For adults who have Asperger's Syndrome, finding and maintaining "appropriate" employment can be a very great challenge in their lives. Because Asperger's Syndrome "affects" socialization and social behavior, even "obtaining" employment through the "normal process of a 'in-person' employment interview", even getting a job, that can utilize their "special interests/special skills" can sometimes be "impossible".

For starters, we High Functioning Autistic Adults have "very poor" to nonexistent "personal" social presentation skills. Many of us autistic adults have a great deal of difficulty in answering "What?", "Where?", and "Why?" types of questions pertaining to "oneself", and how "oneself" can "integrate" their special skills/special abilities into a "group setting", which is what most employment environments are. We also display "discongruous" nonverbal facial expressions, gestures, and body language that usually always "does not relate to what we say about ourselves in our own behalf". "Eye Contact" is an issue with us, because even when we autistic adults do look at an employment interviewer, we tend to simply "stare through another person", and concentrate on things, like visual details on a wall behind the interviewer or we get "distracted" by the visual shimmering effect caused by fluorescent lighting fixtures.

Employers "view" lack of "eye contact", and getting distracted by the "environment" by an adult like myself with Asperger's Syndrome to signal that the "autistic" hominid primate is "completely dishonest - and a liar" about his/her skills, abilities, and experience, even when the "autistic" adult is being "exactly truthful about himself/herself".

Employers also simply do not like autistic adults, who normally manifest such autistic behaviors as "self rocking" and "hand flapping", which are "normal" for us autistic adults, because we use these behaviors to "regulate cognitive/emotional arousal", when presented with "novel 1^st time social interactions", which is what any employment interview is. Many autistic adults also have a tendency to "rotate" objects in their hands over and over again to examine them by touch and sight.

These "anxiety reducing" behaviors, are seen by "normal hominid primates" as sort-of indicating that the autistic adult may also be "insane" or "crazy" - or "worse", that they are "flying high on illegal drugs". Employers still have the attitude, that "We do not want to have any 'certified' Nut-Cases working for us".

Sad, but true.

Autistic adults like myself also have "issues" with speech and tone of our voices. Lots of times, simple greetings are very difficult for us to "articulate". One part of "greeting" another hominid primate that we find difficult to do, is "shaking hands". Many of us autistic adults simply do not like to be physically touched by other hominid primates in a "social" way. This is because we have severe difficulty in "delineating" or "defining" physical "social boundries". We autistic adults are extremely poor at "social" smalltalk., simply because smalltalk does not contain any information related to an autistic adults "narrowly focused" interest/interests. We autistic adults also tend to be "silent", unless "directly spoken to", to ask a question or to be asked to perform a task that another hominid primate wants us to perform for them.

The employment environment many of us autistic adults prefer, is to be "alone by ourselves", to do a job, "at our own slow pace", because one "strength" we do have, is that we are "narrow hyperfocusers", who are at times "extreme" perfectionists, with a high level of "accuracy to exact details". We tend to "vocationally fail" in noisy "high stress", "high volume output" employment environments that are "extremely fast-paced".

Consequently, because autistic adults can not "produce" high-volume production output in an employment environment, we invariably always end-up being "constantly disciplined" for "poor performance", and we are usually "ruthlessly blown out the door - for cause". This causes us autistic adults to have a "real" unemployment rate of 90%, when compared to the rest of the adult employment age population. Employer's attitudes are that they "do not want goof-offs working here", even when the autistic adult has a perfect attendance record, and always works "flat out" at his/her fastest, all day long. There have been cases, where "autistic" adults have been "fired" and "forced to sign" a piece of paper, "demanding" that they never work for any other manufacturer, "anywhere", as a means of "permanently blacklisting" that autistic adult from ever becoming employed anywhere, thus, "permanently" depriving that autistic adult a livelihood and an income. It does happen, more often than "normal" hominid primates think.

I myself can "speak from experience", from having once been forced to "sign" something like that at a former employer back in 1987. It was at a job obtained for me at a high technology company in Manchester, NH via the New Hampshire State Vocational Rehabilitation "system". The Vocational Rehabilitation CRP (Career Resource Person) went there after I was "ruthlessly thrown out onto the street" and after she left, the person who "fired" me, got ruthlessly "fired" and "thrown out onto the street".

Being a "victim" of "workplace bullying" is also quite a common occurrence for autistic adults. Because of our difficulty with "socialization", we tend to "attract" hominid primates who have a need for "scapegoating" any hominid primate with cognitive/social abnormalities. I myself at that particular employer (that no longer exists - Cisco Systems, Inc., "ruthlessly" took this employer over in a "hostile" business takeover bid, a few years after my "termination" ), that among the things that were done to me, was "taking away daily salary" occasionally, for being 30 seconds "late" for work. Also the same "Supervisor" "followed" me into the men's bathroom and "timed" every bathroom break I had to make. I also had my Lunch literally "taken out of my hands" in the company cafeteria and violently "heaved into the trash", if I went 30 seconds "over" the 30 minute Lunch break, even when I was not allowed to take a Lunch break until 25 minutes after the Lunch Break "started". Back in 1987, I went many days, without being allowed to eat Lunch, or even have drinks of water, based solely on the fact that I was "labeled" a "mentally-ill person", who was not to be "accepted or trusted", despite my showing signs of Asperger's Syndrome, that were not "correctly" diagnosed until 2005. I was also called a "Mental Retard" at that particular employer on a daily basis by my Supervisor, as a means of "motivating" me to produce more output. Because of the "above described" workplace bullying behaviors "directed at me", I was "forced" to decide to wear adult-sized diapers every day for my last 10 months of employment, after the 30-day "grace period", when NH Vocational Rehabilitation was "supposedly" helping me to "adjust to competitive employment". By the time I was "violently terminated from employment" in October of 1987, my bladder control was "100% destroyed", leaving me "permanently functionally incontinent" 24/7, since the year 1987.

At the "next" employer, where I worked for 5 years, a "Military Weapon's Manufacturer", I also got "workplace bullied", not by Supervisors/Managers, but by another employee, "lower down" the "pecking order". Besides, the person was a Female Hominid Primate. The person for 4 years, "constantly" filed "False Sexual Harassment Complaints" to the "Personnel Department" against me "on a daily basis", as a means of "sabotaging my work", which was to "proof-read - and correct" Military Standard ECO Documentation, that had to be sent out to the US Navy's and US Air Force's weapons testing/development bases (location "Classified"). Not once, did I ever speak to her, just "going about my work, quietly in my office cubicle every day, like I was supposed to. I never once saw any of her ECO Writing Work, to make sure it was "done correctly", because if not, our military people's lives would be "on the line" - literally.

That Female Hominid Primate person was "let go" in a company-wide "economic downsizing" in November of 1991. After leaving my particular Manager's office, she went "straight to my office cubicle", and started screaming "I WILL DESTROY YOU FOR THIS 'RETARD' WOOD - I SWEAR IT!!!". She "took a physical swing at me with one of her fists" - which "missed", and then she "stormed out of the building". I later found out on the following Monday, that she went over to another company facility a few miles away, looking for my Supervisor's "girlfriend", and not finding her "target" there, drove over to my Supervisor's "girlfriend's" parents house, and "heaved a brick - through the front Parlour window there". After the "hate-filled" Female Hominid Primate "workplace bully" coworker stormed out of the building, I myself went out into the company parking lot, to make sure, that my Ute was not "vandalized" by her.

After that economic downsizing in November 2001, at this military weapon's manufacturer, I myself, my Supervisor, and the other "Layout Draftsman", "pulled" every single ECO, that she wrote for the Design/Production Engineering Department, since 1988, and found "lots of errors", forcing myself, the other Layout Draftsman, and a couple of ECO Writers to "rewrite - correctly" a couple hundred ECO's on a darn $500,000,000 Air-To-Air Weapons System that this particular Female Hominid Primate had "sabotaged", by not allowing me and the other Layout Draftsman to "check her workmanship", which was "our job".

Also, for about 6 months after that economic downsizing, I myself had to "continually" change my route driving in my Ute to and from work, due to this particular Female Hominid Primate sometimes "waiting" to "follow" and "ambush me" personally in her own vehicle. I myself "kept quiet", not telling my Supervisor or engineering manager about "what was going on" or the Lowell, Massachusetts City Police about this "former" coworkers "threatening behavior towards me.

What would be an "ideal" employment situation for an "autistic" adult? Well, from my point of view, employment should be:

A). A job that maximizes an autistic adult's strengths, such as "deep knowledge" related to that person's passions and interests.

B). The autistic adult must be "left alone" to "get the job done" in "his/her own way, and in his/her own time".

C). There should be "allowances" made for the "autistic" adult to be able to "quietly" hide him/herself away, when experiencing cognitive "sensory/emotional" overload.

D). Tasks must be "concrete", and "routine", and "consistent", because autistic adults are not able to tolerate environments where "things change all the time".

E). Autistic adults like myself need to have "one-on-one" communications with as "few other hominid primates as possible". We can not "juggle" multiple social interactions. Also, there should be a single person who should act as a "consistent" go-between, to facilitate communications with work groups and coordination of the autistic adult's work output with other hominid primates.

F). There should be "zero tolerance" for "workplace bullying", because we autistic adults "act like magnets" for hominid primates who have a need to humiliate, dominate, belittle, and "sabotage" the autistic adult's "contributions" to the place of employment.