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?
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.