SPOILER

The day that changed my life started out like any other Thursday at the library I worked in.  I was talking with my black colleagues. Janine and Veronica.  I had no idea that the conversation was going to cause hurt feelings and lead to a life-changing decision to seek an autism diagnosis.  

That day, I  made comments that I  thought were completely innocent, that were simply describing people, not realizing that I was making racist comments.  We have a new security guard, Kathy, who has brown skin.  We previously had a guard named Tiffany, also brown skin.  I said I keep wanting to call Kathy "Tiffany" because of the similar skin tone.   Also we had a guard, Naomi, who was very dark skinned.  I said I think her skin color is what makes her beautiful, and also that she is from Haiti.  

When Veronica told me Tony wanted to see me in a meeting room, I had no idea why.  The only thing that I could think of was that earlier in the day, I had told, not asked Tony if it was ok, to slightly change up my schedule.  I was supposed to first work on pulling customer requests from the shelves, putting a matching barcode sticker on them, and then checking them into the circulation system.  However, I had a cart of books to check in that I had started while at customer service.

So I was blindsided to find out that Janine and Veronica had interpreted what I said as racist.    When I asked why my coworkers didn’t approach me themselves, Tony said they don’t feel comfortable.  He was telling me all of this because he didn’t want me to end up an “island.”  In that same conversation, he mentioned the fact that I tended to frequently jump into conversations that I wasn't necessarily a part of.  That wasn’t anything new for me either.  I just wanted to connect with people but didn’t always know how to do it appropriately.  Most people do that all of the time, so it was really hard for me to grasp why it could be a problem.

Somewhere in that conversation I brought up the fact that I suspect autism.