Context: this is about my boyfriends job situation, I am in my 20s, he is in his 30s. I am diagnosed autistic and we both suspect he is autistic as well. We struggle to navigate the world, interacting with coworkers and bosses can be hard and confusing. But it depends on the person, we both have good social lives – if we can choose the people we interact with, it works out.
We are in Germany. He recently switched careers, so he just started out working the job he does. He spent a few years to learn for his job and is nearly done so he can work as a “real” employee. Right now his payment is shitty, his boss says he will get paid more once he did his last final thing to be fully educated. But that's only for paperwork, he already works as if he was a fully educated employee. His boss keeps letting him work many hours and tbh I suspect he does this so my bf doesn't have time to prepare himself to finish his education officially. But I don't know if it's on purpose of course. Bf gets paid barely more than minimum wage for a job you need to be well educated. His boss tells him all the time what he's doing wrong even if other people fucked up. Bf then tells him how it actually happened, backs it up with notes and then boss comes up with something else. Bf asked for more money several times because he struggles to pay rent and stuff and he has to work so many hours he has no time for hobbies anymore. You could say hobbies are a luxury and you can live without them, but honestly, then he could have stayed with his minimum wage jobs he did before.
Bf has issues with feeding himself, I would guess it is because of autism/adhd – it looks like executive functioning problems to me. He always struggled to eat, but since he works full time it is really bad. He also struggles to do chores since He started working. He can't stop thinking about his work even when he is at home. His hours are all over the place, that comes with the job. His sleep got really bad, I sometimes wake him up because he makes noises and he wakes up and tells me he had dreams about his job. He says He feels sick in his stomach when he has to go to work. And on mondays and tuesdays he questions if this life has any meaning where he has to work all the time for this money. Not full blown suicidal yet, but in my opinion it's getting more serious with every week.
I think some of the issues are inherent to the job he does, but most of it is because his boss and him can not communicate well and I think his boss is happy to have a cheap work horse as long as bf is not officially finished with his education. I would think bf can be happy with the same Job but different boss. But bf is way too stressed out all the time to get a new job. How are you supposed to make applications if you can't even find time to eat and do laundry?
Recently there were a few meetings where bf said he isn't paid enough. His middle boss (more important than bf, not as important as boss – I don't know the english terms for that kind of stuff) later told him He shouldn't have brought it up infront of multiple people because you only discuss payment with this one person, and you should never talk about payment with coworkers. That sounds to me like a neurotypical rule bosses made up to fuck naive employees over but I am not sure. I know bf isn't good at putting hard facts into soft language, but I think the things he says are true. His payment is bad and he has a lot of stress. And there are actual real numbers that show bf is really good at what he does. He performs better than his coworkers who work there for decades.
Anyway, after the meetings his sleep got really really bad and we agreed he absolutely has to stop working there or his mental health will be fucked bad soon. So he called in sick this morning. The plan is that he prepares applications this week and then gets back to work next week while applicating else where for the same job, but different company.
The management person told him to ask his coworkers to do his work for the week, so he did that. I think that's bullshit because if you are sick, you are sick and shouldn't be delegating work. There are management people hired for this reasons, I would assume. But okay, bf did it and now his phone rings all the time because middle boss wants to talk to him. He doesn't answer. Honestly I feel guilty and he does too because he is not physically sick and could theoretically work. But I also see there are real burnout symptoms he has so he is really sick, right? He doesn't work a job where people die if he doesn't show up. It's just inconvenient and may cost the boss some money. It's still before noon and he puts off going to a doctor but he knows He absolutely has to go to get the note saying he is actually sick. He thought about faking symptoms but he hates lying and isn't good at it. I think he should be honest with the doctor. He needs a week to calm down and be able to apply for new jobs. If I was a doctor, I would write him sick, but I know most people don't think like me.
My question: from what I wrote here, do you think my assessments are correct? It is okay to call in sick in such a situation and it is okay to not answer your phone, right? How would you go about talking to the doctor?
Also, for the future – do you have info about how to navigate salary negotiations? It would be great if there was something especially for people who communicate different from the neuritypical standard. Like a how to talk to a neuritypical boss for autistic folks or something.
Thank you so much for reading this.