Aspies For Freedom

I meant to say that eating in the locker room is icky, because there are lots of germs and stuff there. They don't get cleaned as well as a cafeteria (and who knows how well the cafeteria is or isn't cleaned...)

She was probably just trying to impress the person in the business suit, by bossing around anyone she can find, and using any petty excuse to do so.  

That was the case at this very messed-up fast-food restaurant I worked at back in the '90s.  The operations manager shows up and this one assistant manager turns into a raving maniac, screaming at people.  Certainly, she didn't think she was going to impress anyone with that crap.  Another time, the truck arrives and me and this other guy are doing all the unloading.  Instead of helping, another assistant manager just follows us around berating us ("Is that is fast as you can unload?", "That's pathetic.", "Hey!  Loser boys!", etc.).  The franchise owner was there that afternoon and I guess he thought he was going to impress him.  Me and the other guy were each over 6' in height.  This guy was somewhere around 5'5".  (Napoleon complex, maybe?)  He must have wanted his *** kicked really bad.

My point being, the restaurant industry seems to attract nasty people into positions of authority.  I'm sure the "you can't eat in here" treatment wasn't just reserved for you.  You probably just happened to be the unlucky first one she found when she was schmoozing and wanted to demonstrate her authority.

I always eat in the building I have my class after lunch in. I can't imagine eating in the student center....

I don't want to sound full of myself here, but I've been told I'm quite charismatic when I want to be. This might be a good thing for my chosen profession - but less so on the frequent occasions that I just want to be AspieKat and sit and read or have a nice chat with one other person, etc, when I'm at uni or a party or such. It's inevitable that if I sit somewhere on my own (or to have a one-on-one conversation), a gaggle of people I know will soon materialise. O.o Then I get vaguely claustrophobic and annoyed that my plans for solitude were foiled, and I either end up irritable or totally withdrawn... leaving no one happy.

I need an Invisibility Cloak, or something.

In elementary school I had an awful time because kids couldn't understand that sometimes I wanted to be by myself - in their minds, it meant I was some sort of loner who must have been rejected from society against my will. Thankfully as I grew up people (generally) started to accept that I could enjoy my own company without being some sort of freak or extremely shy, and were willing to let me rejoin society when the times came that I wanted to.

That said, my friends are often still surprised that I actually enjoy being alone. Once in Grade 12 Psychology class, we were discussing introversion and extroversion and someone asked what it was called if you were both. The teacher just shrugged and said "'Verted'? Or Kat."

These days, if people give me a hard time about wanting to be alone, I either:
A: Deathglare them into submission.
B: Make some excuse involving migraines... and then deathglare them.

Sometimes finding a rarely-used bathroom works; you can occupy one of the cubicles to read for a while. Kind of gross... but sometimes the only option if you want total solitude. O.o

A couple of times I've had well-meaning NTs give me a concerned "chat". I used to sing in a choir (GOD I hated that) and once when we were on a weekend retreat we had an hour of free time and the other girls set up a game of volleyball, so I went and sat on a hill near the field and read a book. The director came over and sat with me. She asked if there was a reason I was so antisocial. I remember being surprised at her question and not understanding why she was bothering me. I didn't think I was being antisocial, because I thought "antisocial" meant mean or otherwise deliberately unpleasant company. I just wanted her to leave me alone. She ruined my free time.