"Conner Waldschmidt guest blogger and local autism advocate. Conner spent 15 years navigating the business world successfully before being diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum in 2015. Conner hopes to share some of his reflections, experiences and lessons, so that others may have a road map to success... or at least know that someone else understands the struggles that Autistic men and women face in the workforce."

Raise your hand if any of this sounds familiar.

I am, by all accounts, a successful business person on the Autism spectrum. Anyone who looked at my career on paper would say that I’ve done well, and had a solid upward trajectory.

But if you dig deeper, my professional life has been a mix of ups and downs. I’ve been hired into prestigious companies, promoted many times, demoted, fired, praised, and yelled at. I’ve done amazing things that people couldn’t understand, and been accused of things that I couldn’t understand. I’ve broken records in one position, and barely been able to maintain minimum standards at a position that, on the surface, looked nearly identical.

My managers have loved me or hated me. In their eyes, I’m either a polite, productive helper with valuable insights, able to work autonomously and achieve results that few others can, all while helping those around me to achieve their potential, or I’m a resistant, argumentative, rude, disruptive employee who doesn’t like being micromanaged.

Throughout my career I’ve made many friends in the workplace, but I’ve also felt strangely alienated much of the time, uncertain whether people actually enjoyed my presence at social events, or even in the office. Recently I realized that I take full advantage of any approved opportunity to drink alcohol at work related social events because, and this shouldn’t be a surprise, I stop caring what people think when I drink.

I’ve managed to make some strong enough connections that I can reach out to some really good people in the business community for help, should I ever need to. At the same time, I don’t know if I’d be able to ask the majority of my coworkers for a reference. It’s not that I think that they’d say anything particularly bad about me, I just don’t have a clue how they actually feel.

So when I started researching the symptoms of autism that my daughter was showing, I was not entirely surprised to find out that I actually lined up pretty closely with the most modern description of what autism is. I’d looked into it before, but always considered myself too high functioning in certain areas to fit what I thought autism looked like, even the “Aspergers version” as some would call it.

After some soul searching, which is a topic for an entirely different blog post, I got diagnosed.

Within a month I would lose my job as a result of my autistic traits, and  because I protected myself, I was able to walk away with my head held high, and with my family’s financial security intact. As a direct result, not only I today find myself with the ability to point my life in any direction I want, but finally I know who I truly am, and that my path to happiness in life is not the same as most people.

Here’s my story in 3 parts.

Part 1: The Struggle

I’ve been fired, forced to demote myself (because there wasn’t a measurably justifiable reason for my boss to do it himself) or denied rehire, by my count, 6 times in my life (7 if you count the under the table pizza delivery job where I told another employee, a 16 year old, that she cost me $5 by not quoting a delivery fee on a 15 mile delivery, and the old guy who owned the place got pissed that I said that to “his girl” and fired me, which I now realize as I type this, is something I probably should have reported to the authorities).

Generally speaking, it comes down to one of the following things:

1. I’ve spoken to someone in a manner that they’ve found disrespectful in some way, which I was totally oblivious to
2. I’ve said something in a group which, based on the tone of the conversation, seemed appropriate to me but wasn’t
3. A supervisor is clearly, and verifiably wrong about something important that involves my pay, and I won’t let it go because, in my mind, if I can demonstrate with documented evidence that I’m correct, my supervisor should simply agree with me and that would be good business

I’ve endured being screamed at like a child by a supervisors who thought I disrespected her, and berated like Private Gump by supervisors with military background, all for things I did not understand I had done, and in some cases, I had not done.

I’ve been reduced to tears in the workplace multiple times, despite all the effort I can muster to center myself and hold back the emotion.

I rarely get invited to lunch because people stop asking when you never accept invitations. I am never really certain how to behave in a lunch environment with strangers, so despite the fact that I really wanted to be included, when I was new, I made up excuses to not go whenever people invited me. At pretty much every job. And when I have shown the initiative to invite people, they usually have other plans. I’m pretty certain that I’ve been ditched. A lot.

When I speak in meetings, sometimes things go really well. Other times everyone stares at me and I have to explain what I’m saying 4 different ways, and eventually just let it go.

I’ve been referred to as articulate and verbose, as caring and cutthroat… it’s almost like there are 2 me’s. The me that people get to see when they understand how an autistic brain works (even if they don’t realize they understand it), and the me that people get to see when I’m ruled and surrounded by people who don’t accept you unless you talk, look, and speak a certain way.

When I worked at a major metropolitan newspaper website, I had to report to someone in the print department who had no idea what I did. She tried to use old school management manipulation tactics to get me to fall in line. I saw what she was doing and called her on it. She stopped, but you can imagine how that went. And this was a job I left on good terms.

At a similar job, in a similar situation, I pointed out a major flaw in an operational system (they had given the same name to 3 different things which made the subject almost impossible to converse about without a color coded chart). The Director of this department said “well, I guess it’s a good thing you were here.” Apparently she was really annoyed and was 100% sarcastic, upset that I had pointed out a flaw.

I responded by agreeing that yes, it was very fortunate for her that I was there.

At the same job, the head of the region was reprimanding me for something I didn’t do. I kept trying to explain to him why, and he kept saying I was arguing semantics. What he didn’t understand is that what he called “semantics” was actually a critical differentiation that rendered his entire theory invalid (which makes sense, because he was wrong). But, if you say this to a Senior Manager level employee, they don’t take it well. I know, because I tried that tactic and, well, let’s just say the job was unsalvageable after that, although I didn’t realize it at the time.

I was once fired for pointing out that if you only have 1 territory, and your required work hours only overlap with your territory’s available work hours for 2 hours out of the day, you’re going to be roughly 25% as productive as if you were allowed to align your work schedule with the availability of your territory. I was told I was “taking up too much of management’s bandwidth.”

At my most recent professional stop, I once saved the company millions of dollars by pointing out a flaw in the variable comp structure they were proposing. Nobody else saw it, and nobody else understood it until diagrammed an entire year under the comp plan. Then, they turned around and created one that guaranteed that I, and others wouldn’t get paid unless we produced 3x the highest level of production ever recorded in our position. I almost got fired for not letting that one go, but that battle resulted in me being put on a performance improvement plan because of “my attitude.” My VP screamed at me for not letting things go, even when I’m right, and people who weren’t able to understand the complexity of what I was explaining berated me continuing to assert my accuracy, even after it was found, and acknowledged, that I was accurate. All of this while I was performing well above expectations.

It was during one of these incidents that I started researching my daughter's symptoms, and subsequently matched some of the criteria for diagnosis to my own experience. As I dug deeper, and started to come to terms with the fact that I may be Autistic, suddenly, every memory I had from every incident in my career was re-framed with a new context. My world was flipped upside down. That incident with the sarcastic director? She was probably clear as day to a neurotypical. The Senior Manager? I was probably supposed to be playing some deferential game with him to get out of that one instead of demonstrating why he was wrong. Who knows? Definitely not me.

So suddenly I realize that I could potentially have been terminated as the result of an undiagnosed disability. I have a really hard time calling it a disability, because it’s given me so much that I have to be thankful for, and I’m truly proud to be Autistic. However, you can not deny that I, and others like me, face a unique challenge navigating the social aspect of the workforce.

It was that moment that I knew I needed to get diagnosed, for 2 reasons:

1. To help my employer understand how my brain works, and how they can facilitate getting the most value from my employment through direct communication
2. Protect myself legally from my employer (a software company) deciding I didn’t fit their culture and finding a reason to terminate me that wasn’t business related

This, ultimately, was the most important decision I made. 1 month later I revealed my diagnosis to my employer and asked simply that I receive more direct communication than would be delivered to most employees, and to please let me know if I had ever unintentionally upset someone with a facial expression or tone of voice, so that I can learn how to avoid doing it in the future and make any necessary amends for my mistake. 1 months later I was negotiating a severance package. And in case you weren’t aware, when you get fired, they don’t give you a severance package unless they know they really shouldn’t be firing you, legally speaking. For example, if you can prove through documented evidence that their claims are false. Or that they grossly violated employment law. Or both.

I didn’t set out looking to get trade my job for a severance package. I set out to help the world understand a little bit more about people like me. I worked a software company… there were a few of us around. And they liked to fire you if you didn’t smile enough. My VP liked to say as much at company meetings (and to your face, if you were lucky enough to be me).

In part 2 of this series, I’ll walk through the details of the diagnostic process as I experienced it, and specifics of my last days at this employer… when, how, and why they fired me, everything they did wrong, and how I was able to hold them accountable.