My CUH Story - Josh Rimmer

Watch this video about Josh's story at CUH (opens in a new tab).

Hello my name is Josh, I have been here since beginning 2020, come January I'd have been here for two years. I work in histopathology.

It can be quite an intense job a lot of the time we don't really get a lot of moments to take a break so especially at this current point in time but I think if anyone goes into an NHS job you know what you're getting into.

Okay, firstly, I'm going to address this for any and all people who have autism or high functioning autism or any form of it. We do not all count cards! We're not we're not rain man.

I've had so many people come at me say you know “oh you've got autism, so you're really good at counting cards yeah?” No I'm not! I'm terrible at counting!

I have Dyscalculia as well, I can't do maths, so you know I don't believe necessarily anything you see in media or film because I'm yet to see something actually gives a really good portrayal of that.

Actually, the only time I've ever seen anything that came close was a Thai martial arts movie.

It was a film called chocolate it's about a young girl who had autism and her mother was a gangster and getting ill, she has to get money for her mother to get well.

It's not like any other film where anyone with autism is either unable to speak or is just terribly inhibited in the world, she sees the world differently and she has hyper obsession, which does come with autism a lot of the time. A lot of us will get hyper obsessed over something or need to finish on something, for me anyway, but I think it went for a very general overview, it wasn't trying to be specific which I think is very important because if you've met one person with autism you've met one person with autism.

You can't umbrella us under a particular category of what everyone's like. There are some universal things, like a lot of the people I've met sometimes find eye contact difficult with someone we don't know that well. But give me a little bit of time and I can get past that.

A lot of the time, if it is someone I have just met, they will assume I'm being rude by not looking at them but, just personally, I'll find it a lot more uncomfortable to try and look them in the eye.

I've tried it before and it's made them uncomfortable as well because then I'll start staring at them and that doesn't work too well for anyone.

I don't generally put on any job applications, or anything, that I have Autism, I have Dyslexia and I have Dyscalculia and Dyspraxia, I've got a wonderful collection.

I don't tend to put that on job resumes and stuff because I do sometimes get worried about pre-stigma put on me, I'm usually happy to discuss it quite openly in person with people once I've gotten to know someone. It won't be like the first thing I come out with but I'm happy to talk about it.

I'll normally not bring it up quite so soon because I do feel I have to then prove myself, now I can do a job just as well as anyone else.

I may have a different way of doing it but you will get the same result out of me and more often than not you will get more of a result out of me because I feel I have to go that extra mile to learn.

I wouldn't say necessarily prove myself, I struggled a lot in school, I had to really work hard to get a good qualification and I had to go into education quite viciously, especially the later stage of education.

In my opinion I've already proved myself, I know I can do what anyone else can.

I just know I have a different approach to it, but working in this sort of environment there’s not too much of a competitive environment, so that probably helps because everyone's here doing the same job working towards the same goal.

I'm sure if I ended up on Wall Street or something that would be a totally different story and there might be a few words thrown around here and there but for this sort of environment it's very much like “okay, we're all here doing the same job” but I will try and go the extra mile just to prove to other people that I may have this but it's not going to affect what I do

I'm usually happy to discuss with people especially if I feel I'm going to be in close proximity to people.

I say look there may be a few things about me that you may notice, you may not notice, so there's been you many times where it's come out like “oh my goodness, you have autism?”

Yes, yes I do.

I'm sorry, just on the side note, if anyone ever says to someone “You have autism? Oh well, I didn't notice” Never say that please!

Never say that because more often than not you won't notice, you won't know, unless you know what you're looking for you're not going to notice anything different about people like myself.

If you've gotten to know me over a long period of time, or sometimes a short period of time, you're not going to see me as different to anyone else you know. Maybe for the first time you meet me there will be a bit on tension but usually when you first meet someone there's normally a bit of tension or nerves there anyway.

So, never say “Oh I could never tell” because you shouldn't be able to anyway unless that's glaringly obvious which most cases it often isn't.

Personally, I've been quite lucky with jobs. Management are normally quite understanding about it, my manager here actually took the time to actually research, which I was very grateful for.

I've had experiences with some colleagues who think they know about Neurodiversity but they don't, I think educating people to what it is, especially the amount of difference between one person to another, would be in my mind do the world a huge favour.

Especially for someone with autism because, like I mentioned earlier, the whole “You know how count cards?” thing.

Stop assuming you know something, don't assume I can't do something because I guarantee you I can.

I may do it differently or I may take me a little longer to get to grips with it but once I've got it, I’ve got it.

There were certain elements of this job that I wasn't able to do at first and I had a co-worker who said “You're not going to be able to do it because of what you have” No, that's not true and now I can do it better than anyone here, so that proved that point.

Where I used to work they weren't particularly supportive of what I have.

I've had case before where people say “Well you can't do that because you've got this” but I'd say the worst occasion I had was when I was doing a job, like I've said I do it differently to someone else.

I had a co-worker come up and just completely take me away from that job saying “You're not doing it the way I do it” I was explained “But I know this works” They told me “You're not doing it the way I do it” and looked me quite dead in the eye and said “Look, I'm going to be honest with you, with your condition you're never going to be able to do this job. You're not going to be able to succeed in it, why don't you just leave it, why don't you just quit and find something else to do”

I was an adult by this point and I hadn't experienced something quite that cruel since I've been in school, so I was very taken aback by it.

Part of my experience with autism is it takes me a long time to process something, especially a sudden emotional thing like that, so that took me a long time to process it.

I've been referred to by that horrible “R” word before not often it's only happened once.

Where I am currently working there's nothing that's said maliciously, I think things are said due to lack of understanding which hopefully we can educate people on. This kind of thing can lead to better understanding.

For me asking someone what they're comfortable with is fine, that's helpful, that's useful, so I can say “Yeah I'm comfortable with this” or “I don't know but let's see” maybe I can tell you straight up that I can do something.

If you know the nature of this kind of job, the tasks are shifting all the time and different things come up. I'm luckily in a position where the manager I have will say to me “This has come up, can you do it?” and if I say I will not be able to achieve this they will understand that.

But also, I'm able to say “I don't know but I will certainly try and let's find out” I think it's important to know your boundaries but it's also important to learn where to push those boundaries as well.

Currently where I am it's just more of a case of little comments that maybe people don't think through.

If I have a colleague who can quickly do maths in their head for instance, they'll do the calculations and ask me for the numbers. I'll have to take out a calculator or have to ask how it’s done.

It’s the same with spelling. Someone will say "It’s a simple calculation or it’s a simple word to spell” I'm sure it is a simple calculation but for someone like me it doesn't necessarily mean it's simple, it can be quite difficult.

I was asking the spelling of a certain word, quite a simple word, I didn't know how to do it.

My colleague thought I would find any words difficult to spell yet I could happily go sit down and tell you how to spell “discombobulate” which to them makes no sense. To me it doesn't make much sense either, but that's the way my brain works.

Even if it's something simple and straightforward that I need help with, I'm asking help for a reason, I'm not trying to be difficult.

I know that colleagues aren't necessarily trying to be malicious when they say “It's quite simple, it's quite easy” I'm sure it is but I need the time to do it when I'm learning.

When I was learning to do this job, certain aspects of it which were considered incredibly complex and would take a long time. I picked that up fairly easily because to me if there's a logical approach to something then that's set-in stone and I know how to do it and I can do that without any issue.

While other tasks that are considered simpler, if there's no particular logical or direct way to approach it, that will take me longer to pick up. Which did confuse a lot of people to begin with but my colleagues they're all very understanding and they're always happy to ask any questions.

I think it is important to be able to feel comfortable to ask “Well what is it I should be looking out for? what is it that you're happy or comfortable with? or what can I do to help you?”

I think that's really important and it's nice for me, for someone just to be direct, don't be rude about it obviously, but being quite direct and just saying “Okay, well what is it that'll cause an issue or what can I do to help?” something like that, that's very nice for me to hear.