I work at a manufacturing plant, or at least I did until last week.
I have autism but it’s not noticeable, I pass as a normal person. Sometimes I come off as weird or awkward, but I thought I got along well with the other guys at work.
Half a year ago, they hired another guy who had more severe autism. He was mostly non verbal. They had him working at the end of one of the machines, organizing pieces coming out, a pretty simple job but he did it well. He would constantly take bathroom breaks that would become longer every day (up to 30 minutes). I figured he wasn’t actually using the bathroom. His long breaks were starting to affect production, so I guess they let him go.
After we lost him, we ran a rotation to fill his role until we got a new employee.
During that period, the other guys including the team lead thought it would be funny to run some joke to make fun of “the autistic guy”
Basically, whoever was scheduled in the rotation to replace him was to “mimic” and exaggerate his movements and coping mechanisms.
Every day we had a different guy flailing his arms around, pacing back and forth, aggressively nodding their heads for the day. All while laughing.
When it was my turn in the rotation, I of course, didn’t do any of it. When I was reminded “remember to act like him” I said no. I explained that I can’t support doing something like that, as someone with autism myself. I told this to the coworker I felt closest with. I trusted him.
In the following weeks, things changed. My coworkers weren’t talking to me like before, they were becoming passive aggressive. I was getting scolded for the tiniest things.
We deal with lumber, and some pieces don’t meet the quality standard. The team lead started telling me pieces I picked were no good, and then in the same hour accepting pieces even worse quality picked from someone else. I started getting shadowed by the supervisor. I couldn’t even stand for 5 seconds.
After several more weeks of this treatment, I was told to go into the supervisors office, where I was told “this isn’t going to work out”. I knew damn well they didn’t have the leverage to fire me, and that they wanted me to quit.
And I did quit. This past week is the best I’ve felt in my entire life. And I’ll never go back to that kind of work.