How The Meltdown Monster’s F-Bomb Laden Tirade And Some Crazy Good Luck Started This Autistic’s Career: An AuDHD Origin Story
Hi there, my name is Shawn and I’m Autistic. I’m still freshly diagnosed, it adds to my lifelong diagnosis of ADHD, making me what many refer to as AuDHD. I am sharing my stories on Medium because when I was researching I couldn’t find any stories quite like mine. I’m no expert on Autism, so I am sharing stories, like this one, from my past to help others like me find that story they need to make it all connect. Hope you enjoy it and maybe learn something along the way!
One of the more alarming things I’ve read about Autism is the disastrously high unemployment rate; a recent UK study showed not only a huge difference when compared to the regular population, at 29% employment, Autism is even one of the lowest rates amongst the overall disabled population. I suspect the number is somewhat skewed and not fully representative of the actual unemployment figures, as it only counts diagnosed Autistics. Additionally, for Autistics, like myself, who are employed, there is quite a bit of incentive to not disclose the diagnosis, even to insurance companies or other medical practitioners. Even so, the number is still likely way too high.
Given these numbers, I am very much in the minority. Not only am I employed, I have a great job at a great company. So, I thought it would be good to share my path to finding my career, building it, and eventually, how I ended up in burnout. It’s not a short tale, but I encourage you to hang in there. There are good guys and bad guys, a troubled antagonist, and even some guest appearances by soon-to-be-featured characters.
In this story, we meet our antagonist at a particularly low point in his life. He struggled all through school to the point of dropping out as a Junior. Over the next few years, he went through a string of ~50 jobs. This tale starts at job #51 with no prospects, nothing, just another low-paying, pain-in-the-ass job. With that, let’s begin.
Just Because You’re Good At Something
Way way back in time, back when all the phones were dumb and everything Internet-related started with an ‘e,’ I worked at an answering service. If you don’t know what one is, count yourself lucky. They are a service provided to companies that need someone to answer their phones while they are not able to, primarily after hours. The most common customers of answering services are doctor’s offices.
The problem with them, and why I hope you can avoid them, is that everyone who has to speak to an answering service has the same thing in common: they thought they were calling the business, but they are getting a glorified human answering machine instead, super frustrating. You get some Yahoo who “can’t help you with that, but (is) happy to take a message and pass it along.”
Fun Fact
By the time I left, I had estimated I had taken ~500k calls while there, and I repeated the above script on almost all of them.
We took many calls a day, measured in the hundreds. I was extremely quick and efficient at it, though some might say I was curt. Whatever, the doctor called you back, didn’t they?
I digress; I found there was a rhythm to the calls and a pattern to the people. I identified nine types of callers, such as “Old Rambler” and “Indignant.” There was a path to the quickest resolution for each type of caller. For example, the Old Rambler was easy: short and stern, don’t allow one extra word. Whereas, with the Indignant, it was best to let them speak and only interrupt occasionally, gathering the information bit by bit while always agreeing. I built up scripts for dealing with each of the types, and I rarely had surprises that didn’t already have a script ready (Masking®)
I could usually tell what type of person it was in their first sentence (Pattern Recognition®). Due to this efficiency, I once had an eight-hour shift where I handled 1000 calls. I’ll save you the math, that’s an average of 1 call every 28 seconds!
While I was pretty good at the job, as you can probably surmise, I absolutely hated it. Talking to 1000 people in a shift, while perhaps impressive, was utterly exhausting. I would get home completely mentally spent, but my body was taut from stress; it was an awful, paradoxical feeling. I would have to…ahem…”medicate” to bring my body in line with my mind.
Get Me Off The Damn Phone!
Because I hated taking calls, I volunteered to do absolutely anything I could to get off the phone. The Owner of the business also owned the building, so there were always odd jobs to do both in and out of the office, and I did them all, from helping to move furniture to sweeping the parking lot. Anything was better than taking stupid phone calls and talking to people who didn’t want to talk to me any more than I wanted to talk to them.
One day, things shifted, a path opened. My boss asked me if I knew how to put a CD-ROM drive in a computer. I had no idea how, but I told him I did. I figured it out, and away we went. Over the next couple of years, I became the IT person for the business.
At one point, we realized we needed new computers, so to save the company money, I began custom-building them; we could get twice the computer for half the price. I loved building computers. I learned all the parts and specs and different levels of components. I knew the parts and prices so well that I could build the machine part by part in my head based on the spec needs and estimate the cost within a few dollars (Special Interest®); take that AI! By the time I left the company, I think I had built around fifty computers and servers.
The Office Manager And The Monster
The Office Manager was a nice woman in her forties; she and I worked closely on a lot of things over the seven years I worked at the answering service. She was generally good to work with and was usually a bulwark against The Owner’s wild mood swings.
Despite being the IT person, I still had to take calls from time to time. One day, The Office Manager made a mistake with the schedule, so she needed me to help cover it. I had tons of other things to get done, but I had no choice; the phones always took priority.
My day got off to a rough start as it was. I slept like crap, I was in a terrible mood, I had a pounding headache, and my patience was paper-thin (Sensory Overwhelm®). Now, work was not going well; I was stressed by the tasks I wasn’t able to complete, and I still very much hated being on the phones.
I felt like this was a horrible injustice inflicted on me. The person sitting next to me got to hear every detail. I outlined all the ways in which The Office Manager was wrong, all of her past transgressions, all the mistakes she had made, and, most importantly, why it was a waste of my time to take calls when I had so much more important work to do.
Unknown to me, and perhaps ironically, she had been in the back room doing her job, monitoring calls to review for quality. Unfortunately for both of us, the mic was always on regardless of whether there was a call, so she heard everything.
She came out quite upset and asked me to join her in the back room. I quickly pieced together what had happened, and the panic of being caught was the last straw. I tipped over the edge like Bruce Banner giving in to the Hulk; the monster emerged (Meltdown®).
The Monster
So, what does it feel like when the monster emerges? Well, I like the car metaphor; the monster “takes the wheel.” When it happens, I feel like I’m just a passenger going for a ride at 100mph in a rusted-out F150 truck with no seatbelt. It’s a feeling of loss of control, desperation, resignation, regret, and pain. Though I would be lying if I didn’t say that, sometimes, there is a sense of satisfaction; the monster is saying what’s on my mind after all.
The monster stomped after The Office Manager to the back room, ready to rumble (Fight Response®). He let her know in no uncertain terms exactly what he thought of her in that moment. I wish I could say the conversation was professional in nature, but alas, the monster is not professional. There were f-bombs, b-bombs and numerous other letter-bombs, bombs that would make a drunken sailor blush; the monster is nothing if not colorful. All that mattered at that moment was that she had made a mistake, and the monster knew he was right (Rigid Thinking®). See, the monster doesn’t care about the size or impact of the injustice, only that there was one, and he must correct it.
99% of the time, the monster only gets to complain to me, and I can silence him, but every great once in a while, as Matt McKenna describes in his fantastic article on Meltdown, “The Mental Dam” fails, and The Monster takes the wheel.
The Baby And The Bathwater
Obviously, I was sent home for the day, which I figured was definitely my last day. I mean, who gets to every-letter-bomb a manager and keep their job?
Once home, I was a wreck. I was a wreck due to the stress of the day and the situation. I was a wreck because the monster was allowed to drive, and I was a wreck because I had almost certainly just lost my job. First, the anger from the situation gave way to frustration, then to tears, and finally, a feeling of slowness and weight. I was totally overwhelmed and had nothing left to say; I sat motionless on my couch alone for a period that seemed like hours and minutes simultaneously (Shutdown®).
My boss reached out to me later that day and told me to come in at 10 am the next day. I think I mumbled a few words in response. I was so torn about whether I should go or not. He was a bully to me on so many occasions, but then, sometimes, he would surprise me with incredible generosity. I just never knew what to expect from him. Though this time seemed pretty obvious, I was almost certainly getting the bully.
That night, I replayed the interaction over and over in my mind. I couldn’t think of anything else, no matter how much I tried to distract myself (Rumination®). I thought of all the horrible things the monster, no, I said, and I felt awful.
After a night of restless rumination, 10 am came around, and I found myself sitting in the Owner’s office in a chair that was not one of the normal chairs; I might have been imagining it, or maybe it was a reflection of how I felt, but it seemed like I was so small in that chair. I waited until 10:15 am before he arrived, he walked in with a very serious face…enter the bully.
He sat down in his brown leather executive chair facing out his window with his back to me and said:
“Shawn, I don’t know what to do with you. I should fire you.”
…super dramatic pause…
“ However, I think that might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”
Idioms
Let’s take a quick moment to address this idiom. It was the first time I had ever heard this one, and I had questions. Who’s baby? Why was the bathwater being thrown out and not drained? How would a baby be thrown out with said bathwater? What do babies and their bathwater have to do with me yelling at the manager?
I did figure it out, but it caused me to miss the next several moments of the conversation.
PSA: Please don’t use idioms during serious conversations.
“Shawn, are you listening to me? Did you hear what I just said?!?” I assured him I was listening, though I was still working on the idiom. He finally turned to face me and explained that he would not be firing me but instead laid out his plan for my future at the answering service. I almost fell off that little chair.
I was to work precisely 7 am- 3:30 pm M- F. I was no longer allowed to take calls or speak with anyone in the office. I had to move to the desk in the corner, and I would be focused on one thing: “We need a website. I want you to make one for us.”
The Career Long “Punishment”
I have absolutely no idea how it worked out this way, but I had dressed down a manager in a highly inappropriate manner, and instead of being fired, The Owner gave me everything I could have ever asked for. I no longer had to help on the phones, I didn’t have to talk to anyone, and I got to learn something new. I couldn’t believe my Blind Dumb Luck®. Seeing my situation now through an AuDHD lens, there was even more benefit than I knew at the time. I had a structured schedule and a single clear goal that didn’t require any socializing or organization; I just had to learn and build.
At the time this happened, I was attending an electrical engineering program at a local technical school. The first time I loaded a web page with the code I wrote and saw an image, I was immediately hooked. Thus, I ended my stint as an electrical engineering student and began a new one as a web developer.
Blind Dumb Luck
I have a theory that I’d like to introduce, one which I will examine further in future articles. I’ve had quite a bit of luck, and I feel like it’s a huge contributor to why Autism related difficulties didn’t surface sooner. The luck kept me shielded from many of the deficiencies that come along with my flavor of Autism and ADHD. Happening into a career in tech the way I did, is honestly just blind dumb luck. My life could have very easily gone in a much different, much darker direction. What would it be like if I got fired?
I loved programming so much. I created websites and Windows applications, built a server stack, and created multiple databases. I had dreams where people spoke in SQL Syntax (if you know, you know). I built and learned and built and learned. I obsessed over everything related to coding(Hyper-fixation + Special Interest®). I continued pushing and pushing until, before I knew it, I had made a career for myself as a programmer, one that provides a very comfortable life.
It was the craziest gift born out of a crappy job and a horrible situation. I have so many mixed feelings about The Owner; he was so cruel to me in so many ways; he yelled at me, belittled me, and took advantage of me at every turn. But somehow, he gave me this opportunity, an opportunity that changed my life. I went from a high school dropout with what most sane folks would call a substance abuse problem to a successful software engineering manager at a major tech company.
Awesome Until It Wasn’t
Jump ahead several years; let’s visit the employer before my current one, where we will find a classic trauma response and some more of that Blind Dumb Luck®.
I genuinely liked it at my last employer; I met lots of great developers, many of whom I still work with. It was the first time I felt like a “real” programmer; there was a team of talented engineers, and I was a part of it. It was great.
My boss was a funny dude. He was short and round, both serious and goofy. I loved working with him and felt loyal to him. I found out later that he actually overruled the folks who interviewed me. They recommended against me, but he saw something in me.
There was one period of time when we lost a few of our team members over a couple of months, so I decided to play a trick and show loyalty at the same time. I wrote out my “resignation letter,” put it in an envelope, and marched into his office. His face betrayed him; he knew what was coming. I handed him the envelope, and he sank. He opened it up and read it out loud. “Boss, I love working here; I’m not going anywhere.” he laughed for a good minute straight. He told that story at his going away party several years later.
In the last year I was there, I worked on a project that touched all of our applications. It was to a point where I had to roll it out so we could identify and patch any issues that came up. I warned everyone, including my boss, that the codebase could be unstable and that we should not use any of the latest builds until we were sure they were good. My boss then pulled down the latest build anyway and went to demo a new feature to a prospective client. The application he needed to demo, as it turns out, was the only one that had issues needing repair; it didn’t work at all, and he was livid. I got a call at 8:30 am; he yelled at me for 20 minutes straight.
That moment was my last one of loyalty; yelling at me is what The Owner did. I was right back there, feeling so small, scared, and helpless in that stupid chair, waiting for my punishment. I felt betrayed, heartbroken, angry, and sad.
It was clear I had to leave and I’d like to say it was a brave, calculated decision to do so. It wasn’t, to quote Forrest Gump: “I just ran” (Trauma/Flight Response®). I ran to my current employer a few months later.
A New Job, More Luck
As it turns out, my new job was a huge step up by every measure (Blind Dumb Luck®). I got a considerable raise, more complex problems, more responsibility, awesome people, and more impactful work — all this at a business that everyone on the planet has heard of. Not only that, but it’s also a company I have loved all my life, as they have made many of my favorite gadgets (Special Interest®). That married two Special Interests together: gadgets and programming.
As a result, I poured myself into the job. I worked on a new web shopping cart for their commerce site. I have since built seven shopping carts, two as a developer and five as a manager. The carts I’ve made have earned billions of dollars in revenue and served tens of millions of people.
Around the same time, I came across cycling, and I went all in. I bought bike after bike, learned everything I could, and competed in some big challenge rides. I loved it so much.
This period of working at a place that made Special Interest gadgets, practicing my programming Special Interest, and finding a brand new all-consuming Special Interest in cycling was absolutely glorious!
Buckle Your Seatbelt, Next Stop, Burnout City
In 2022, after a brutal winter, both literally and figuratively, I had some good things going on. I was promoted a few years back to Manager and in June ’22, I was promoted to Sr Manager which I had worked so hard for. Additionally, I trained hard on the bike and did not one, but two major challenge rides over the summer, one of which was in Colorado on actual mountains.
But then this thing happened: silence. I was already promoted, and I had completed the bike rides.
In my Special Interests story, I realized a connection between Special Interests and Burnout while I was writing it. Each of the last two big burnouts I experienced in the previous couple of years was preceded by an “in-between time,” a time when I didn’t have a Special Interest.
So here I was, two major Special Interests, my career, and cycling, came to a conclusion. Not that I didn’t still love them, but my interest in them came down to a more “typical” level.
The feeling that followed is hard to describe (Alexithymia®). There was just silence. I didn’t know what to do with myself. All that was left was a profound feeling of loss, fatigue, and disorientation. Focus, organization, detail recognition, and energy all dropped precipitously. This led me to feeling worthless. I was just no longer able to complete the volume of things I was able to before (Skill Regression®) and there was simply no end in sight.
It’s a shit feeling and one I have not fully recovered from over two years later. When I can muster the courage, I plan on writing about how this period has felt. I even have a video made.
Oof, That Got Heavy
If you read this far, thank you so much! As I hope you can see, it took a lot of luck for me to end up where I am. I was lucky I found a way to build a career based on a Special Interest through a dead-end job, that a meltdown didn’t cost me my career, and that a trauma response led me to an even better job. I was also lucky in that many people were there to help me along the way.
While I have the talent and worked hard to get where I am today, without an outsized share of Blind Dumb Luck®, I could easily be one of the 71% of Autistics without a job and with the recent bouts of burnout, who knows, I may find myself in that group yet. Imagine how many of those unemployed Autistics are even more talented than me but are stuck on the sidelines.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “What can we do about it?” or at least you should be thinking that. I wish I had an answer; all I know is based on my personal experience. Schools failed me (more on this soon!), my parents had no idea how to help me, and it took 51 employers to finally see my value. The only answer I have is that we must do something or many things, and by “many,” I mean fundamental societal changes in the way we perceive, teach, support, and interact with not only Autistics but the disabled community as a whole.
Check out the story I wrote about what Special Interests mean to me and what not having one is like to understand what it must have felt like to have multiple interests simultaneously and subsequently have none.
(Registered Trademark®): This is my silly way of calling out potential Autistic traits in my stories. As I’m no expert in Autism, or myself for that matter, I’m highlighting them in this way so that you can more easily dig into those aspects yourself.
