Being fired unexpectedly is a traumatic experience. Not only does it mean you suddenly can’t pay your bills, it also harms your self-esteem, and it can make you anxious about even looking for another job–let alone starting one. This is especially true if you’ve found yourself in this exact situation multiple times.
Being fired suddenly and for seemingly no reason is an all-too-common autistic experience, and one of the most unfortunate and unfair aspects of this is the reason for termination often boils down to inaccurate assumptions about the person’s character and intentions, not poor job performance.
What often happens is the neurotypical employer observes their employee’s natural autistic behavior and mistranslates it as insubordinate, rude, disrespectful, lazy, sarcastic, etc. They then fire that employee without warning, often giving them no chance to defend themselves or explain their side of the story.
What’s more, when an autistic employee who’s being fired is allowed to speak up, their earnest and logical explanations of what happened from their perspective are viewed as attempts to make excuses or be manipulative, causing an already tense and demoralizing situation to become even more fraught with emotional pain and confusion.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at 10 reasons autistic people have been either unfairly fired or threatened with job termination.
If you’re a neurotypical employer who employs or wants to employ neurodivergent talent, pay close attention to each point, and try to view these situations from our perspective.
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