I do not look forward to the prospect of job hunting. I will avoid it at all costs - even to the point of staying in a role that is unsuitable enough to be damaging to my health and home life. "Why on Earth would anyone do that?!" I hear you cry. Well, I'm tenacious. I don't like to admit defeat. I always to do my job to the very best of my ability, which is not inconsiderable. I do find it difficult to 'let go of the bone', so to speak: I do not notice the metaphorical marker posts (clear to NTs) that are the clues to when efforts should cease, when it's time to negotiate a sideways move or make a complete break... When I reach the 'tipping point', it is only after I have become ill through stress from the constant mis-communication, the culmination of too many long hours, lack of breaks or exhaustion from high pressure deadlines...
My current role has been a little different in this sense. There are no long hours, no deadlines... just a combination of isolation, unrealistic expectation, management inefficiency and lack of support and recognition: All things I like to think I am immune to - after all, haven't I dealt with such things on a daily basis for most of my life?
Eric Berne defined the fundamental unit of social action, and called it a 'Stroke'. So, if a 'transaction' is any social interaction, a Stroke is each social action considered individually, and can be positive, neutral or negative. Berne believed that we seek positive Strokes in our transactions. As an Aspie, I live in a world where positive Strokes are rare, and I can fail to recognise them even when they do happen. But I live in hope. On my better days, it is hope that gives me my drive, my motivation, my optimism. But sometimes hope is my enemy, the slave-driver that keeps me scrubbing away at the same spot on the floor until my fingers are bloody and raw.
I am so used to trying to fit into the NT world and living up to NT expectations that I sometimes think I will never be able to stop, and 'be myself'. The NT world is the only world I have known, until recently. In order to break the cycle, confidence is key, but my picture of myself is just as skewed and incomplete as the one I am sure NTs have of me, and until I can see myself more clearly, I will surely continue to make the same mistakes. And this is the thing that makes me dread the process of job hunting.
The complexities of NT world means that making social errors is easy... Today, on my first outing into job hunting for a few years, I was dismayed to see how, over the last few years, the lists of requirements for prospective employees have lengthened and become more severe; even for the most menial and poorly paid of jobs... What confidence I had left immediately plummeted . Although I am both accomplished and experienced, and a whole raft of other, what I am assured are, employer-pleasing things, I do not have a degree. Therefore, as an Aspie, I would never apply for a job that states that a 'degree-level qualification' is essential. I would limit myself to applying for jobs for which I have the stated qualifications, experience and abilities. Simple, yes? But, I am reliably informed, these requirements are not necessarily written in stone.
How can I hope to navigate the world of work when even the prospective employers don't necessarily mean what they say? How will I know what expectations it's okay not to meet? Am I expected to speculate about my ability to undertake tasks in a situation I have never experienced? Should I guess about how I would progress, interact with other people I have never met? Surely this practice of inflating requirements to raise the quality of the pool of applicants is ill advised at best and discriminatory at worst?
I feel very strongly about this. How long has this practice been in use? How many applications have I discounted based on an incorrect interpretation of the role? And I always thought the interview was the hardest part....
