Our Condolences For The Loss Of Hours Of Your Life, A Quarter At A Time

Bosses/Owners/Managers, Continuing Adventures, Employees, Factory/Industrial, Fired, Impossible Demands, Iowa, Mental Health, Non-Dialogue, Time, USA | Working | April 16, 2025

This is the story of how I got fired for being on time.

I was working for a meat-processing plant. We processed hogs. The plant manager had a policy that if you weren’t fifteen minutes early to your shift, you were late. We had to arrive at work fifteen minutes early. This time wasn’t paid, as we were not expected to work. Instead, he had us sit in the breakroom so that we could all come on shift at the same time and relieve the last shift all at the same time. We were not even paid for the time we spent walking from the breakroom to our positions on the line. We were only paid the moment our shift started, which was also the moment that we took over from the previous shift.

Obviously, I know now that this is many types of illegal, but I was barely seventeen, abnormally strong, kind of stupid, and just happy to be paid more than my age per hour.

Here’s the problem. I am autistic (diagnosed at the time) and have ADD (undiagnosed at the time). Waiting in that breakroom physically hurt. It was actively painful. Every second beat upon my brow like death’s ticking pulse.

It started with a sensation of restlessness. I could not sit still. I would start twitching, or squeezing, or bouncing in my chair. It was as though my whole body itched. Then, I’d get a burning sensation behind my eyes, which would spread and move down from my eyes to my chest. The loud noises from the line would become louder, echoing in my brain, and I wouldn’t be able to hear the conversations of those around me as my heart beating in my ears drowned it out.

And then the buzzer would ring to signify it was time to walk to our places on the line so we could take them over at the precise second of the second buzzer.

I brought a Gameboy Color to avoid the sensation, only to have it swatted out of my hand by the manager. I learned that we were not permitted to play video games while waiting. I tried with a discman (this was before iPods, though early MP3 players existed), but also no joy. I brought a paper book, but I was also told to put that away.

The only things we were permitted to do in the breakroom were chat and drink coffee.

So, I started getting there later and later.

Work was forty-five minutes from home on a good day. I had basically unlimited permission to drive my dad’s car, which helped me get to and from.

At first, I would just show up exactly on the fifteen-minute mark that the manager demanded. But… fifteen minutes of grueling wait while my adrenal system activated for no good reason was too painful. I dreaded it, and the dread made it harder and harder to stop reading, playing video games, studying, writing, or any of the other myriad things I did in the morning before work.

When it started, I was only a little “late” — showing up fourteen minutes before my shift instead of fifteen. Then twelve. That was the first time I officially got a warning, and that kept me around fourteen to thirteen minutes for a while.

Then, I slipped again. Ten minutes. Eight. Five. My second warning.

Finally, one day, I arrived two minutes before the buzzer to signify that we needed to walk onto the line to take our positions. After I got done with my shift, the manager took me aside and let me go.

I wasn’t that bothered. It was a summer job, and I would have school again soon.

I did learn a lesson from it, perhaps not the one that NAR would have preferred me to learn, and perhaps not the one that the manager would have preferred I learned, but it was a lesson my dad knew very well.

The next time I found a place to work, I quickly learned all of their systems and took over underserved roles to a degree that firing me quickly became unthinkable, taking full advantage of the different way my brain processed the world to do things a neurotypical person couldn’t — at the cost (to work) of forcing my place of work to put up with my personal quirks.

This is how I’ve operated at work, both as a senior accountant and as a Maintenance Lead, ever since.