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Finding Harmony in Opposites Are you an introvert who’s fallen for an extrovert? Do you find yourself wondering how to navigate the differences in your personalities and create a harmonious […]

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Hey there,

I have ADHD and use picking at my skin/scalp as a stim (despite being medicated) and work in an office, which means lots of time sitting and staring at computer screens…ideal picking conditions. I keep my nails short, I wear makeup and hats to reduce the temptation, but I’ve realized that I need a fidget tool to distract myself from the need to pick. A while back I figured out that bringing my knitting project is a perfect way to keep my hands busy!

The downside: it attracts comments, and I’m SUPER sensitive to drive-by comments from folks curious about my appearance or what I’m doing. It does attract way fewer comments than when they catch me scratching at my scalp or when I use my fidget toys (fellow pickers: NeeDoh cubes or gumdrops are perfect). I work with a fair number of Boomers and they feel the need to make judgemental comments about how old I am when they see me with a fidget toy, which actually does impact how they treat me in the workplace.

Comments like “oh, what are you making?” while I’m knitting are totally fine and can be really fun, since I do have other crafty coworkers and we can talk about our projects. It’s the requests that get to me – the “ooh, could you make me a hat / scarf / huge expensive sweater with complicated pattern I saw online” or just straight up “when are you make me something?” that bug me, and they happen SO frequently since I work for a large company and have been knitting at work for at least 2 years.

People who ask questions like this are almost always unaware that knitting is time-consuming, expensive and I only buy yarn from a local shop that hand-dyes their own Merino – and they do the “but what if-” continuation after I’ve said no, while I’m already annoyed, and the longer it goes on the more annoyed I get. I’ve worked in lots of professions over the years, and I quite like my job and I’m good at it, so I’d rather not change careers yet again after alienating all of my coworkers. I’m usually super patient and have worked with little teeny tiny kids so I’m used to a ton of annoying questions, and I’ve even offered to teach people to knit – they only just want me to make them something, struggle to hear “no”, then get annoyed with me.

Example:

“You crochet?” (Nope, knitting)
“What are you making?” (The same hat I’ve been working on for a month, I’m a slow knitter)
“Could you make me one?” (Uhhh nope, I just make things for my family / I’m super behind on holiday presents this year)
“What if I commissioned you?” (No, sorry, I don’t sell my work, if I paid myself a living wage it’d be $300.)
“What?! I buy hats at the store that are $30” (Those are made on a knitting machine & not by a person usually, or if it is handmade they’re super underpaid, and are probably not made of the expensive handmade yarn I buy)
“What if you just got some super cheap yarn from (big name craft store)?” (Nah, I just use ethical yarn)
“But what if you made just a scarf or socks or something instead?” (nope, sorry)
“My grandma used to crochet and she could whip something up super quickly” (very cool for your grandma! Knitting is a lot slower than crochet and I’m a slow knitter.)

Cue person being really annoyed and huffy and treating me stand-offishly for the rest of the day. I’ve had one coworker do this repeatedly, suggesting I sell things as a side hustle & asking me when I’m making him something, to which I finally said “sure, if you get the yarn for it and find a pattern you like, I’ll make you something” – which cued him to say word-for-word, “I didn’t want to do the work, I just wanted you to make me something”.

Am I overreacting? Maybe! Have I tried a firm “nope, sorry” to which the response is almost always that person not speaking to me for the rest of the day? Yep! Am I destined to have this same conversation over and over until eventually I snap and strangle someone with my circular knitting needles? Who’s to say.

Would you happen to have any scripts / advice / commiseration?

Thank you,
Yarnover it (they/them)

Dear Yarnover,

Your letter indicates that you frequently get monitored and singled out by coworkers due to your disability, and you do a lot of work auditing their intentions so you know how to avoid upsetting them or attracting similar attention in the future.

The examples you list show a pattern of sticking to your boundaries while engaging with their questions in good faith, but your patient explanations are not having the intended results. So you’re doing the timeless dance of the neurodivergent, visibly nonconforming, and/or serially awkward: You’re assuming that any routine social interaction that feels “off” is most likely because of some signal you failed to grasp, and categorizing your reactions to others’ behavior (such as annoyance about chronic intrusions and some people’s inability to take “no” for an answer the first seven times you say it) as probable overreactions.

Some consequences of following this logic:

• It leaves little room for and no defense against the possibility that some people act like assholes and go on little bad faith power trips simply because they enjoy it.
• If all your reactions are classified as overreactions, then anything you’d do to administer consequences or even express how you feel are probably off the table. (When people ask me for the “polite” way to tell a boundary-crosser to back off, what they’re usually asking for is the least perceptible way.)
• Ergo, “how do I fix myself so that assholes stop happening to me?” becomes the default approach to encountering bad faith in the wild.
• Wildcard slot for power dynamics around who gets to demand politeness and civility without giving it vs. who is expected to perform these things without expecting them in return.

Assuming good faith until you know otherwise is generally a good way of trying to be in this world, the same way assuming everyone is out to get you is an exhausting way to be. That said, the cultural tendency to overcompensate by ignoring historic power imbalances and assuming individual good intentions in the face of patterns of repeated bad faith behavior leaves us perpetually open to manipulation by bad actors.

Fortunately there is a fairly reliable test for whether your antagonist in a given conflict is operating in good faith: You decline to comply with whatever they want from you and see what they do. When people who genuinely did not intend to annoy or offend you or cross a boundary find out they did, they tend to apologize and back off. When people who did intend harm get called on it, they tend to explode and double down on DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim-and-offender) protocols and other manipulation tactics until it’s all your fault, again. Once that happens, no amount of clarification, information, or work on your part will fix the situation.

What this means in practice: Some of your coworkers are genuinely curious about knitting or genuinely curious about you and knitting is a relatively safe topic to engage with since you are enthusiastic about it. However, some of these people are doing it specifically to fuck with you because you are different and they cannot abide that. They will never admit this, and your charm offensives and patient explanations will never work on them, because their goal was never to understand why. It was to exert dominance. You can tell which are which by how some of them get when you dare treat them like a peer instead of an authority.

The repeat offenders don’t think you should be allowed to knit at work unless it serves them directly (…or allowed to use fidget toys…or ignore them…or give them “too short” answers….or have a disability….or have work tasks more urgent than catering to them…or live your life without constant judgment and commentary from them). These folks will “just” ask questions in order to command your attention and suck up your time, they’ll keep going until they get a rise* out of you or satisfy whatever impulse makes them be like this. (*Any indication that you are less than overjoyed to be interacting with them for as long as they feel like interacting with you). If they succeed in pissing you off, they will have a reason to feel aggrieved and punish you all day. If called on their behavior, they will act surprised. Why on earth are you so mad? They were just asking questions!

It matters that this particular conflict is taking place at work among older, abled, cisgender people who are pretty sure that the likely consequences of pissing you off are weighted strongly in their favor. This added  difficulty level makes straightforward solutions like “just tell them to go away because you’re working” much less feasible. It’s not that the “simple” solution is unreasonable or unfair, or that it never works, it’s just that the risks are higher if your ability to eat and be housed depends on being “a good cultural fit” with people who think you’re supposed to fit them and never the reverse.

I think there is stuff you can do about this, but it requires a hard reset on your part. This isn’t a problem about figuring out what each of these people individually want and finding better ways to explain yourself next time about a thing that helps you and harms no one. Boundaries start with defining what you will do, not controlling what other people do, making this a question about wresting back control of your days, accommodating yourself to the max, and clarifying what messages you wish to send about what you need to do your job effectively. If you’re going to have to mask to get through the workday, might as well build a mask out of deliberate messaging that has a hope of serving you!

Homework time:

First, how interruptible does your job expect you to be vs. how not-interruptible do you ideally need to be in order to get your work done?

What do you need to get done this week/today, and can you map tasks for which you require the most focus with blocks of time where you’re likely to have the most focus? How do these blocks correspond with how annoying vs. enjoyable it is to talk about knitting? For example:

• Blocks of time when you need knitting as a focus tool. (No interruptions please!)
• Blocks of when you’re in the break room and happy to chat about knitting with other like-minded people. (Knitting chat = yes!)
• Blocks of time when occasional work-related interruptions and/or casual chitchat are expected and unavoidable. Shove “meetings” into this one, but remove “knitting chat” for the time being.

Second, what are some visible, perceptible ways you could distinguish focus blocks from the others and enforce greater seclusion? Can you close a door or temporarily move to an unoccupied conference room or designated quiet workspace?

See also:

• Noise-cancelling headphones, the bigger the better.
• Blocking out time on shared office spyware collaboration tools.
• Rechargeable LED lamps where you can change the color at will.
• Jo March had her garret and her “Eff off, I’m writing (This means you, Amy!)(Beth, dear, please leave the tea mugs OUTSIDE!!!!!)” cap. You already have one hat. Do you need a second hat in a different color?

The props & lighting might signal the boundary. What body language or other cues indicate “I don’t wanna talk to you right now” and could help reinforce the boundary?

• Don’t turn your body toward them or look up from your screen to talk to them.
• Continue typing or reading the entire time.
• Keep your answers very short and focused on work.
• All the other “grey rock” and “be boring” tactics they hate.

A lot of social skills advice for neurodivergent people is about how we can get better at reading  body language and social cues to avoid annoying neurotypical people by taking them at their word, (or worse, asking them to clarify their meaning), but I’ve yet to see instructions about how we get to transmit our own cues. The stuff I listed is all the stuff I was taught were “universal” signals that mean “stay away” or “keep it moving” when someone does them to me. Just how universal are they? Let’s find out!

Now, you already know that certain of your coworkers find you fascinating (non-complimentary, at least from their perspective, whereas all of my indicators point toward “a goddamn delight.”). And you know certain people (serially annoying) are gonna comment on anything and everything you change no matter what you do because that’s their brand of weirdness. You can’t prevent it, but you can expect it, plan for it, and build it into how you respond to it.

When making changes to your environment or activities inspires someone to try to get around the boundary or comment in a way that feels intrusive, try this from now on: Instead of explaining yourself at length (and thereby rewarding the unwelcome behavior), find your best “pleasant coworker who is mildly confused” mask, and pick whichever of these script patterns seems most true for you and achievable at the time.

Them: “Wait, why is your light blue all of a sudden?”

You: “New lamp. It helps me focus.” (Alternate: “I like blue.”)

Pause while everybody takes that in.

You: “Anyway, did you need something urgently, or can I dive back in?”

Option 2:

Them: :hovering around waiting for you to notice:

You: (slooooooooooooooooooowly saving your work and bringing your attention their way) “Hi there. Can I help you with something?”

Them: “Just wondering, why is your light blue?”

You: “I’m trying a little thing where I make it blue when I need to focus and pink when I am open to answer questions or chitchat. Anyway, right now is focus time. Did you need something urgently or…?”

Them: “So I should only talk to you when the light is pink?”

Pro-tip: If the questioner is someone you know to be serially annoying, unless you work with fellow ADHD, Autistic, or AuDHD-ers and know for sure that you’re talking to one of them right now, there is like a 5% chance this is a sincere question and a 95% chance that it’s a derisive challenge or excuse to lecture you.Trust your pattern recognition skills and history with the other person about which is most likely, not other people’s ideas of how this should work under laboratory conditions, ’cause there is also a more than decent chance that neurotypical bystanders who are supposedly the best at parsing subtext will be like, “But it was just an innocent question, why are you being so mean?” if you react accurately to the hostile intent where they can see you. This is why I say that the best way to get around a “neg” is to agree with it effusively, and that’s why you’re gonna slap on your most cheerful “everybody’s just joking around here!” mask  before you say your next line.

You: “Hahahaha yes! That would be great, actually, but mostly I do it for myself when I know there’s something I need to get done and I can’t afford to spend time chatting. Anyway, did you have work question that needs answering right now…or….?”

Continue looking at them with your most placid Customer Service Face and *don’t say more words* unless it’s answering their work question or thanking them for stopping by.

Then turn your head/your chair/visibly re-angle yourself to detach from the interaction like you’re using your “action” to disengage from a DnD fight, and go back to work. If they keep hovering and looking for more excuses to bother you one you’ve done that, see what happens if you physically exit the space. As in, get up from your desk and walk somewhere else on the floor (bathroom, water cooler, coffee, check mailboxes, etc.) If they wanna walk and talk so they can continue the interaction, there are multiple ways to ditch them without making a scene, like backtracking for an urgent toilet visit or phone call that you forgot you need to make, and if that fails, stop by their desk on your way back to yours to drop them off.

You’re already noticed that resisting certain labels or extended interactions makes some people you work with get weird and huffy. If someone is being rude or unprofessional here, don’t assume it’s you! People have choices about how they treat you. Cool, normal people don’t explode when a coworker says that it’s been nice chatting but they need to get back to work and won’t satisfy every drop of idle curiosity. Those who do aren’t reacting to you doing it wrong somehow, they are reacting to being thwarted about whatever they get out of picking on you. The key to dealing with people who throw tantrums when they don’t get their way about the tiniest thing is realizing that they’ll do it no matter how you treat them, because that’s their only coping skill with people they think have less power than them. If they stomp off in a huff and make a big show of avoiding you in the future, that’s a victory! Your prize is less of their company and less plausible deniability that they don’t know that they are being annoying when they interrupt you.

The nice thing about this strategy is that you can substitute “knitting” or “white noise machine” or anything for “blue light” and follow the same pattern. “It helps me focus.” “I like it.” When you’re on break time, or out of hyperfocus, you can be your gregarious and pleasant self who loves knitting*! (*With one caveat, coming below.)  If you feel you were “accidentally” short with someone with benign intent, remember that it’s okay to be too busy to talk to nice people, too, and you can always follow up later. “Sorry, I was in the middle of something before. How is your day going?”

Finding a way to be consistent about switching modes and giving yourself ways to reset after an awkward interaction is way more useful than trying to find One Script To Finally Rule Them All. You can’t ever get people to stop trying to hijack your day, but I think you can probably exert more control about how long the interruptions last and how you snap your attention back to where you want it to be afterwards.

Bonus: Specifically About Knitting

Here is experiment you could try with how you talk about knitting. I want you to think in terms of switching between three distinct modes. The modes are called:

“Knitting is fun and interesting!” (Mode 1, hereafter)

“Knitting is boring routine background noise I use to get myself through tasks that require sustained attention.” (Mode 2)

“Sorry, I don’t take commissions.” (Mode 3)

Mode 1 is for break time or during office chit-chat lulls involving fellow knitting enthusiasts and people you trust to not be annoying about knitting. In Mode 1, “What are you working on?” is a straightforward question with a straightforward answer. “I’m making a _____ for _______.” And as long as you are enjoying yourself and everyone else is participating in the conversation, be effusive about the kind of yarn you like and the patterns and the other details that make it fun for you. You don’t have to be a robot about it all the time just ’cause other people are weird and demanding sometimes.

Mode 2 is for when you are actively using knitting as a focus tool and someone interrupts you to ask questions about what you’re knitting & why. Tell them it’s a focus tool you use to occupy your hands when you need your brain to stay on task. Then, stop saying any words about knitting. Everybody already knows you like it. Did they need something work related? No? Thank them for stopping by and go back to work. If they are truly interested, they can join in on general Yarn Chat next time everybody’s in the break room.

Mode 3 is for people who badger you about knitting stuff for them. “Sorry, I don’t take commissions.” Then, once again, stop saying any words about knitting. Reasons are for reasonable people. The more you explain your process, or justify what kind of fancy yarn you use, or break down your labor and material costs for unreasonable people, the more they interpret it as the starting point in a negotiation where they will eventually wear you down instead of the “no” that it is. This is the exact dynamic you are describing, is it not?

Change the subject back to work, or ask them if they have any neat holiday plans coming up or if they’ve read any good books lately. You’re not being mean, rude, or unprofessional here. Badgering someone who has given you five reasons already for why they can’t or won’t do what you want is actually rude and unprofessional.

If this works like I hope it will, the act of knitting at work can remain a hobby you enjoy and an important accommodation, while providing zero further beeswax for people who harass you about it To pull it off, I recommend you save discussions about knitting at work for down time and people who make that enjoyable for you.

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