A Disappointing Start

I like structure. I actually thrive on it … for clarity’s sake. For clarity’s sake, I need lots of it, and not just structure. I also need clarity. I need directness, specifics, details, and thorough explanations. The more the better …

I believe my need for clarity is one of the hallmark characteristics of autism. For the most part, I prefer direct and explicit instructions. So if I ask for them, I expect to get them and not a vague package of responses. If one wants to annoy me, be vague. If one feels annoyed by me, it’s because I’m asking a lot of questions because one is so vague.

One way to tick me off is when a person is so vague in responses that they actually believe they’ve given me a direct answer. I end up having to either ask for more specificness or take a deep sigh, knowing that the vague response is my cue to figure things out for myself and make the best of things. For a new job, this is no way to be because it makes me feel I’m being set up for failure if that’s not another person’s intentions.

Although I got away from a toxic work environment in due time, I had a disappointing start to a new work environment. The good thing is that during the week of orientation, I didn’t sense anything toxic about anyone that I was working with at all. I was relieved about this, and my mind was put at ease that I didn’t have to walk on eggshells.

However, this didn’t stop me from having a few frustrations though or stop me from experiencing overall red flags about the new work environment itself. I wouldn’t say these were toxic cues, but they were issues enough for me that I needed to regroup. I’m big on organization, and although I can forgive a lot of things, I can’t get with the program when there is a lot of wasted, dead time or lack of clear directives. I suppose these are just pet peeves of mine, but they are peeves nonetheless.

One of the mottos of one of the supervisors I met the first week of orientation is that the company never hires dummies. Yet, the entire week, I often felt like my need for constant clarification was a sign that I lacked overall intelligence … that I might have been the first dummy they hired into their company. Despite my need to process information deeply because I want to fully understand what’s expected of me, I felt like I was a nuisance the entire time during orientation.

The odd thing is that two people I met during orientation week commented on how they enjoyed working with autistic children and adults. Yet, they seemed to look upon me with bothersome disdain at my need for clarification on a number of things that were said during different times that didn’t make sense to me. Yet, had I not asked for clarification for myself, the other newbies who were often confused wouldn’t have had their own questions answered because they seemed to be as confused as I was over a lot of things too.

I wouldn’t say I necessarily had the courage to ask for clarification, I just needed to ask to make sure I understood what was going on. I typically don’t think about courage, and I usually never freeze up into muteness. All I’m thinking about is that the last thing I want to do is fail at the tasks set before me. So I’m never hesitant to speak up in those instances.

When I want to know something, I’m going to ask. When I need to make sense of something, I’m going to ask. To ease any anxiety I have over a situation, I’m going to ask questions. As I said, I prefer clear, precise instructions rather than vague or implied information. Although this need to have clarification might be taken as me being less capable than others, it’s really just my way of processing and learning.

A good training process or orientation should accommodate different learning styles. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily happen, and I find this to be an issue almost anywhere I go. So that when I do come across someone who explains information extremely well, I become excited because I know I’m going to perform well and do what is expected of me. Needless to say, this was not the case during orientation week. I was truly disappointed … so disappointed that I cried on the drive home from the first day.

First of all, there had never been any specification that orientation was going to be in the specific location for an entire week. It was stated by the supervisor and a person from human resources (HR) that orientation was for one day. The specific location was my originally assigned work site – a 20 minute or so drive from my home. Yet, within a day of being told this, I get an email that the site was moved to a different location a little more than an hour drive away.

At first, this was no problem because I thought there was all there was to it. Yet, during the course of the first day of orientation as the supervisor went over a lot of job information, the supervisor nonchalantly mentioned that new hires could expect orientation to last five days in that specific location – a daily hour drive away from home for me! When I verified this as a way to clarify what I’d just heard for the very first time, I was told “this is what we do; we travel”.

Although travel for my specific job was mentioned as a periodic necessity, nothing about orientation was mentioned at all. Orientation went from being a day to a week within the span of a sentence, and I wasn’t forewarned ahead of time with an email or phone call. I learned the day of orientation about all the specifics. To say I was irritated would be an understatement, and by the time the supervisor had gotten around to casually mentioning this, I was already overstimulated and annoyed.

Prior to orientation, new hires had received an email instructing us to read the company handbook, complete orientation assignments, and fill out necessary paperwork in digital form. Yet, the day of orientation, the supervisor read every page of the handbook to us and had us redo the orientation assignments and the digital paperwork too. What was the point? It felt like wasted time to me. I’d say that maybe this was all a part of the preliminaries of how this company does things, but it was like beating a dead horse that wasn’t dead but just got up and ran away.

By lunch time, I was too overstimulated to even talk about anything. I simply gulfed down an unsatisfying lunch and blanked out from thinking about anything at all. In fact, I feared I was headed for a meltdown before a meltdown could happen because I simply couldn’t think or process anything for the rest of the workday. I literally couldn’t take in any more information. I was done and had taken in all that I could in response to being highly overstimulated and underwhelmed by the facts I wasn’t receiving to understand the necessary aspects of my job.

By afternoon, I was shadowing a fellow coworker, and although this coworker was very helpful, I didn’t learn a thing except that they had a cool personality and really seemed to like their job. If I was supposed to learn anything else, I was already tuned out. However, I wasn’t tuned out enough to choose which office cubicle space I wanted for the rest of the week of orientation when asked for a preference.

To numb myself to the overstimulation, I chose the cubicle furthest away from the entrance, bright lights, loud noises, loud music, and biggest distractions. This cubicle was in between two relatively calm people. I liked them both right away because I discerned they were not about drama but all about their work. In fact, I felt like I was looking at an aspect of my own personality in both of these coworkers.

Since my day felt as if it had already been semi-ruined by the lack of organization, vague responses to my questions, and surprise information that wasn’t shared from the start, I thought that having a cubicle in a great spot for the rest of the week might absolve some of that disappointment. It did, but I also took note of two somewhat troublesome coworkers.

It was fortunate for me that this location wasn’t my home office but a place for me to train. I’d discerned based on these other coworker’s chattiness and need to stop by the cubicles of the calm women that they needed to have some drama. Both women were chatty – one nicer than the other. Both relatively ignored me for the most part, but I felt at times they were attempting to impress me with their knowledge of life and all things gossip. I didn’t care, and I certainly didn’t want to hear them.

It seemed at some points that both were attempting to outtalk the other one. I was glad that their moments of conversations didn’t last long. I’d taken note that there was more silence than I was accustomed to from any work environment that I’d ever experienced before, but I also noted that everyone was evaluated based on a numbers driven performance. I wasn’t so sure how I was supposed to fit into this, and I can’t say I was feeling too sure about the job since I hadn’t had any true training even by the end of week one.

I had to wonder if such pertinent information about our jobs hadn’t been shared because the staff would otherwise not get any applicants for the positions. As I searched the faces of the two other new coworkers who were hired at the same time as me, but for different positions, I wondered how much they were shocked by the change in daily information. On the surface, they seemed to go with the flow, but the many times I did ask my clarifying questions, they seemed to rest at ease in their seats as if relieved that I paused the presentation a bit so that they could soak things in for themselves.

I will say again though, there was nothing too terribly toxic about any individual I encountered during that first week. In fact, I felt peace about almost everyone I encountered even though I felt some hesitancy within me beneath the surface. It was a total difference compared to the toxic work environment I’d left. I didn’t feel any contentiousness whatsoever, and that was a peaceful feeling. That was something I knew I would grow to quickly adjust to and might be able to subconsciously deal with any other upsets.

Yet, I disliked the lack of directness, the lack of organization, and the lack of information provided at the appropriate times. It almost seemed as if the supervisors and the human resource management believed they’d shared information with the new hires before even though they had not. So when they sprang new information upon us as if it was nothing new, they’d gloss over it as if it were no big deal. This just wasn’t cool to me because it felt like I was being gaslit even though it was obvious that I was hearing this new information for the very first time.

I especially hated the long drive and not being given a surefire schedule to follow. It was strange because at one time I wanted to question if I was just hired for the sake of the company having a spot to fill. With the most recent job I left, I had a lot of e-learning to complete, but it didn’t take up an entire week. I pretty much started training the first day even though I had to ask to be trained because I didn’t like simply standing around doing nothing. With this new job, it was relatively the same. Orientation was long and drawn out, and I never learned anything about my specific job position.

I guess one can’t have everything they want in a job. So what gives?

Stay tuned for more …