Relying on other people

I find it really difficult when I have to rely on other people in order for me to be able to do something; be that having to wait for authorisation to proceed with something or needing someone to provide me with something.


Its not an uncommon thing amongst autistic people that we dislike being reliant on others - relying on others generally involves interacting with others and that's not something we like being forced to do necessarily!


Thing is, the world we live in means it is very very rare to be able to get through life without having some form of reliance on others - we rely on our employers/the state to provide us with our money regularly, we rely on utility companies to maintain a consistent flow of electricity/water to us, we rely on the emergency services to be there if/when we need them.


And I'm perfectly fine with that. What I dislike is being forced into relying on others in order to achieve my aims because others wont allow me to have the control myself.


I'm not allowed to have keys to my place of work because my manager fears what would happen were I to panic/meltdown when alone (never mind the fact that I live alone and have done successfully for 4 years now . . ) This means that during the school holidays when I'm due to work so many days I am reliant on the key holders opening/closing the building at the right time for me. However, this doesn't often happen. The caretakers, as is their right, want to do all their hours in one go rather than their early morning and evening slots as they do during term time; not particularly helpful to me when I need to work my standard 8am-4pm hours.


The fact that I'm not allowed to have keys to open/lock the building means I'm subject to things not going smoothly; case in point, tomorrow I'm supposed to work my normal hours, however the first key holder wont arrive until 9am. This means to do the hours I'm supposed to (and need to in order to get all my work done) I'll need to carry on working beyond my normal finish time, luckily tomorrow another key holder is planning to stay late so I can do this. Not sure what's happening Tuesday however though as this wont be the case.


And yet, despite the fact that I have raised this as an issue before (my fourth summer with this problem I believe) and despite the fact that my colleagues all know about my Autism and my need to know in advance what's going on I'm still in a situation where things aren't clear to me and I have no way of contacting the people who do know - its the summer holidays, my manager has gone abroad and I don't have the contact details for the caretakers - not that I would have the authority to ask them to switch their working hours even if I did!


Still, at least I'm not relying on others to have done bits of work for me to be able to do mine. Oh, wait a minute . . . .