because our brains can often lack the ability to filter out the information being delivered to us through these senses it is easy to become overwhelmed and overstimulated.
An example from my own workplace that I'll give is that my workplace use a central knowledge base for all important updates but in order to catch people's attention they use bold colours, a lot of pop arty style graphics, use a large variety of different texts and backgrounds and a lot of hyperlinks to other sources of information which means sometimes we have to have multiple tabs with all of this visual stimuli on, and they want us to read through this while we're in meetings or on a call, and I have to point out that I can either process what I'm seeing or I can process what I'm hearing, it's really hard for me to do both at the same time with the level of focus that they require.
It is the method of delivery of this information and how they allow me to process this information that is indicative of whether it's successfully implemented by myself.
Too much stimuli and I will go into shut down mode and nobody will get much from me.
The thing with autism is it is a different neurotype and whether some autistic people believe it or not, it is disabling and therefore a disability.
I have worked in other areas and found that the call centre work from home environment allows me to control a lot of sensory input to perform my best but the job itself is really difficult to do because I am autistic.
I, like you, sometimes, or often, rather, spend time out of my contracted hours playing catch up for things people do in their working hours, and a reduced workflow was requested as a reasonable adjustment as I work for a large organisation, international even, and the workload can easily be spread with it making very little difference to any ones day. However what I really need are better tools and strategies provided to me by my workplace to level the playing field. Both things can be achieved with things like requesting breaks are spread out across the day, access to urgent personal time offline when I am overwhelmed, better training and understanding of the effects of burnout for management so they can better manage my performance and work with me to achieve my targets, and less micromanaging as it is very square peg in a round hole. I am capable of doing the job, but if they aren't willing to provide an accessible way of viewing their procedures then I need my own processes for this and if it reaps the desired outcome they need to get off my back.
Sadly, I am off sick, again because my needs at work aren't being met however I do fully recognise that my employer could do their absolute darndest to try and meet those needs with the resources they have available and sometimes it still won't be enough, as thar is par for the course with autism.
My employer does value staff welfare, and holds regular welfare meetings and I do think more employers should hold welfare meetings, but they don't pry for specifics, they just make sure they're following the right procedures for time frames for occupational health referrals, sick notes etc.