I may be a boomer but at least I don’t spend my days hating shit.

Apparently not everyone thinks it’s ugly.

The Presidents of the United States of America fit the bill

Thank you! As an autistic person, I am serious in saying that your practice with your students is honestly the most helpful thing I’ve ever heard of a person doing for autistic people.

That is precisely what we most need: clear communication from others. With that, we can earn our own way. But we do need that.

It may be that your comms skills are good enough for most people but not for this person. One option you have is to improve them even further so that it goes beyond being sufficient for the normal people, and also becomes sufficient for this person.

For example, I have never had my instructions misinterpreted. I am autistic. In my experience, both autistics and neurotypicals tend to interpret my instructions with zero difficulty.

I am saying this to indicate that it is possible to use language in a way that works even for the people who need extra precision.

In the scenario you described, the use of the word “this” in the “send this to them” instruction was a predictable failure point in the communication.

Eliminating that word from that communication would have prevented this issue.

If you want to change the individual, have them do significant working memory training. If you want to solve the problem, consider establishing and enforcing a higher level of disambiguity in office communications.

You don’t think your writing style affects your workplace? If you are indeed the manager, you are tasked, among other things, with establishing the culture of the team.

I’m very aware that people have different skills and limitations and adjust accordingly. I have done a lot, including helping organize tasks, reviewing issues when they come up, setting goals, positive reinforcement, asking how they want me to change to help them further, suggesting learning opportunities, suggesting social interaction opportunities…

One thing you have not mentioned trying is encouraging others in the organization to replace the words “this” and “that” with the actual referent in their communications.

For example the email that said “send this to them”, could say “send the product to them”.

Disambiguating the words “this” and “that” in communication seem like a much more direct path to avoiding this problem than the steps you described.

Your employee is autistic, and suffers from low working memory.

Increasing the employee’s working memory through targeted working memory training will help with this.

Unfortunately, you probably cannot order them to do this training, or even mention the deficit while staying within HR rules.

As an autistic person, I will say that the word “this” is one of my biggest stumbling blocks in communication.

When the business owes you something the person in front of you isn’t acknowledging or able to provide you.

Thank you for telling the truth. It’s good to see someone doing that instead of trying to spin feel-good bullshit.

captain_aggravated is not talking about how he values himself. He’s talking about how society values him.

by magazines that thought a dad body was an actor of his roid cycle

What does that mean? “an actor of his roid cycle”?

They are if they try to use delusion to make themselves feel better.

Fucking amen

I think that “championing body positivity” for any class of adult humans is undignified. I think that doing a special extra thing for people in order to reverse the polarity of a judgment about that aspect of them is cruelly mocking them for that aspect of them.

Perhaps there’s something about that short guy that’s actually awesome, and doesn’t require childish lies and role-playing to communicate.

If someone called me “small dick king” I would hate them forever, despite whatever positive intentions they might have had when they said it. Do not make my weakness the key point of my persona, even if you include that awkward attempt at “positivifying” it. Just call me “Intensely Human, master wordsmith” or something that’s actually positive. Don’t treat me like I’m a five year old, using keywords to remap my negative qualities into positive ones.

The whole idea of using a term, that’s special to short men, to “champion” (verbing nouns is horrible) body positivity in short men, makes me feel nauseous.

If we want to respect short men, let’s do so in action, not in word choice.

No, it’s never okay to generalize. Unless you’re saying my previous sentence in which case it’s okay.

You consider lid down to be foolproof, but I’d say seat down is also foolproof if your eyes aren’t absolutely horrible.

“mama” is a cross-cultural word for mother. It’s the easiest word for a baby to pronounce.

I guess any vehicle you can’t afford can scream rich asshole if you’re bitter enough