I am not unemployed due to laziness. I have ambitions. I would like to be successful. I would like to have a beautiful, grounded wife, children, and earn a good crust. My grandfather, who died before I was born, was in the Navy during the second world war. In his field he was an important person who gained respect. I would like to gain respect too and to achieve my goals, but I find it very difficult because I have Asperger’s Syndrome, a condition on the autistic spectrum that produces impaired social skills, obsessions, high anxiety and, certainly in my case, extreme emotion and passion.
I very much want to have a job, but it has proved trickier than I expected. It’s going to be even harder now after the cuts. It’s also going to be more difficult to qualify for a disability allowance, but I would like employers and politicians to realise that those of us who have these sorts of conditions need help, because it is often difficult for us to understand how to behave.
There have been many books written and TV programmes made recently featuring characters with Asperger’s. There was one on the New York Times bestseller list about a boy with Asperger’s who is misunderstood by the police. In my experience, we’re misunderstood by more people than just police.
If, at the age of ten, I had been able to look into the future and see myself as I am now, I would have dropped dead. I know that I would make a good father but I feel that there is no chance of my having a family. I don’t want to be a jobless nobody, but no matter how hard I try I get fired from every job I do.
It’s not that I have a bad attitude. I think I am an honest and reliable employee. But I find it difficult to fit in.
There is an agency near where I live, which finds disabled people paid jobs. I have seen how efficient this agency is, as two residents in my care home (who have ADHD) were both helped to get jobs. But at first the agency refused to take me, as they did not classify Asperger’s Syndrome as a learning disability. It is. I should know. Some people might say it is a gift, which makes sufferers original. But though I am highly intelligent in some ways, I can’t spell to save my life, I have major problems academically, and I am prone to panicking when things go wrong.
My first official employment, when I was 19, was as a night cleaner in Tesco. This job I found on my own. I went and asked for the manager, and said I wanted work there. The job started at 3 a.m. and ended at 8 a.m. I walked through the small town in the dark to it. Throughout the night, the other workers bitched about me because I was new. At 2 p.m. the next day I got a phone call to say I must not return. A month later, when I contacted the ‘WorkStep’ programme that I had joined, the young woman working there was told by the cleaning firm that I had been fired for my ‘unacceptable attitude to other workers’.
I have been able to get voluntary work more successfully, with the help of a care manager of a home I was in at St Leonards-on-Sea. I moved there in early 2004 and was told it was one of the highest areas of unemployment in the country. I tried to find low-paid work and got an interview in a home for people with Alzheimer’s. At the interview, I jumped when one of the patients grabbed my shoulder, so the managers realised that I was too highly strung to stay.
I then found myself a voluntary job at a residential old people’s home. This environment I liked very much. I am generally very open-minded to the elderly because when I am an old man I might be a grumpy old git. But the junior workers were younger than I was and one girl aged 16 doing a holiday job made a pass at me.
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ she asked me. I told her I didn’t, and was not interested in a relationship with anyone. I then stupidly accused her and some of her companions of behaving like ladettes. A week later I was sacked after only two months.
I did not do a paid job for 14 months after that. I was totally demoralised. But I kept trying and eventually got a job through the local Job Centre, at an industrial refrigeration factory, cleaning offices and lavatories. On my fifth morning, I was told I wasn’t keeping the place clean enough and was sacked. For the next months I went through a few interviews, but did not get offered anything.
The last job I found was by knocking on the door of an old people’s home near to where I live. I was to be a weekend cook, catering for 16 residents. This job I very much wanted to keep. I came in for a week to try to learn the ropes. The environment was pleasant and I felt I could do the work. But I was told I could not continue because I suffer from too much anxiety.
So the point I’d like to make is that it seems that I am not on a disability living allowance for no reason. My Asperger’s clearly makes me difficult to work with, however hard I try. But I long to be employed again. I have always respected ex-servicemen and, so that I can have a purpose in life, I am thinking of joining the Navy like my grandfather. But although I usually look on the positive side, I worry that I will not be accepted, because of my condition.