Workplace bullying - the deep south version
This is the last post in a series of posts about bullying @ work - worst jobs for autistic adults.
By: An anonymous Aspie
One of the hardest things for autistic people in the twenty-first century is workplace bullying. I suppose it gets more press now, since we know what autism is, but I am pretty sure people have gotten a hard time for being âdifferentâ for as long as there have been people. My own experience of this came at a place where all the trappings of modern workplace culture were nonexistent: the most redneck auto parts store in town, an old 1930s building crumbling away at the edges like a wet loaf of banana bread
I am âhigh-functioning autistic:â I look normal, can act passably normal, and get along fine with everyone. I have many wonderful friends, and am thoroughly enjoying my college education in progress, my hobbies, and my side-hustle as a light novelist. But that is now: I got the job then, in a time where my life was turned inside out by a sudden cross-country move, and I just wanted a job. The auto parts company needed people, and as I knew nothing of the value of labor, I thought $8 an hour a small fortune: which it would have been some fifty-odd years ago. (Autistics are not all naĂŻve: however, I was one of the dumb ones.) Happily ignorant of OSHA regulations, redneck culture, or much of anything else, I went to work.
Regarding actual anecdotes of workplace bullying, well, that place was a bit of a zoo. There wasn't really an "office culture" because of the nature of the place as an auto parts store--an ancient building full of machinery, batteries, barrels and sacks and everything. Here the Dilbert-style cubicle culture didnât exist. I became warehouse manager, delivery driver, salesman, janitor, and the entire department of Shipping and Returns. My âofficeâ was the front seat of a two-door truck with worn-out tires like potato peels, a perpetually smoky and underpowered engine, and a tendency to shut itself off while gasping and wheezing along the highway. It shed license plates, front grills, headlights, and tailgates with wild abandon. Sometimes I could have gotten there faster riding a horse, and in some cases when the delivery truck was too hard to crank, I drove my own car instead. Ten years older than the delivery trucks, it leaked all the oil it didnât burn and smoked like a railway train when it was cranked, but even this rolling museum piece was much better maintained and more efficient than the trucks at the auto parts company. This, in hindsight, should have been my first red flag that the workers were not a priority of the storeowner, but instead I bought parts for my little old car: the company lost a Ford sedan when the transmission gave out, and one of those trucks is now held together by ropes, but my old-fashioned but functional machine will be an antique next year and is still running on its old original engine. So nobody tell me that automobiles wear outâitâs the owner that does it, and carelessness betokens more carelessness!
The work was not a problem. I was good at it. Pay was too low but we're talking about holding & keeping employment here, not about discretionary income. My trousers rotted off my body every couple months due to the battery acid back there; it was a part of life. My hands turned a perpetual black from handling broken starters, alternators, the worn-out brake linings from eighteen-wheelers. This was fineâit was part of an honest dayâs manual labor, and I personally found the arduous nature of it refreshing, and the precision needed for the organizational part, relaxing. The only problems arose as the man who owned the shop tended to toss off petty insults about everything. It is unwise, depending on the workplace, to show signs of weakness.
Religion was not safe. I am a Catholic. Then again, this was the Deep South. That apparently is a sort of taboo here; they were a sort of Pentecostal or Holiness Church, and they kept asking about "why don't Catholics eat meat on Fridays" and while questions from open-minded people do not bother me, they might bother some who are not fairly hardheaded about their religion. (Many autistics are either diehard believers or agnostics, and have strongly felt reasons for being such.) However, if I wasnât âdifferentâ enough from the fairly quiet voice and intention to perhaps do too much work, they concluded from my celibacy and abstinence from meat on Fridays that I was something akin to a gay Hindu and behaved accordingly; remember folks, why waste time on religious freedom when you can eat meat to own the libs and prove youâre not a vegan SJW!
Regarding workplace bullying, âthe real thingâ came when I ended up having to boss the part-time help. There was one young man there: a rich, golf-playing, duck-hunting daddy's boy from the country club. You know the type if you were ever in small town South Carolina: all traces of refined behavior completely erased by an expensive private school, insufferably pretentious, huge jacked-up pickup truck that's never been off a paved road (we call them "mall terrain vehicles" in jest, and worse) and generally a loud, wealthy, insecure sort of person. I ended up having to be this kid's boss. He claimed to be studying calculus and at the same time seemed to have a very hard time with his ABCs, as he never stocked the shelves right. Here the friction begins. I had memorized that parts store in two weeks, worked for three months to get any skill at managing Warehousing, driving deliveries, making sales, and being the janitorâto have young Daddy's Money get in there and ruin it, delaying sales and making my work twice as much, was a problem which I made the mistake of bringing up to him. Because hey, so much for doing my job as warehouse boss, right?
He figured out that I can't stand loud noises due to the classic autism symptom of sensory sensitivity and he and the other little high-school-aged brats began circling my house at night with the loudspeakers on, blasting country music. I couldn't walk to work any more without getting harassed by them in their off hours. And they kept rather irregular hours--I would be walking down the sidewalk and someone would set off a car horn from a truck in the bushes and I'd realize it was one of them, or one of their friends. I have had at least one nervous breakdown due to this and to this day my heart rate rises uncontrollably around that kind of music, the blend of hip-hop and country known unpleasantly as âhick-hop,â which sounds like one should put their head in a paper bag and breathe deep until the feeling passes. Soâpanic attacks, huzzah! Much simpler than that alphabetâand as the South is loyal to the party, there ainât none of them Arabic numerals involved either!
The boss' son (who was set to inherit the company, and seemed to have quite a bit of money but not much wits) used to ask dumb rhetorical questions a lot because he knew it confused me...he was chaotic neutral, I think they call it. But anyway this particular one generally urinated with the bathroom door open all the time in the back room and ignored my requests that he stop, turning it back round with "well, why are you looking? are you gay?" which is problematic for many reasonsâmainly because I should not have had to see him in there urinating all over the place and leaving the door open like a barnyard animal, though I suspect it's not as if he had anything to hide.
Though autistic self-advocacy is important, letâs not take biology and make it our identifier: I don't think it's a good idea in every case to disclose autism status. At least in the Deep Southâand probably everywhere there are imperfect peopleâin other words, the world overâthe "good old boy" mentality is strong. Autistic or not, you can find it in your workplace by looking for the unintentionally fascistic view that the strong are better and that sensitivity is emasculating. Dogs are treated better than people, and by the time you quit the job, you will like neither.
In sum: the workplace culture was bad for autistics because:
Small town social life revolving round the counter of the auto parts store was dangerous for autistics, not known for their social awareness; one false move, one failure to follow the unwritten rules of good-old-boy culture which I had not grown up in, and the entire town had found a new Other, a new oddity to play with;
For a pack of "religious" people I seemed to get a lot of particular criticism about my Catholic Faith--though that is not a thing exclusive to Catholics or to this company;
Because I did not join them in their disgusting (lewd) conversations I think they wanted to pester me about that as it obviously bothered me;
Because I was very literal and did things a certain practiced way, which actually helped my job, they used that as a way to ask dumb questions for their own amusement;
Because I was there, and anything different or unusual gets picked apart by the insecure and the ignorant.
Congratulations, my long-suffering and patient readers, you sat through to the end of me complaining about people; if you are employers, youâll have more profitable work and happier employees if you let them be while they are on the job. If you are a worker, or looking for work, donât be afraid to ask the boss questions; if you are afraid, then maybe you should ask around and find a boss whose personality has graduated middle school. If you are autistic, donât be shy, but ask friends about finding a jobâreal friends, who will help you; also, if you could call OSHA and own the store, donât get a job there because they are either too broke to pay you, or too careless to clean up. If you are the guy who maintained our delivery trucks, the guy who peed with the door open, or especially the flitting nouveau-riche preppy boy who never learned his ABCâs, then congratulations, reading this was the first dayâs hard work you ever did in your life. I might be autistic but Iâm not so stupid as to go back!
Lost in Translation? â Working with autistic adults - A disaster analysis
It is a âwell known factâ that autistics struggle with communication. Consider the following interchange/communication disaster that occurred in my life this week. I am a freelance technical documentation writer for a software development company. A big release was coming up and of course, their helpdesk site needed work.
I received a text message from the man I report to. It said: âManagement has agreed that we need to have the helpdesk documentation by Wednesdayâ.
I thought âOk, seems unrealistic but fineâ. I didnât say anything further, because, I was at the time, connected to a very slow drip and working on a hospital bed. Three hours later, after having passed out on the sidewalk from low blood sugar levels, recuperating back on the hospital bed and then being carted home by a friend â I opened my laptop again and began working. I passed out again after an hour. I woke up about three hours later with a massive tension headache. I ate dinner, still trying to recover from the day. Here is the interchange between my employer and myself as it devolved over the next few hours.
Me: If there is anything, I can do to assist with getting helpdesk ready, please tell me, I would like to help.
Him: Well all I can think of is if you could <vague description of some requirement that wasnât well thought through>, that would be great.
{It seemed to me at this point that he was searching his head for something I could do. My assumption: He is scraping the barrel here, hence, this task was not really critical.}
Me: I donât have knowledge of that area in order to do that though.
Him: Itâs fairly straight forward, I think you can manage it.
{Also, him: Disappears to take a call in his office and I hear nothing from him until he emerges at 21:00.}
Him: Are you working on <vague description of some requirement that wasnât well thought through>?
Me: Um, no, I wasâŚ
Him: {flips out}
Me: Huh?
Him: Do you just not care about the sheer amount of pressure that we are under? Could you NOT see that I needed you to start that <vague description of some requirement that wasnât well thought through>? Donât offer to do something and then NOT do it! {Yada yada yadaâŚ}
Me: But when I asked if I could help, it seemed to me that you were scraping the bottom of the barrel to find something I could actually help with. Also, you left without addressing how I do the <vague description of some requirement that wasnât well thought through>, especially since I told you I wouldnât be able to do it.
Him: If you actually WANTED to help me, you would have come to ask me how! Never mind, I will do it myself. You can work on <clearly defined XYZ> instead.
Me: Ok, I will start now. In future, could you please give me more specific information and timeframes when you require assistance? Also, I didnât want to barge in while you were in the zone to ask you a question about a task I didnât see was all that important.
Him: But canât you SEE that EVERYTHING is important right now?
Me: Um, I am just asking that you could perhaps phrase it more directly, like âCould you please work on this immediatelyâ or something along those lines?
Him: But I KNOW, if I speak to you that way, you will be offended.
Me: I kind of need that level of directness. Is that too much to ask?
Me: I understand your requirements now. I will work on them exclusively until completion.
This is the a very watered-down rendition of a spirited conversation where it was clear that communication was severely compromised.
Where it Went Wrong
Inferred Meaning and Vague Requirements
âManagement has agreed that we need to have the helpdesk documentation by Wednesdayâ â There was meaning hidden here, that was not clear to an autistic brain wired on explicit instruction. This was a statement. The implications of the statement were unclear.
Another example of inferred meaning:
âWell, all I can think of is if you could <vague description of some requirement that wasnât well thought through>, that would be greatâ â The phrase âAll I can think ofâ can have so many possible meanings. I chose a meaning based on some pattern building mechanism my autistic brain had built up. âAll I can think ofâ implied (to me) that it wasnât such a high priority.
In addition, the description of the work itself was vague, not well thought through, and unrealistic given the as-is situation.
Unclear Expectations
As I said earlier, the requirement was not clear in my employers mind, so conveying it to me in unclear terms and then somehow expecting me to know how to do it AND to start on it as a matter of high priority was unclear to me as well. Yet, the neurotypical expectation to âjust knowâ were still there. Hence, the blow-up.
Assumptions About What We Know
He assumed I would be able to complete the task, and was sure could figure it out without giving it further thought. It just doesnât work like that with autistic people.
We understand things really well. BUT not things you cannot explain to us in the first place. He later came around to say that he saw there was no way for me to do what he asked me to, as I didnât have the user rights to do that among other factors.
Non-Existent Timelines
In the entire interaction, no fixed âdeadlineâ was given. No priority was assigned to the subtask in CLEAR terms. This makes it impossible for us to organize our time.
A Better Way to Communicate with Us
Some examples of phrasing that would have induced a better outcome:
âManagement has agreed that we need to have the helpdesk documentation by Wednesday. So, I am going to need your help intensely over the next few days. Please could we discuss what you will do and by when we can have it done?â
When I asked how I can assist, it would perhaps have gone better if it was phrased this way: âLet me think it over. Honestly, I am just hammering out work, so things are a bit vague in my head right now.â
âI would like you to please <specific description of task> and it would be best if it is completed by <time and date>. Can you assist within these terms?â
âI understand that you have not done this particular task before. Letâs take ten minutes for me to show you what is required.â
Perhaps the impatience can be understandable if a manager or supervisor is used to subtext as the norm. But I invite you, as a neurotypical person working with an atypical, to consider â would not ALL interactions with employees of all neurotypes benefit from the following?
Patience
Ability to express yourself and your expectations clearly
Ability to admit your own possible lack of understanding
Clarity of expectations in terms of work to be done
Clarity of expectations in terms timelines
Good project management such that last minute panic is avoided
Not âbeating around the bushâ in phrasing
Not trying to âsoftenâ the expectation/requirement
Trusting that speaking in a respectful but clear and direct way is just better, not offensive
To conclude:
We expect clarity, are not offended by directness and do not subscribe to subtext. These can be seen as positives, not disabilities. Consider the beloved Mr. Data in Star Trek, TNG.
Bullying in The Workplace
By: Vanessa Blanchard
This is the third post in a series of posts about bullying @ work - worst jobs for autistic people.
Finding jobs for autistic people that donât involve heaps of bullying and discrimination can be quite challenging. The impact of having employment that leaves you burned out and traumatized can be long-lasting and the discrimination we face is pervasive.
Itâs why unemployment rates among autistic adults are as high as 85%. People just donât make room for us in traditional employment. They donât even try to learn or understand.
A Girl in a Candle Store
When I was 20 years old, I left home and got a job at a candle store. My first day on that job, I was promoted to assistant manager. My boss seemed quite impressed with me, but I didnât understand why.
I wasnât ready for the position. I was fresh out of an abusive home with no life skills to speak of. I was facing full adulthood -- alone -- with a learning disability, a developmental disability, and PTSD, none of which I knew about.
But people donât have to have terms like autism or ADHD to observe that something was wrong and judge/discriminate against it. The way I was treated changed rapidly.
Very quickly, my boss began making confusing and critical comments to me. Everything I did was wrong, and I could feel her disdain, even when she wasnât around.
Sheâd leave nasty notes to people and my name adorned many of them. Or sheâd leave them with no name so everyone would have to read them to know who it was for. She spoke to me less and less, except to criticize me or tell me she was tired of people talking about her.
Eventually, almost all of my shifts were alone. She worked with a different manager who was her friend. Then Iâd work with one other employee for part of a shift so I could get breaks and spend the majority of the shift alone. I remember looking at the schedule and realizing I was the only one scheduled to be alone like that. That hurt.
We shared a shift once where I wore the wrong outfit and she was very offended. Someone else had to tell me that my outfit placed me on the same hierarchical level as her, which I hadnât known was something to worry about.
She was also constantly suspicious of me. I once called out because of a flat tire and she thought I was lying. Then someone dropped off the tire iron I forgot and she once again thought I was lying.
After nine months, I put in my two weeks notice. On my second to last shift she said to me, âLetâs just get through this. You wonât be missed.â
I couldnât go back for my last shift. She called my house shouting about how I was screwing them over.
The Aftermath of This One Single Job
I left that job thinking I had a terrible work ethic. I felt judged and ostracized. I knew I had done a lot to rebel in that environment. My attitude was, âIf you donât like me, I donât care about this job.â
Sometimes someone decides youâre trash, or disappointing or something, and thereâs nothing you can do. I was an annoying kid back then, with a ton of difficulties I was only beginning to understand. But I once had to work a nine hour shift with a fever because no one would cover for me and I did it. I was othered before I rebelled, even if I needed a healthier style of rebellion.
I think thatâs a common trajectory with bad management and that I wasnât the only bullied person in that place. Still, I ran into her years later and had a strong PTSD reaction to her. I was fully frozen, face burning with shame that she could even see me.
I think that the surprise of being bullied was part of what made it so impactful for me. I had shown up to do my thing and was praised for it. Then, over time and still doing my thing, I was increasingly disappointing. I remember being very confused often and was always the last person to realize how people felt about me.
The horrible, off base, bad faith takes on who we autistic people are haunt us. And over time, it becomes our canon. Our inner dialogue. It takes a lot of effort to fight back against that.
Upon Reflection
Over the years, this dynamic would play out again and again. I was impressive until I wasnât and then I was driven out. But I show up and put forth my best efforts. That has also been constant. The discrimination that I face trying to find a job as an autistic person is not about what I actually have to offer. Itâs a reflection of a system that needs changing.
My experience isnât unique to me. Itâs one of the biggest risks involved in trying to find jobs for autistic people. We end up with âproblematicâ work histories when we canât protect ourselves from this dynamic. If weâre going to improve upon that unemployment rate, weâre going to need to find a better system of employment for us autistic folk.
Bullying in The Workplace
By: Patrician M.I. Todinescu
This is the second post in a series of posts about bullying @ work - worst jobs for autistic people.
When I was younger, I was lucky to land a position as an accounting clerk in the film industry, with little to no previous experience in accounting. The job made me around $1000 per week, but of course being young and in a new city, I would also blow about that same amount per week.
The daily tasks were my ideal type of work, pattern-based and repetitive: sort completed receipts alphanumerically, file the sorted receipts in their correct account folder by date, and so on until the end of the day, every day. The job started out ideally; all my coworkers were pleasant, and I joined in on the casual, friendly banter as we all worked through our own assigned tasks.
Unfortunately, it didnât last long. Things took a sour turn one day, as the friendly chatter started delving into personal opinions on politics, or other hot-topic issues. Inevitably there were disagreements, and we all quickly agreed to disagree for the sake of professionalism. Despite this, one of my coworkers had now become openly disdainful of me. Theirs was the desk I walked past every morning to get to my own, and the previous cheerfully polite âgood morningâ greetings were now replaced by silent, cold glares. The once bright and relatively stress-free environment had now become tense and vaguely antagonistic.
Each day I dreaded going in to work, as each meek word out of my mouth was met with thinly veiled scorn. I retreated further and further into myself, my motivation to complete my daily tasks plummeting, and my professional performance sinking with it. I dreaded being in the same room as this co-worker and asking them even a single work-related question required significant psychological preparation. I would take frequent coffee and bathroom breaks just to minimize my time spent around this person. I jumped at every opportunity to work in a separate room, or to assist a separate department, regardless of how brief the task elsewhere was.
My boss became aware of the situation after I self-consciously confessed my struggle, but there was nothing to be addressed, since there had been no actual confrontations or problems outside of the âcold shoulderâ treatment. Instead, I was assigned to auditing and reorganizing the previous decade worth of files, mercifully, and was able to escape into the back room for most of the day. But the damage had already been done.
The work environment became so emotionally unbearable that I began experiencing physical symptoms from the stress of being so clearly unwelcome. I felt physically sick, my digestive system reacting poorly to any food I ate no matter how healthy, and my brain was muddled in a thick fog â that served to numb me from the stress â but made sorting alphanumerically take twice as long. I made simple mistakes frequently, that set me back several hours apiece, and each passing day I stuttered and stumbled increasingly through my words and social interactions, until just meeting peopleâs eyes took a painful amount of effort.
I grit my teeth and pushed through, trying my best to keep my focus, and internally working to brush off the silent ostracization I faced daily. It was excruciating. Each day I felt less and less tethered to reality, a blurry filter constantly superimposed on everything in sight, as if I were underwater. It quickly became too much. The only outcome of suppressing my psychological stress, was to force my feelings into physical symptoms that were much harder to ignore.
Full of guilt at my inability to keep my emotional reactions from interfering with my productivity, and drowning in the shame of failing to hold yet another job for more than six months, I resigned from the best opportunity Iâd ever had, or could picture for myself at that time.
This job took place well before my Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis, and even though I was good at intuitively knowing when it was time to move on from a place, I berated myself endlessly for quitting that amazing gig. I am now well aware of this âshutdownâ process my brain initiates when under too much stress. To avoid a total self-destructive spiral into meltdown, it is imperative I remove myself from the stressors as soon as possible.
Looking back on this now, with thorough knowledge of my limitations, and well-established healthy coping strategies to address my specific needs, I can easily see how being equipped to understand and communicate my needs would have made all the difference. I donât believe that there are specific jobs tailored for autistic people, or a neat little âworst jobs for autistic peopleâ list that everyone can access and use when considering what job fields to go into. I believe that autistic people, or any neurodivergent persons, are capable of doing any job that suits their unique skill sets, as long as we, as a collective society, are able to allow and accommodate the unique needs of every individual behind those skill sets.
"I donât believe that there are specific jobs tailored for autistic people, or a neat little âworst jobs for autistic peopleâ list that everyone can access and use when considering what job fields to go into" https://t.co/q9DdfX68Ji
— Spectroomz - autism employment blog (@spectroomz) May 17, 2020
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 arenât 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 Iâve 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, thereâs a lot to get through. There was never enough of us, things going wrong on the floor. It wasnât targeted, it wasnât personal, it was just a bit of a rough patch. Nothing to give any more thought to than that. Then, it wasnât 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, itâs not bad weeks, itâs bad months. Itâs being blamed for errors in work you didnât do. Even being blamed for work you had no idea about at all.
Doesnât matter how or why, itâs just plain your fault.
Before you think it could get worse, youâre given jobs and the wrong tools. Youâre given a job thereâs 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 youâre given is a soft steel plug and an air powered impact wrench and told to make it fit all the way.
Iâll wait.
Impossible tasks arenât all you get. You realise that all of the work youâve been doing the last week youâve been doing alone. Youâve 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 theyâre 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. Youâve become a psychology experiment in learned helplessness. You stop struggling. You think itâs got to get better from here, it canât get worse.
Only, it gets worse. What you see is that thereâs a favourite. You will see the favourite getting not just praise but easy work. If thereâs work to be done that requires two people, they will get two people to help them. If thereâs 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 whatâs left, even when the battery is failing, the hydraulics have a leak and thereâs a list of problems as long as your forearm.
Then when thereâs no work to be done as itâs now that quiet, they always get to go home early. When even thereâs nothing to be done and itâs âluck of the drawâ youâre still, always, last. When thereâs only you and your abuser left, they will unleash the worst. When youâre 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, thatâs your fault it took that long. Even then, you still donât get your full break, because they decided to count your lunch break as your trip to the outpatient clinic. Only they didnât tell you that. They just want you to work and itâs your fault that you didnât have your lunch while you were waiting.
Youâve 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. Youâre not believed, not taken seriously. Despite a breakdown witnessed by family, itâs nothing related to your work from your manager. Itâs just because youâre being sensitive. When you get pushed further and further down into that dark hole, you start losing parts of yourself. People are told itâs nothing to be afraid of. Itâs just that youâre bored by your old favourites, you canât find anything new to enjoy. Everyone including your abuser is speaking for you and youâre openly ignored. Despite the pain youâre in, youâre ignored, again.
You realise thereâs no level where it stops, where it goes away and when it will stop. You realise thereâs one thing that will stop it, you stopping. Thereâs no other solution, because thereâs no-one else. Thereâs no-one who will even listen to you, thereâs 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 didnât 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 donât trust people for a long time. Once trust returns, that trust is fleeting at best. It doesnât 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 youâre twitchy, watching for any sign of the past. Even with the best boss you can now imagine, itâs there. Even when they back you up, stand up for you. Even when theyâre talking to you over lunch, a lunch they asked if youâve taken, youâre 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 donât 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 youâre seen. It can change the foundation you build on, how you process the workplace youâre 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 wasnât 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. Thatâs 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 wasnât 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 wonât 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 thatâs another job youâve just missed out on. Itâs on the pile of the hundreds of jobs youâve missed out on.