Since November of last year (2021), I’ve been working for a nonprofit organization that seeks to take creative people on the autism spectrum and teach them technical skills so they can use their creativity to land a job. Another of the organization’s goals is to show employers what kind of environment is most conducive to the care and maintenance of their autistic employees. At first, I was going to head up their media team, which makes promotional videos and other media to generate funds for the organization, but that didn’t really work out. I never really felt “in charge” of it, and there was already someone there who was much better suited to that who finally stepped up.
Seeing how well I work with my two stepsons, the boss put me in charge of the internship program. Part of being in charge was creating the program from the ground up. The interns would be unpaid, but we were open to taking in anyone on the autism spectrum who had aptitude for and interest in supplementing their creative skills with technical skills just like I’ve done.
But that didn’t really pan out either. I was recently told that budget issues meant the company was going to focus on the revenue-generating media team and drop the internship program because it wasn’t getting the grants that the boss was hoping for. It makes sense to me, since we only really had one intern. The only person getting paid was me, which made it too expensive to keep running.
What I should have done is get them to guarantee me a certain number of hours. I was willing to accept $16 an hour because the hours were steady. Now that they’ve been ripped away, I see that they could have always been ripped away. I was always at their mercy. The same is true of everyone who works as someone’s employee. I thought it would be different working for a nonprofit organization, but it all came down to how much money I’m bringing into the company. In the end, money mattered more than I did.
The Houston Aspie Blogging Collective 