My employment history

This is an e-mail that I wrote to someone requesting my work history because they needed real life stories to present to the U.N. in July.  I decided that I would just share with the rest of you what I shared with her, and if anyone else is in the same boat that I am please feel free to comment.

This is the e-mail:

I have been in the workforce since I was 16 with my first job at a Burger King.  I was extremely proficient and never had customer wait longer than 90 seconds for an order with a 0% return rate.  That made the managers very pleased however I was not good with the co-workers because a lot of the times I had to correct their mistakes.  I was let go twice because of my interactions but they always called me back because of my proficiency, after the second time they called me back they decided to make me a manager to give me more authority so the co-workers would be more apt to listening to me rather than thinking I'm just their equal.  I worked there until December 2001, my senior year in high school in which I enlisted into the United States Navy in which point I decided to quit because the stress of working with those "idiots" started to get to me.  I shipped out to Recruit Training on July 5, 2002 shortly after graduation.  I was in the Navy from July 5, 2002 until July 5, 2005 in which I attained rank of E-5, earned two Naval Achievement Medals for my work with chart plotting, correcting, navigation and track laying, expert rifle shooter medal, sharpshooter pistol ribbon, Sea Service Deployment ribbon, National Defense Service Medal and many other mentions.  Again my work was noted as proficient but I had a hard time working with the other operations specialists because I devoted my time to my primary function (radar control and chart navigation) and didn't want any help because I had a way of doing things and was very precise with my corrections and calculations.  The reason that I stood out was mainly because I wanted to stay focused on my job and didn't really talk about much else other than navigation (both electronic and celestial) but no one else really cared about all that so I took it as my main objective to make sure that I was always on watch keeping track of everything which made the others feel inferior.  I did not realize that, I thought I was just being a good shipmate.  I had three people that I hung around with, the others would just come and go, in other words I didn't really have many people in my corner to back me so my advancement was strictly by my hard work and testing in the field rather than recommendations from my superiors.  I agreed to an administrative discharge one year short of my EAOS date because my social abilities wasn't helping me at all.  I was not diagnosed with Aspergers until April of 2011 so at that time I did not realize I had it, and until my son was diagnosed and my wife decided that I needed to get tested I knew very little about the syndrome.  Since I got out of the Navy I held down many positions, obtaining 6 jobs from October 2005 until February 2008 before landing a job at a steel mill from April 2008 until May 2011 in which I was released in April, brought back by the union, and released again a month later due to my social inabilities.  I then secured another job from May 2011 until April 2012 as a temporary associate in which I was not hired in due to my social inabilities rather than my job performance.  My first position out of the Navy was working as a seasonal helper for Target working on the overnight freight team stocking shelves.  I worked there from October 2005 until February 2006 and they liked my work however the reason they said they had to let me go is because I was too particular on the placement of the items and was taking more time than what was allotted, although I knew exactly where everything was going and where to find everything in the back and I didn't have to rely on the computers to find items for customers because I knew where they were and what was coming and going.  The next position that I had was at a sub factory but that only lasted about two months because I didn't like talking to the customers and I couldn't get along with the co-workers so after that I took a position as a security guard in which that only lasted about a month because all I was doing was sitting around waiting for something to happen and became extremely bored.  The other security guards were able to talk to each other to make time go by faster but they usually never talked about what I wanted to talk about.  The next position that I was in was at KraftMaid Cabinetry from April 2006- January 2007 in which things were going well until I started taking it upon myself to help out another department to finish the products on time and a couple of the employees in that department didn't like that so they told on me because I was only trained to work on the machines but not certified and that led to my dismissal, which however I would have probably been laid off the following week anyway because they laid off 400 people the week after I was let go.  From there it took me until April to find another position in which I worked overnight freight at a Home Depot.  They had me doing the garden and paint sections because it took me very little time to find where the products went because I had a map of the store locked in my head and they loved the way that I was able to turn a normal 14 hour job into 6 hours because of my quickness and all the time that I saved.  The things that got me in trouble there was because of differences between me and two other employees that slacked off a lot on the job so I raised my opinions about them.  The first spat we were both written up, the second time was with the other employee so since I was involved in both they decided to let me go.  After that I was able to find a job at Therm-O-Link which was a wire producing and extrusion mill.  I was able to double the numbers expected by me by implementing better procedures and working with the engineers in which I have been told those same procedures are still in place.  They were very impressed with my knowledge and how I was always able to put in the crazy hours which made most of the others call off at least once a week to enjoy a little free time or take care of personal business.  I obtained that position in July of 2007 and was involved in a work related incident in October 2007 which caused my had to get caught up and wrapped in the machine.  I took a lot of time and made weekly appointments for cortisone shots other treatment in which since I worked day shift caused me a lot of times to have to leave work to make the appointments while on the clock so the company was losing a lot of money so it took them a couple months then they finally got a group of people to testify to an offense that I didn't commit so they could release me.  In April of 2008 I was able to land a job for Minteq International in which I lines steel bearing furnaces with refractories to prevent them from burning through.  I also did all the routine maintenance on all the gunning equipment and did the programming on the laser equipment.  I was the only person certified on all of the equipment and all of the persons in the mill loved the work that I performed because of time and efficiency whereas the others weren't as efficient as me.  My shop supervisor told me all the time that I am the best gunner that he had in the shop as far as work ethic, attendance and punctuality but I need to learn how to think before I speak.  In November of 2010 I decided to seek counseling in which the counselor thought I had OCD and then he said he couldn't help me if I didn't answer him.  I didn't know how to answer him so my wife decided to come with me and she decided that she didn't like him and thought I should find someone else.  In April of 2011 I found a counselor that I have been working with since, at the end of April 2011 was when I was diagnosed with aspergers.  The main reason that I went to counseling was because I was terminated because of a few confrontations with other employees (there were only 2 of 9 that I got along with) and when the union got to me I told them that I was suspected to have aspergers but not fully diagnosed so in order for them to get me back to work (on a last chance agreement) was to get a full diagnosis.  Once diagnosed I printed a lot of information about aspergers to hand to my supervisor to let him know what it was about and asked if he could pass it on to the other employees and he told me that I need to fix myself before he tells the other employees.  I then got into a few more arguments but they were unable to release me because of the diagnosis but one of the factors on the last chance agreement was safety so they started to try to find safety issues to write me up on because they did not want me in the shop expressing my thoughts.  They wrote me up once for not putting in my ear protection and another time for taking off my safety glasses to clean the lenses.  The one violation was when I wanted to help out the mill guys on the floor clearing a clogged tap hole in which while burning it out the oxygen hit an air pocket and caused the 2500 degree hot slag to splash back and I got burned on my had and right leg.  My company said that it was a mill job and not mine, they said I was not trained in it and therefore my accident violated the safety agreement in the last chance agreement so they had to let me go.  My supervisor did not want to let me go since other than one other employee there I was the most reliable when it came to problem solving and completing a job but there was nothing he could do because the company felt that I was more of a cancer to them trying to implement new safety strategies and costing them money.  After that I took on a position at Johnsonite (Rubber Flooring) as a temporary associate (temp to hire) in which I was qualified within one month on all the jobs (helper, splitter, stock storage, mill operator, mini-mill operator and calender operator) in the calendering department.  Likewise with this position I received a lot of praise on my efficiency and job knowledge however I got into many spats with a few of the other co-workers, and even though I knew it was the wrong thing to do I just couldn't hold back telling these people how I felt about what they were doing.  I got along good with the supervisors and plant manager but I only worked good with 3 other people in that department and the plant manager said that I need to be more of a team player and less of a thinker and due to my lack of social skills I was unable to make more friends so they decided to end my assignment rather than keeping me.  Since that was a temporary position there was nothing that I could do to protect myself so that's why I am only looking for full time employment now so that once hired I can implement the American's with Disabilities Act.  I do have a job interview on Tuesday and my only hope is that I can be myself and cover up a little of what I can to get this position.  If you have any more questions on my employment (or school) history please feel free to ask.