The Struggle of Eye Contact
I have a really, really hard time with eye contact, as many people with autism do. I think in my many years of life, I've learned to "fake it until you make it," but it's still super uncomfortable for me. I try really hard! But if you're with me and we're talking, you'll notice that I will look away after a couple of seconds and then look at your face again. It's such an odd thing, you know? But the longer I hold eye contact, the more uncomfortable I get, and then I have to look away. This happens with people I know and love, whether it be friends or family.
I shared this story on my Facebook, but years ago I worked for Xerox (they have a business unit focused on providing third-party customer service support, and in this particular job we were supporting the travel website Hotwire). Anyway, in that job I worked as a quality analyst -- the person who does call monitoring and mentoring of customer service agent -- and I was up for a job as a supervisor. I interviewed with two of the team's managers, so it wasn't super easy for me to keep eye contact with two people. I thought I was a shoe in for the job as I had a lot of experience with what we were supporting, and I worked pretty closely with the agents. After a few days I found out they didn't want to hire me for the job due to my lack of eye contact. "The agents aren't going to trust you if you can't keep eye contact," I was told. I was disappointed, but in hindsight it probably was a good thing that I didn't get the job, due to stories I've heard from former co-workers on how they were treated when they were supervisors. In the end, Hotwire decided to ship the customer service off to a different company, and many of my former co-workers were let go.
Now, back then (this was 2012, I think) I didn't know I was on the spectrum, but it certainly is another piece of evidence that pointed to my being on the autism spectrum. It's an interesting thing to think about, this particular symptom. I did a quick Google search to find a scholarly article on the topic, and came across this article from Scientific American. At least in speaking for myself, eye contact makes me uncomfortable. The longer I do it, the more uncomfortable I feel, and that's the point where I will turn away. One of my friends with autism suggested a technique of looking at a person's nose, which is something I haven't tried yet, but will in the future. That could be a workaround to a behavior that's off putting to so many.
I shared this story on my Facebook, but years ago I worked for Xerox (they have a business unit focused on providing third-party customer service support, and in this particular job we were supporting the travel website Hotwire). Anyway, in that job I worked as a quality analyst -- the person who does call monitoring and mentoring of customer service agent -- and I was up for a job as a supervisor. I interviewed with two of the team's managers, so it wasn't super easy for me to keep eye contact with two people. I thought I was a shoe in for the job as I had a lot of experience with what we were supporting, and I worked pretty closely with the agents. After a few days I found out they didn't want to hire me for the job due to my lack of eye contact. "The agents aren't going to trust you if you can't keep eye contact," I was told. I was disappointed, but in hindsight it probably was a good thing that I didn't get the job, due to stories I've heard from former co-workers on how they were treated when they were supervisors. In the end, Hotwire decided to ship the customer service off to a different company, and many of my former co-workers were let go.
Now, back then (this was 2012, I think) I didn't know I was on the spectrum, but it certainly is another piece of evidence that pointed to my being on the autism spectrum. It's an interesting thing to think about, this particular symptom. I did a quick Google search to find a scholarly article on the topic, and came across this article from Scientific American. At least in speaking for myself, eye contact makes me uncomfortable. The longer I do it, the more uncomfortable I feel, and that's the point where I will turn away. One of my friends with autism suggested a technique of looking at a person's nose, which is something I haven't tried yet, but will in the future. That could be a workaround to a behavior that's off putting to so many.
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