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Comment by mlyle | Hacker News Reader

It's not hard, and I think anyone reasonable would ask "why not?"

But someone who does not understand the employee's autism might leave satisfied with why the employee would not like to complete the task, but assume that the initial blunt "no" was deliberate disrespect or disregard for the manager's request... and after a series of interactions like this, come to an erroneous conclusion that the employee desired to be uncooperative or doesn't care about showing any regard for our feelings.

Understanding why helps us be empathetic and "not take it personally."

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Eh? Maybe I'm slightly autistic myself, but I would definitely answer "no" to that question (but in a kind tone). I would consider "Do you want to do X?" a pretty rude kind of question, because it is not only requesting you do something, but also making you deal with the cognitive dissonance of saying you want to do something that you don't.

It could also later come back to bite you with the person claiming "But you said you wanted to do that", even though you were just doing it because they were asking.

> but assume that the initial blunt "no" was deliberate disrespect or disregard for the manager's request... and after a series of interactions like this, come to an erroneous conclusion that the employee desired to be uncooperative or doesn't care about showing any regard for our feelings.

I'm probably on the spectrum the way I read that is it's the managers feelings that are the root of the problem. The manager learns to manage his/her feelings and the problem is resolved.

Everything related to people is so much easier when you avoid taking anything personally. It’s almost never meant that way. When it is, you’re still better off not taking it that way. Someone was rude to you? So what? Just keep going.

(Obviously, this doesn’t apply to things like targeted harassment. I’m talking about normal work discussions with troublesome replies.)

Obviously, this is hard to actually do. But it’s good to try, and management should definitely do this, especially with their subordinates.

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