When the workplace is torture

This is the first post in a series of posts about bullying at work - worst jobs for autistic and Aspergers adults.

Work is something many of us face on a daily basis yet for some it has a real cost. When that cost is your very soul, you need to get out. 

Seven years ago I was in a workplace that can only be described as a shade of hell. When I describe it as abusive, those aren’t the words I used. Those were the words used by the workplace safety body in my part of the world.

I was made to use unsafe equipment and spent nearly forty hours every week alone in a warehouse. Despite following all company policies, my training, I could do nothing right. I was openly mocked in front of people and there was no support. The same person I should have reported this to was the same person doing it. 

My manager. 

I can tell you there, I died. My body might still have been there, but that light, that person inside, they were gone. They no longer existed. I nearly gave up the hobbies that I’ve now turned into a business. I looked at a loaded semi-trailer, prime mover and trailer, and thought for a moment of letting it run over me and my car. 

Only the thought of the driver and the cost they would pay kept me from doing it. 

At first, it only ever felt like a bad day at work. Just things were a bit busy, there’s a lot to get through. There was never enough of us, things going wrong on the floor. It wasn’t targeted, it wasn’t personal, it was just a bit of a rough patch. Nothing to give any more thought to than that. Then, it wasn’t just a bad day, it was bad days, in a row. It was big projects and impossible to complete task lists. It was having to do everything yourself when company policy required someone else to check things off.

Then before you know it, it’s not bad weeks, it’s bad months. It’s being blamed for errors in work you didn’t do.  Even being blamed for work you had no idea about at all. 

Doesn’t matter how or why, it’s just plain your fault. 

Before you think it could get worse, you’re given jobs and the wrong tools. You’re given a job there’s no way to do. It truly is impossible. If you think otherwise, get a 50mm internal diametre 90 degree elbow in stainless steel, power coat it both sides then try to clean the threading on the inside without a full set of dies and taps. What you’re given is a soft steel plug and an air powered impact wrench and told to make it fit all the way. 

I’ll wait. 

Impossible tasks aren’t all you get. You realise that all of the work you’ve been doing the last week you’ve been doing alone. You’ve not spoken to any of your work mates for the last three days, four days, five days, other than to say hello or goodbye as they’re leaving. You even barely see them during your lunch break. 

When you hear the credit given to your manager for your idea of how to rotate people during your lunch break and is being rewarded for it, you feel ignored at best. Bitter at worst. You realise that nothing you do to change the situation matters. You’ve become a psychology experiment in learned helplessness. You stop struggling. You think it’s got to get better from here, it can’t get worse. 

Only, it gets worse. What you see is that there’s a favourite. You will see the favourite getting not just praise but easy work. If there’s work to be done that requires two people, they will get two people to help them. If there’s work that means they have to be alone, at height, on a vehicle, they will not be alone and given the best equipment. You will get what’s left, even when the battery is failing, the hydraulics have a leak and there’s a list of problems as long as your forearm. 

Then when there’s no work to be done as it’s now that quiet, they always get to go home early. When even there’s nothing to be done and it’s ‘luck of the draw’ you’re still, always, last. When there’s only you and your abuser left, they will unleash the worst. When you’re fresh out of hospital with appendicitis, you will be working and expected to be at 100% when the doctors have given you at least a month at light duties. You will be pushed to work as normal despite any pain it causes. You will be abused for trying to get off light and you will be ignored when the pain is so overwhelming it brings tears. 

You might even be denied your lunch break because things took so long in the follow up check-up. When hunger is so bad that it hurts, that’s your fault it took that long. Even then, you still don’t get your full break, because they decided to count your lunch break as your trip to the outpatient clinic. Only they didn’t tell you that. They just want you to work and it’s your fault that you didn’t have your lunch while you were waiting. 

You’ve complained about it at this stage. Even to the person who runs the site, warehouse. Despite these complaints to site management, site managers have gotten you nowhere. You’re not believed, not taken seriously. Despite a breakdown witnessed by family, it’s nothing related to your work from your manager. It’s just because you’re being sensitive. When you get pushed further and further down into that dark hole, you start losing parts of yourself. People are told it’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just that you’re bored by your old favourites, you can’t find anything new to enjoy. Everyone including your abuser is speaking for you and you’re openly ignored. Despite the pain you’re in, you’re ignored, again. 

You realise there’s no level where it stops, where it goes away and when it will stop. You realise there’s one thing that will stop it, you stopping. There’s no other solution, because there’s no-one else. There’s no-one who will even listen to you, there’s no-one to back you up. 

When you feel truly alone, you feel there is absolutely nothing and no-one to support you, it is truly the worst the place you can go. You didn’t think it really existed, but you lived there, for months. You even forgot what food tasted like, what a good day could even be. You forgot that people could genuinely care for you. You forgot what it was like to even have friends, real friends. People who would look out for you. You forgot that you could smile, laugh, joke. You forget that pleasure existed. You got so used to the pain, the silence, the apathy, you forgot what the opposite of that was. There even could be an opposite of it. 

You need months, years to relearn. You don’t trust people for a long time. Once trust returns, that trust is fleeting at best. It doesn’t take much to lose faith in people. Just one bite and everything comes back in an instant. Even years later, the twitches, bad reflexes still remain. It stays with you and you’re twitchy, watching for any sign of the past. Even with the best boss you can now imagine, it’s there. Even when they back you up, stand up for you. Even when they’re talking to you over lunch, a lunch they asked if you’ve taken, you’re still unsure. Still expecting the old behaviour of your old workplace. 

That was me a year ago. 

The final part of this is the part no-one talks about, is the recovery from. 

It seems to be obvious to anyone, it takes time to recover. What they don’t tell you is just how strong those reflexes can be and just how strong their hold can be. How much they can change you, how you’re seen. It can change the foundation you build on, how you process the workplace you’re in. 

At my first job back in the workforce and in warehousing, I was extremely distant at first. I took a long time to warm up to my co-workers. If it was given to me, I saw it all the way through till dispatch. As much as I could control it, I would. I was more concerned with showing that I could do it, hold my own against my co-workers. Not just hold my own, do it better, do it faster. Make sure I wasn’t the target of any ire. Give the management no reason to be against me. 

Only it was the wrong attitude for the workplace I was at. Where I was formal, they were informal. I could casually call up people over in Sydney and ask for them to check aspects on orders. I might have been at the bottom of the food chain, yet I was trusted to book in high value items. I was trusted with checking out flammable cleaning agents, caustic cleaning agents. It became part of my daily duties. 

Yet, despite the confidence in my ability to organise shipping and in handling all of the goods, computer entry to the system of a national corporation, I was worried that it would be just over one day. That’s it, kicked out of the door. Not just that, the people around me would turn on me, not back me up. When there were issues in transitioning to a new work process, I was worried that the problems would be blamed on me. Not just blamed on me, recorded, written down and used to get rid of me. 

Every time I checked the forklifts, pre-start checks, I was surprised that I had my choice for the job I was doing. I wasn’t assigned a vehicle unfit for use. I was surprised that all vehicles were in good condition, properly serviced and actually safe to use. The workplace had its own problems, I won’t deny that. Yet, those problems were being worked on and everyone was involved in trying to improve them. It was a very good place to work, yet I still needed a good four months for that to really sink in. 

When I say this stuff stays with you, it really does. It rewrites your brain, your reactions, your very foundation for being at work. It changes how you approach your co-workers, your new manager. It changes your trust in the policy, systems at place in your work site. It changes how you approach applying for jobs and what jobs you even consider. It makes getting into the work force at all harder, much harder. Where the normal months turn into years. Where all it takes is one person to find you weird and that’s another job you’ve just missed out on. It’s on the pile of the hundreds of jobs you’ve missed out on. 

Learn more about working from home as an autistic adults