Avoidance, Selective Mutism, and the Accuracy of First Impressions...

[Darkkin]

It is the holiday hiring season for the bookshop. Traffic is increasing and phones have been ringing steadily and this afternoon, about fifteen minutes before the end of my shift, I had a customer on the phone with a question that took some digging.

While I was on the phone with my customer this girl walks up to the desk and starts clicking her fingers to get my attention. (In my head, I'm thinking, 'I'm not a dog, you witch...), and the louder her finger snapping got the longer I dawdled on the phone. (This was one of my regulars, so it wasn't hard. I found the series she was looking for and placed an order for five books for her, all while this teen drama queen was snapping to get my attention.)

I wrapped up with my phone call and finally turned my attention to this delightful individual. First words out of her mouth, 'Where is my paperwork?'

What the duck? I have no idea who you are, what you need, or what paperwork you are talking about...All I have is a stunning example of obnoxious behaviour and glaring assumptions.

I didn't say anything, just buzzed for the manager and said, 'I'm assuming one of the new hires is here. She didn't give a name.'

I didn't pull my punch. Her behaviour was horrendous and condescending in the extreme. As soon as I pinged, I grabbed a nearby stack of books and walked off. Good grief. What an appalling display. I've worked frontside retail for a long time and this was in my top five of rudest people.

Most folks provide context, too much context most of the time. The reason for their query, a name, etc...Truly basic information.

How hard is it to say, 'I'm so and so, and I'm here for reason X.'

I'm trusting my gut on this and keeping a safe distance from this individual. There are people like this we see come on staff every holiday and they rarely last longer than two weeks. I'm weirdly accurate when it comes to knowing who will be a problem and who will excel on the bookfloor.

The ones who excel are easy to jive with, the problematic ones can make you feel like a cat who has been petted the wrong way. You want to hiss and hide, but that is not appropriate, so I wield silence and play least in sight. Basically, I disappear into the stacks and stay busy with books and customers.

With those I get a bad vibe from or notice certain behaviours, I will avoid interactions with them at all cost. I will do basic social niceties for nearly everyone, but there are times I make exceptions. And those exceptions are not worth my time and effort. It might sound harsh, but when a person's behaviour toward a complete stranger is that awful, I see no reason to waste time in their vicinity.

Anybody else actively avoid people they take an instant and vehement dislike to?

 

[VictorR]

Wow, that's rude of her and sorry that you'll have to work with her for the next while.

While many of us on the spectrum can be socially awkward or aloof, I draw a significant difference between awkwardness and those who act as if the world revolves around them.

When I worked at an employment resource center many years ago, I feared the youth who were dragged in by their parents (usually their mom) wanting me to help set them up with a job. They often had little or no skills, no accomplishments, mediocre academic achievement, and often little motivation. Not much for me to work with. Basically, they were being overparented and spoiled, and were used to getting what they wanted without even beckoning, for mom was a faithful servant who anticipated their every need, and was too polite to give them pointers on things like manners and respect. Fortunately such clients were the minority, and on the other hand, I had some clients who were so awesome I wish I could hire them to be colleagues.

 

[Darkkin]

We have a really great full-time staff of genuinely nice people. They are really a good group to work with and they know what I am like with people I like and trust. I'm reasonably sociable, quick with a pun, and happy to share a surfeit of weird factoids.

I'm generally a fairly easy going and very polite soul. When I go quiet, the silence can seem to scream because it only happens when something or someone is stressing me to an extreme degree. I tend to pick up on things very quickly and people notice when I take notice of something 'off'. Either way, I will definitely be letting our manager know about the incident. Behaviour like that cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged.

 

[Duna]

How hard is it to say, 'I'm so and so, and I'm here for reason X.'

Good question. I am (or was) usually like this, and then people started to tell me how rude I am and I should be more sociable. So I tried to put some more detail into my inquiries, and of course went too far. In my case it was a form of masking.
N ow I want go back to my "natural self" because that's also how I prefer people to act in such situations: to be practical.

Anybody else actively avoid people they take an instant and vehement dislike to?

I definitely do.
To the extend that I refuse to interact with them altogether.

 

[Outdated]

I think you handled the situation a bit more politely than I might have. People tend to get what they give from me. I don’t often have strong reactions to people but when I do I have learned to believe in my instincts, they’re rarely wrong.

Many years ago the company I worked for advertised an apprenticeship and we got more than 200 applicants, we interviewed 50 of them. During these interviews my boss Kev noticed something strange about me. He said he could see my reactions to different people, some of them I wrote off almost a soon as they walked through the door.

Kev said at first he thought I was being pretty rude but then he noticed that no one else was noticing my reactions. He started studying me instead of concentrating on the interviews. He said I was amazing to watch in action, there was no alteration in my body language, not in my voice modulation, not even in my breathing. He said eventually he decided that it must be something in my eyes that he was seeing and no one else could see it.

Through 2 different companies I ended up working for Kev for about 6 years, we became good mates but he also made good use of me. He called me his Miner’s Canary and took me along to almost every meeting he had to attend. Clients, creditors, lawyers, the whole lot.

He told everyone that it was because he was training me up for management but that was ********. I was there because I could read people and he could read me.