Asperger's Syndrome at Work: What EA Professionals Need to Know

"April is National Autism Awareness Month, yet few understand the challenges that adults face in the workplace." Certain employees are enigmas to their colleagues and supervisors. Consider "Allan" a brilliant programmer who forgets to make eye contact and to smile. He irritates coworkers with painfully blunt, but usually accurate, assessments of their ideas, "That's dumb and won't work!" Doreen has lost more than a dozen technical writing jobs for asking too many questions and being "rude." Notoriously, she tried to empathize with a colleague by observing, "I can tell that your diet isn't working because you're still fat." Mark's supervisor laments, "He can be an incredibly creative, out-of-the-box thinker, but he gets so caught up in the details that he loses sight of what we're trying to accomplish. How do I get him to stay on track?"