I don’t tell people that I blog. It’s probably because I don’t want any questions around it or to create more misunderstandings. It seems like the perception of a blogger is that we’re always happy, confident, know what to say and if we experience any negative emotions it’s only for a few minutes, and we know perfectly well how to deal with them. Well, this is probably description of a lifestyle blogger, but then, what that makes me think is, that if I write about negative experiences openly it means that I have no lifestyle. It’s either one or the other: you have lifestyle or you are real.

A couple of weeks ago I had an interview for a job in a learning disability care home and the company looked really good. After the interview they emailed me asking to clarify why I actually got sacked. I think that was two weeks ago. I didn’t reply as yet. I was intending to but… I don’t know, people always misinterpret what I am saying or at least they do it a lot. I don’t want to be in a situation where I think that something looks good and then it turns out that it’s not. The people who I was dealing with during recruitment could actually be good but then, can they control all the staff?

I had this unpleasant experience in my previous job, this one that I got sacked from. It was November 2019 but I remember it quite well. Two colleagues that I was with on an evening shift were making fun of me. It started in a very innocent way. Did I ever mention here that people often think that I joke when I don’t intend to? They laugh and think I’m cute. Ok, I don’t mean that if it lasts a minute or two, it is sweet although it still leaves me with the feeling of being misunderstood because, when I actually try to make a joke no one is laughing.

So what happened on that day was that those colleagues were like ‘Magda, we love you’ for everything that I had to say and after that they’d laugh. It felt to me like they thought the fact they say they loved me gave them permission to make fun of me. It was making me uncomfortable. I was trying to control my body language and tone of voice to look more serious but that didn’t work so I just tried to avoid them. I didn’t sit at the table with them, I sat on the sofa, facing the other way. I thought they’d get a message. They didn’t, the situation continued. They kept calling me to ask me about things and then laughed at my responses. It didn’t look cute any more, it looked nasty and yet they didn’t stop. Finally they laughed at my accent, that apparently I didn’t say the word Google right. I still don’t know how to say it correctly, I forgot.

Anyway, that was the last straw. I run to the office, locked myself there and cried. Only then they realised something is wrong. And guess what? They made it all about me. ‘We didn’t know you will get upset’ – said one of them angrily.

But they wouldn’t do that to a neurotypical person, would they? Yet, they thought it’s ok to do it to me. They didn’t know I will get upset, but I did. ‘How dare you?’ they could have said, it would mean exactly the same thing.

This situation happened in a company that provides autism training to their employees every other year. And it looks like my colleagues though that the fact I’m autistic meant that I have no feelings. They were surprised and agry when it turned out that I do.

I sometimes wonder what happens in companies that don’t do autism training. I’m upset and fed up thinking that, on top of my own struggles that I face every day, I have people prejudice to deal with.

That’s why I didn’t answer that email asking me why I was dismissed. I felt like I’ll end up being misunderstood again.

Sometimes what people do is, they use you. They want you to tick boxes of disability confident employer or to look good for the council, because that’s where their funding comes from. And then, when they have you, they do whatever they want with you.

I mean, it only was bank hours contract so no commitment. I could easily try and then move on if I didn’t like it, but I don’t want to be in a situation where I’m being mistreated again, even in the slightest. So I didn’t reply. We had an interview where I explained myself and they seemed to be ok with that and then they came back with the same question. I mean, ok, I understand, employers have the right to know who they’re hiring, but it put me off.

Can you see where I’m coming from? I think I’ll apply for some other jobs later on and leave this one out. It just didn’t feel like if that place was for me.