I’ve had to be the lead technical advisor on a process refinement activity at work. We have some other consultants helping guide the conversation with our vendor who has a lot of problems in their process that our clients are unhappy with.
Needless to say, i’m your guy for a process discussion but maybe not the best at dealing with a bunch of neurotypical social dressing amongst a bunch of folks that I don’t work closely with.
Working sessions were LONG and informationally dense and, while I was able to get great results on our process work, it became pretty evident that folks were increasingly treating me according to the social standing that I enjoy as an autistic person. Of course, I understand this well and wasn’t overly bothered.
Usually I just let these things slide because its usually pretty trivial and not worth the trouble, and ive never been great at punishing poor treatment in a way that leaves me clean in the exchange.
Well we got to the end if the exercise and I was surprised to find that ‘someone’ would now need to make a 20-slide presentation to the bosses and the whole group about everything we did and that it was already scheduled. That someone was obviously meant to be me in this situation and so I let them know if I were to do it that I would need more time to prepare than was being given. (I need to write a script, run through it, revise it for it to be consumable by NTs. Especially when there is a lot of people attending.) What followed was all manner of badgering and belittling attempts to pressure me into doing it as and when prescribed. But I just stuck with my stance until a colleague less versed in the issues volunteered out of what I assume to be feeling uncomfortable by me not caving to the pressure.
I thanked him privately and explained that it was just an autism thing and I needed more runway for prep. They could have let me know any time along this workshop that I would need to also do this and I could have done the work to be ready as needed.
In any case, we were given the opportunity to give feedback for the experience to the consultants: what went well, what was tricky, what could be improved and of course they asked me last.
I gave them positive sounding feedback in all areas, i mean, largely we accomplished what we set out to do.. but I did have notes for improvement that as a person with accessibility requirements and specific needs, not having any expectations communicated about what ‘next steps’ might entail as we worked through the exercises throughout did not let me properly prepare for the work that might be needed.
They immediately did a 180 in attitude. I also got a very prompt follow up call where they were oh-so-pleasant and they apologized (and made excuses ofc)
Even so, I could tell they felt like jackasses and I never lost my cool one bit as I explained I just needed a heads up and prep time, but that they would have to present themselves if they wanted to stay on that schedule. Of course they can tag me in for context and commentary.
Bonus is I outted myself as disabled to a ton of folks who had no idea.. and it feels good.
