A working Autistic person has Questions

The following was posted on an autism message board and it indeed brings up lots of great points stuff that the autism 'experts' never experience. It seems only those of us in the spectrum know what we are talking about.

Hello everyone: I've dealt with this sensory for some time, and my family thinks I'm out of my tree when I mention it. I don't climatize to weather easily. I never have. When I was younger, my family actually took away my short sleeved shirts, and my shorts. What I don't understand is, I get cold when they aren't cold, and I'm hot when they are cold... It's sort of frustrating!! I hate the noises coming from the air conditioner, it makes my ears ring. I hate the sound of flourescent light, because that also makes my ears ring. I haven't been able to sleep well since starting to work for Wal-Mart, and I think the reason may actually be that my routine has been too disturbed, but I'm not sure. I'm afraid to ask them for a routine schedule - that may just only tell them that I don't have open flexibility. But, I'm tired of the headaches that I'm getting. Meals are always set at different times, and it seems that my body just can't keep up....



Join the crowd mate,

You might try wearing ear plugs while working at Walmart, I wear them just to shop in the store or walk though any warehouse type of store. Trust me you will still be able to hear EVERYTHING people say to you but they act as hearing filters and block some of the noise and the objectionable high pitches that only we hear. I use my wild hearing and my knowledge of Cars to Trouble shoot them, I bet you can her sounds in cars other miss, often times those are the sounds of impending part failure.

You will eventually get the idea of hot and cold, as many of us in our anthropology have-the hard way. Many of us have a weak permeant frostbite condition that has developed as we have aged. PLEASE even if you are NOT cold you are cold dress for the weather. I can't tolerate the slimmest margins of cold anymore without blue fingers that STING.

I admire your job at Walmart (Big American superstore) you are working in one of the worst places an autistic person could work, it is an echo chamber and remember it would take a decibel meter for others to hear what we hear. You might be onto something with a disturbed routine many of us have learned to deal with it and go with the flow but it is hard. Do you wear a pressure devise? Many in our anthropology wear spandex bikers shorts as underwear (lined with a towel inside) and they do wonders in calming down our world.

My own experience the other day. A family member had gone with me to Lowes, a large warehouse home improvement store and we checked out separately. I was at wits end in this store as I was NOT wearing my hearing filter and the echos and the beeps of the traveling forklifts were enough! While checking out It was just too much to be able to count money. I thought I gave the cashier $6.00 but I gave him $10.00. We I came out of overload I was getting change for 10.00 and not $6.00 dollars and was stunned and confused. The Casher finally told me I gave him two fives . Out in the exit way I was able to figure things out and count and configure I did indeed give him two fives as I recounted my money. If I had wore my hearing filters I probably would not have messed up on counting money. If traditional people heard what we heard they would SCREAM "turn the music down".

It gets better out in the parking lot I was backing out of spot as was another driver with a fully loaded pick-up truck and he was unable to see I was already most of the way out of our spot. I slammed our car in low gear chirped tires and moved forward fast enough to prevent a collision. Besides looking at him what really clued me in to the impending accident was his load had shifted and emitted a Squeak that only I heard and his cargo scraped on his truck bead. That sound told me was was moving at a good rate and I need to get out of there.

Autism is indeed a curse and a blessing and it prevents you from functioning as much as, it prevents all kinds of other troubles. NO "expert" in Autism has a clue to our hearing and logically thinks If we can't hear that they can't either. They also think that is no way we can be warm at 40 below and they also assume they feel pain and it is impossible that we don't. What I would not give for a decbial meter in an autisitc classroom! Perhaps then someone could get a feeling for what we really hear. Rich