Making a “scene”

If you’re autistic, you may well need rest breaks in your work day, or to avoid work social events or just to have your camera off in work meetings. These are a few of the “interpersonal” area of reasonable adjustments that can be helpful. (Other areas are “communications”, “management” and “sensory”.) And if you have a supportive line manager, that’s all well and good and you may well get what you need. But supposing your manager is more difficult and you have to make everything happen yourself? Or supposing you’re with a set of colleagues you know less well and have to negotiate to get what you need? You – the autistic person who has, let’s be frank about this, a communications disability – may not be best placed to advocate for yourself.

I talk to an awful lot of autistic professionals, unsurprisingly, and something that many of them say is that it’s just too hard to get what they need at work. It’s difficult to persuade people that your needs might not be the same as theirs. Food analogies can be a good way of thinking about this. If you have any kind of food intolerances or allergies you’ll probably have experienced how difficult it is to get others – who have no problem with those foods – to take your situation seriously. You might end up having to be really persistent to get a waiter to be clear that a given dish doesn’t contain gluten or wasn’t prepared near nuts. You might feel you were “making a scene” in the restaurant and be embarrassed. You probably only insist because you know if you don’t you’ll be really ill.

Think of the autistic situation similar to that analogy. Perhaps you need to turn your camera off in meetings – perhaps the chair of the meeting, like the waiter, can’t really be bothered to understand why it matters or doesn’t care. You – the autistic person – are likely to be embarrassed about making a scene to insist on what you need when no-one else understands. But because your autistic needs are likely to be about interpersonal relations themselves you’re in a double bind. Either you tolerate something that’s really difficult for you by making a scene and standing up for what you need – or you tolerate something that’s really difficult for you by putting up with not getting what you need. There’s no good outcome.

Going back to my food analogy, imagine you had an intolerance for (say) dairy products. You need to see the menu that shows dairy-free products. But the only way you can get the waiter to bring you that dairy-free menu is to down a glass of milk. You can’t win.

Autistic life is often like that – you decide to cope without the adjustments you need because actually getting them will be a worse experience – at least in the short term – than surviving without them. So if you have autistic colleagues who need particular things in the workplace, please believe them. If you force them to advocate and negotiate for what they need, you’re actually probably making what they need totally unattainable.