So one thing you should know about me as an Autistic person, and this might apply to others, but I don’t know that it’s totally widespread among the Autistic population, is that I am pretty tied to my routines. They’re essential to how I function in the workplace, and they’re essential to how I function at home (the latter helps my kids, too – knowing what to expect on a day to day basis is important to them, too). I don’t do well when they’re interrupted.
I work a really good job for me. I’m the cook at a local preschool (that provides childcare and education to kids from 6 weeks old to 5 years old). It is a far cry from my last job, which was very social intensive, and could vary quite a bit. There were ways of doing things, but if something came up (like a bus full of high school athletes pulled into our parking lot, for example), we had to roll with the punches, as it were. But now, I spend a lot of time in my own space away from people, and a lot of my work is solitary. I’m very set in my routines. I’ve been there for just over two months and I have my own way of doing things and in my own order.
But as I cannot stay for 10 hours a day, and as we have an inspection coming up soon, they sent me someone to help with the order today, and to help go through what I need to focus on for the inspection.
This is good! But this is also bad.
It’s good because yes, I need the help in order to get everything in order, because this is the first corporate inspection I’ve had, and I need to know what to expect.
It’s bad because my brain is going “holy crap I don’t know what to do here because I have this way of doing things and now you’re moving stuff around and what if I can’t find things? And ack, why are you moving that around? It’s been there since the first day I worked here, and why are you doing that?”
Breathe.
I’m grateful for the help, I am. I am just having such a hard time getting my brain to cooperate and believe that this is 100% a good thing.
Next time, I wish I had some notice. Or I wish she would have come to me when it was spring break (like I had asked) when I could have stayed for longer because I had paid for childcare for the entire week, from 6am-630pm if I had wanted to stay that long.
But this interrupting me at 9:45 am, and again at 1pm, and moving things around and now I don’t have places for things I did have places for before? I don’t know. I’m frustrated.
And it’s easy to go “@#$%# neurotypicals!”
But I know it’s not her fault. It’s not even the office’s fault. It’s just that I need to be more explicit about accommodations and what I need. It means that I need to say “you need to write down what you want me to do with these things” instead of them sending someone in to help.
Tomorrow is another day. The order is put away, so hopefully she’ll just have some notes and I’ll get everything in order.
The world will not end because today, my routine was interrupted. I will adapt, and I’ve told myself the truth – “you’ve dealt with worse.”
The Caffeinated Autistic 