Typical

[greenstorm]

Alright. I'm not used to having a normal experience of something, but I may be having a normal experience of autism, now, as an adult, that many people are more used to having their whole lives.

So a meme went around a bit ago. The text was:

people think taking things literally is just like

-not getting jokes and sarcasm

when in my experience it's more like

-thinking you have to fulfill 100% of the exact requirements for something, when everyone else apparently knows it's actually a bit flexible

-SAYING something with a literal meaning and others interpret it figuratively

-following instructions to a T but not knowing how [you're allowed to] modify them when something goes wrong

-doing EXACTLY what someone asked of you and them getting mad that it wasn't what they meant or actually wanted [this feels very gaslight-y]

-being terrified of people's empty threats or hyperbole without realizing they didn't actually mean it

-[learning] all the connotations of different words so you can use them as precisely as possible, getting frustrated when others are inexact

A lot of this aligns with my experience.

For the longest time my work was pretty unambiguous. I worked hourly or by piecework, I did the thing, I got paid for it. Now I'm in this union environment which is not designed for folks who do either knowledge work or fieldwork, and the way folks deal with it is by being imprecise, by saying there's no flexibility but knowing there is, but knowing there's not too much flexibility. There are a ton of, I don't know if they're empty threats or not, but I suspect they are. And no one can speak plainly about it because when I ask literal questions they're figurative in response.

And none of this is about the actual work product. It's all about "is it ok to start lunch 5 minutes early and end it 5 minutes early" which is such bullshit to be worrying about. I'd rather worry about the fact that wildfire and the biologists have conflicting requirements for how much wood is left on a block and how to reconcile that, but instead I get resentful that I get my teeth into a project and if I take 10 minutes into lunch to complete something I can't just come back after lunch 10 minutes later without using vacation time, but sometimes I can, but we're not supposed to, so don't do it often because we're not supposed to but it's ok to do it a little bit but really we shouldn't do it but sometimes we do. So then PDA kicks in and says that since they don't care whether I'm working well or efficiently, why should I bother? I can sidestep the demand of having to work because my work is useful and often interesting, but having 8 to-the-minute time demands per day is defeating me (start, lunch, two breaks, and end time).

Then I do some spiralling around it because I'm not doing good or prolific work and it feels like a shitty use of my time. So, ok, I'm having poor mental health and I know some things to do about that: some grounding things, journaling, taking time to really root into my life and pay attention. But then more ambiguous rules stuff strikes: if I'm having a truly awful mental health day and can't work, does that count as sick for the purposes of sick leave? When they send out emails a couple times a month telling employees to do all these grounding exercises and whatever to care for their mental health, do they mean on the clock? Probably they mean "don't do it, it's not ok, but it's ok to do sometimes but not very often but it's actually allowed".

Which basically means it's something you're not supposed to talk about, which is isolating.

So, yeah, if autism is a thing where folks don't follow social norms right (among other things) then one of the big ways it presents for me is in interpretation of ambiguity. In a lot of cases I can throw the ambiguity out and society's ok with that: modern gender stuff, for instance, makes less sense to me as an actual thing than older more defined ones, but I can throw out the whole thing and folks are more or less ok with it. Mononormative relationships? Make no sense to me but I just don't do them.

Highly unionized (read: prescribed) work environment where folks socially kind of work around poorly worded rules? Crashing. Burning.

And it's making me think about how autism is supposedly also an issue of emotional regulation. The idea is that autistic folks can't regulate like neurotypical folks and they melt down or shut down a lot. But if you put anyone in a situation where they aren't allowed to know what they're supposed to be doing, what they're supposed to be doing is actually impossible for them, they don't know whether or not there will be punishment in any given second for not doing the thing they don't know what it is and can't do-- and then stop them from doing the mind or body things (stimming) that soothe them. Well. I think you get meltdowns and shutdowns, fight or withdrawal, and all the normal trauma stuff that autistic people evidence to the point where we do not know what autism looks like without comorbid trauma stuff.

So that's my weekend thought. Also some farm stuff but that gets its own post because it's happy.

Comments

[yarrowkat]

Jenny had an experience this month where the washing machine is going out, and Tristan would come in (he's done this maybe 3 times) and said, "we need to call the repair person." and she agrees, and then he's mad that SHE didn't call the repair person. but he didn't ask her to - he stated that we collectively needed to.

she does seem to have gotten him clear on the idea that if he wants her to do something, he needs to actually say it, like "jenny, would you please call the repair place tomorrow."

if i were having that kind of experience at work i think would start trying to find another job. or push hard for a way to get them to let the breaks be at flexible times, or something. it sounds terrible to be so regulated by external factors. i get an hour lunch and two breaks if i want them, per the union that covers my job, but nobody enforces it; i trade the lunch break for coming in an hour late all the time (like, 2-3 days a week, routinely) and take breaks when its convenient for my workflow.

it makes sense to me that people melt down over those situations. i think the problem is more lack of mainstream understanding of autistic experience.

[greenstorm]

I have developed a "ok, what are my action items, is that you or me?" verbal tic for situations like you describe. Out of curiosity, if Jenny said "we need to call the repair person" do you think Tristan would interpret it as him being assigned to do it?

My town is very, very small but I have certainly thought of it. Jumping to the other union would fix the situation - they are much more flexible and you just record hours and report them - but I do like my job. Our union negotiations are happening this spring so I'm hoping that gains a little more flexibility for us, since there's no much remote work now.

Yeah, stigma leads to lack of understanding in a bunch of ways, which leads to stigma.

[yarrowkat]

i feel like if he walked in and said that to me, i'd say, "do want me to do it or will you?" or similar. but it depends on context probably.

y'know, i strongly suspect that if Jenny said that, Tristan would *not* add it as an action item to his own list. gender? gender. ARGH. though it's very possible he would respond with "yes, do you want me to do that, or will you?"

do you have any input into what the union negotiates for? do they accept feedback and priority-setting from members?

[greenstorm]

For me there's a conversational mode and an action mode, and I sort of toggle between. I most often act in conversational mode ("I'm thinking about moving that bookshelf" doesn't mean, let's move the bookkshelf now, it means, do you have input on whether I should move it) and try to be very clear in action mode; I think many folks have an easier time navigating back and forth between those two types of speech.

They definitely ask us and have an email form that goes around. I'm unclear how much of that feedback actually matters to them, or how much I'm in the majority in what I want. They've made a statement about going after "recruitment and retention" which may involve flexibility and/or money, and compensation for folks who are pulled onto disaster relief (the other union folks get overtime; we get straight time no matter how many hours worked). So who knows, really?

[yarrowkat]

i blame this on my Aries Moon but if i say "what if we moved that bookshelf" there's like a 70% chance that what i mean is "would you help me move that bookshelf right this second" >.< many many people have provided the feedback that they don't want to live their lives like that and could i please calm down already and mostly that means i'm better at communicating more precisely "can we do this right now" than i used to be.

i could see overtime being a nice benefit, too, but not one that changes the 8 timeboxes a day problem. i hope they do work on flex schedules for you all. regimented breaks with zero flex is just inhumane.

[greenstorm]

Ha, right. I think out loud, so I like to talk things through before I do them or else I can't be sure it's not a terrible idea (like maybe it won't actually fit).

I do almost feel that because I'm natively bad at it, I'm more careful/better at it because I've had so many issues that I pick up that precision you mention.

AGREED. My job is either computery thinking or running around in the field, neither of those are super suited to this schedule. I think my union includes gov engineers and psychologists, it's a bit of a weird marriage.

[yarrowkat]

that makes lots of sense. i am preternaturally good at volume estimation; i can almost always tell by looking if thing A will fit in spot B. i am also aware that this is not that common an ability (my ex used to get so MAD at me when i'd be right. i'd say, let's reoraganize, this can go there, etc, and he'd insist on wasting hours measuring everything first and then he would be upset that i was right the first time. another red-flag-in-retrospect, of which i have a large collection. like sure, measure, but then don't get mad at me about it.)

unions are weird. super helpful! but weird. we're part of the Communication Workers of America which is odd because we are university staff. the union spends a lot of time fighting for the rights of the lowest-paid people and the custodial staff, which i appreciate though i am not impacted by either the issues or the fight. otoh, they occasionally make the legislature give us all a raise, so that's great. they compel equity increases periodically - like everybody under 30k gets brought up to 30k. i'm near the top of what's possible in my position so i'm okay there. benefit of longevity, i suppose. and i'm not full-time because US labor law is whack; i work 36 hours a week but that's "part time." 90%, they say. :eyeroll:

[greenstorm]

Haaaaa, oh Gods that's awful. Like, yes, measure, but after that awe is the appropriate emotion. I say this as someone who measures things for a living and can estimate the diameter of a tree or length of a log pretty well, but can't do bookshelf-under-overhang.

That's a pretty good union. I know in the last round of negotiations our union agreed to "anyone who's working on this date is immune to layoffs but anyone hired afterwards can be got rid of" and there's a lot of basically prioritizing seniority instead of trying for equity.

[yarrowkat]

length of a log i probably cannot do! at least not reliably. likewise diameter; that one kind of defeats me. bookshelf, i totally have your back! it's just What Fits Where, that's my weird skill. i have sometimes attributed this to driving (and going camping out of) a classic VW Beetle for so many years - i can fit many items in a small space just by organizing them well! but really it's something about how my brain works.

way back in the day, when i lived in the Casita (a 2-car adobe garage that had been converted to a studio apartment), Matt and i had a running joke about whether it was a square or not. i was certain it was longer than wide, and he was certain it was a square. finally we measured - it was 6" longer than wide. so we were basically both right, since it was only a little different, but also i was right. :) Matt being himself, (and not alan) he accepted that with grace.

[greenstorm]

I didn't used to be able to do it! The trick is to guess, then measure, several thousand times. It also doesn't connect to-- how to say this, it doesn't connect to my body or to my feeling of physical embodiment really. I look at it, a number comes into my mind. Other estimates I do are related to body-feelings.

See, abilities like this are part of why humans are so neat. It's like... I don't know, running a variety trial and finding a tomato that resists the cold better. Finding people's skills and strengths is a way to experience people's diversity, and diversity just *feels good* to be around.

[yarrowkat]

i understand about the embodied vs mental sense of it. different epistemologies for different skills or parts of a skill.