on one of my lasts posts, most of the people that answered agreed with the idea I’m on the spectrum. I don’t know. I don’t see anything wrong being myself.
I’d just like some serious answers from neurotypicals explaining to me why my question triggered my coworker so much:
Manager called me to ask if I can take an extra shift at a different unit because they’re short staffed due to illness. I agreed.
Because that unit sometimes overfills and nurses there have to take care of more patients than the ratio agreed with the union I called the unit to ask how many patients they do have today, to have an idea if my shift tomorrow is going to be an easy or a difficult one.
The coworker started yelling and calling me an idiot and using some other choice words, so I said “ok” and hung up.
I didn’t yell at her, I simply asked the question in a neutral tone, and I still don’t get the animosity.
20 minutes later the same person calls to inform she called our manager and tomorrow I don’t have to work at that unit.
All this stupid drama because I asked how many patients they have? I simply don’t get it.
Am I really this autistic?
me: Hi, I’m A and tomorrow I’ll be working with you. Can you tell me how many patients do you have today at the unit?
her: what for? (she sounded exasperated).
me: I want to know how much I have to work.
her: are you stupid? (aggressively)
me: I beg your pardon?
her: are you stupid? [insert rant here she started I didn’t listen to because when people yell at me I disconnect and if she already made up her mind not to answer me, why bother? Plus, how many of you can have a conversation with somebody yelling at you?]
me: fine [I hung up]
While the response you got was probably an overreaction, if you stated it exactly this way, that was the trigger.
“I want to know how much I have to work” will suggest that you don’t want to work. A better way to phrase it would have been with your first question:
“Hi, I’m A and tomorrow I’ll be working with you. I don’t usually work there, and I wanted to make sure I was prepared for the workload. About how many patients do you have?”
That tells them that you do want to work. Slotting the word “about” in there lets them know that you don’t expect an exact number (that they would have to shift their own brain gears to go look up), and gives them the option of saying something like “pretty quiet right now” or “it’s crazy, I gotta go, see you tomorrow.”
That’s a bingo.
Since they’re probably chronically overworked, they’re probably unhappy about it. And getting people floated to them who don’t want to do work is a common issue with those kinds of units.
I’m a very nonconfrontational person, but if someone called to interrupt whatever I was doing to ask “I want to know how much I have to work” tomorrow, I wouldn’t be happy.
AuDHD here, and I think you’re spot on, but I wouldn’t discount that union issue mentioned also being a factor. If they’re doing anything wrong then they definitely won’t give an honest answer and being put in that position will frustrate them even more (even though it’s possibly their own fault).
I’ve lost count of how many times I thought I was doing the right thing by seeking clarification so I can properly adjust for some bending of the rules (not necessarily opposing anything) but got blowback because I acknowledged the thing everyone else was conveniently ignoring.
When I ask my boss for clarification: Figure it out!
When I don’t ask my boss for clarification: That’s not what I wanted!
???
“I want to know how much I have to work” gives off vibes that you generally put in the minimum effort and want to know if you will actually have to try tomorrow.
This appears not to be correct, but that’s just how people see that particular phrase. It offended her that your question appeared to imply that the level of workload affects your willingness to work in that unit. To mitigate what she perceived as your reluctance to do hard work, she called your manager to make sure that she didn’t have to work with you.
Consider the reason behind your question. Would an accurate answer have actually affected your day? Most people don’t have the luxury of knowing what tomorrow will look like. I understand the desire to be prepared and to know what will be thrown at you beforehand, since I’m neurodivergent too, but often these questions are for our own comfort and an answer is not actually necessary.
Yeah so explicitly saying “I want to know how much I have to work” is what set her off. It would probably upset most people.
Obviously this is supposition, but she’s probably under a lot of pressure because they’re under staffed. She’s probably working really hard to help the patients in her care, going way above and beyond what’s expected or required in the regs simply because things need to be done and there’s no one else to do them.
She’s desperate for help, and the person that gets assigned to her calls in advance to ask whether it’s going to be busy?
I can see that it may have seemed like a reasonable question, but when posed to someone who’s overworked the response is to be expected.
Can I ask what you would have done with the information? Like if she just said “sure we have n patients”, and that had exceeded the regular for patients to nurses, what would you have done?
My guess is this part
To her it might have sounded like you don’t want to work as much while she doesn’t have a choice because it’s her unit. She is already stressed enough so she doesn’t want someone complaining on top of that.
To neurotypicals this sounds like you don’t want to put in the work. A better way to phrase it would be “I’m just trying to see how busy today will be” you can follow it with bullshit like “trying to decide if I’ll be cooking dinner or picking something up on my way home”
Okay I’m autistic so I might be missing stuff as well, but really the only reasoning I can think of is the following: They might be very understaffed when you called and therefore busy, that’s why they assigned you after all. She might have been working her ass off when you called (or the whole day before you called) and be completely stressed out. Especially if you called during her working hours. Assuming you called during working hours, you were probably distracting her from all the important work she is stressing about to ask a question that from her context kinda equates to “is water wet?”.
Assuming all (or most) of these assumptions are true I can understand why she got annoyed, even if it’s mostly a miscommunication. If she was very busy and stressed you probably also became a bit of a lightning rod for all the stress that built up over the day.
I don’t think this necessarily a “mistake” that only autistic people would make. In the wrong conditions this could happen to anyone. But as an autistic person I do recognize that stuff like this often happens more to me because I tend to find things that are “obvious” and “dumb questions” to neurotypicals absolutely not obvious. Combine that with often not understanding how others will feel, and it becomes very easy to make these mistakes as someone who’s autistic.