Chapter 24, "Working as a Poultry Efficiency Consultant." I'm Frank. I was 50 when I was diagnosed, although a lot of people in my family are special education teachers. So it was well known that I was one or two notes off if you were looking at it as a musical instrument.

There was definitely something amiss fairly early on that was very noticeable by five or six years old. The struggle was mainly in education, the human interaction, the stereotypical stuff of not being able to look someone in the eyes, that especially. As far as interacting with my friends, riding bikes and doing things of that nature, there wasn't as much difficulty with maintaining that social stamina as there might have been for other autistic people.

For example, in the summertime, I might be social for nine weeks out of 12, and then the other three weeks, I might just stay in my room. I was always designing things from a very early age. I was doing floor plans and drawing scale models of houses when I was in grade school.

I have always been very good at seeing things in a three-dimensional view. My proportions were very accurate. It's ironic that math class was another area where I really struggled. It's funny because in my job, I have to be able to calculate and balance various components of equipment, but I'm able to do that in my mind.

Getting my start. Work-wise, I started out in finance and accounting in Fortune 100 companies. But that wasn't stimulating because sitting behind a desk all day and looking at numbers just wasn't my thing. I would have been much happier on the floor interacting with process and people. Thankfully, I found employment in that niche, and I am currently a management consultant in the poultry industry.

I've worked in everything from mining to railroads for the last 22 years. But the last seven years have been in the poultry industry exclusively. Right before that, I was a controller at a division of Colgate, and they sent in consultants to do the work. When I saw what they did, I romanticized the fact that these people were flying around everywhere. And I thought to myself that I wanted to do that.

Once I got my MBA and my wife at the time was raising hell that I didn't have meaningful work in her eyes, I felt that the timing was right to try. In the paper, there was a listing for people hiring management consultants with a financial background. And with how hellish things were at home, I knew that being on the road and coming home every weekend was going to be easier than going home every weekday.

So I sort of floated down the channeled river. I really just stumbled upon it and went for the ride. It's a stream that meanders and meanders with the current going one way, and you're just following the inlet. I did have some really great support with some friends in IT consulting who taught me things, as well as three brothers.

Having that support network helped me balance out the waves of the river because it wasn't incredibly easy at first. It's kind of funny because I've had this discussion with others, and nobody I've worked with ever went to school dreaming of being a consult. Most of the people I work with are dysfunctional in some way and are doing this because they can't fit into the corporate mold, although I would argue that it's only dysfunctional in the eyes of the corporate mold.

In my position, I get a pretty broad brush. I get free rein, so to speak, to interact with the client and show them the benefits of redesigning stuff as opposed to the behavior change only. My job is essentially to make companies increase the amount of output with their current staffing or reduce their staffing while maintaining their current amount of output.

The way I do it is I redesign the process because it's hard to change people's behavior. But if I change the process, they don't have the behavior to fall back on anymore. The old behavior simply doesn't fit in the new process. Sometimes the fix is as simple as repositioning a conveyor or a piece of equipment. More often than not, it's more complex than that.

I would say that having Asperger's has definitely helped me in the way I run the floor on the job, specifically in two unique ways. One, most people have no idea how the equipment works. These plants are very mechanically driven. Even though there's a lot of people, it's also very automated. So you have to be able to understand the puzzle by being able to visualize things almost mechanically. That really helps.

Secondly, I can be kind of like a chameleon. In my job, I go in and tell people that they need to reduce their staff. I'm capable of being totally disassociated emotionally from the situation when I tell people that they either need to get rid of 20% of their workforce, or someone else will take over their department that is already on board and will get rid of the people.

I don't have a problem doing that. I'm kind of cold when it comes to that. It's not particularly a nice thing. But when a company needs help or could tank, it's a lot better when someone is talking to them in a more unemotional and analytical manner. That said, the first goal is to always keep your labor force whenever you can. If you can increase efficiency and people are able to get more product out and keep their jobs, that's a lot more palatable.

Another strength I have is that I think in pictures. So if we're having the end of day meeting, I know the equipment other people are talking about or how people might be bending over excessively and stressing or straining. It's like a movie. The problem is that my mind never stops. A lot of times, I'm thinking about stuff other than what is in the present because it appears as though my mind prioritizes what it thinks is critical, and everything below that is put in another folder.

One of the things that is a little bit more difficult for me is the social aspect of things. Being aphasic, if people are interacting with you about something that they find humorous and you take it literally, that can lead to mix-ups. Same with sarcasm. Something may not be a personal affront to me, but I take it as such because I don't know the difference between conjecture and reality.

That's why, in my opinion, I gravitated towards the mechanical part of the job-- machines, gears, hydraulics. Even though there are computer chips now, the controls are still basically analog in a lot of ways. I'm also face blind. I have to be around someone for a while before I can remember their name and associate it with their face. That said, I do tell my coworkers that I'm Asperger's. They know, and there's no reason to hide it. I don't see it as a stigma.

My job is very rewarding. One of the things I've started doing is instead of flying home, I just stay in a hotel wherever the project might be. Previously, when you fly home every week, you get home around midnight on Friday, but then you're leaving again to the airport at noon on Sunday. That added a lot of stressors and anxiety. There was no downtime. Now things are a lot more palatable because I get to explore different areas all over Canada and the United States with the different projects I do.

There is also a lot of flexibility with my job. There is normally a low point in the year for about four to six weeks. I am in a position where I can be honest with my employers and tell them to lay me off for a month so I can rest and recharge. So I normally work 10 to 11 months out of the year and then have the month of December and half of January off.

Advice for others. Living with Asperger's comes with innate strengths and difficulties. You have to keep trying new things until you find what your strengths are. Keep trying is the key there because otherwise you'll get all balled up in the weaknesses part of it because it is a trade-off.

My next piece of advice-- be honest with people. Granted, it's all situational depending upon who you are working with because you may be judged. But tell people what your limitations are. More often than not, it is better to let people know what is going on rather than burning out. Don't be afraid to seek support both inside and outside the family. Just get a feel for what seems right.

Most jobs are rewarding in some way. I've actually learned the most from minimum wage jobs. They've contributed the most to what I do, so I don't discount them as places to learn. I still find great comfort in counting and sorting. If I could get paid a livable wage to count and sort, I would count and sort.

Whatever excites you, you need to pursue that. If you do that, you will produce the maximum amount of effort outward. If you enjoy doing something, do it. Aspiring to be something that you're not is not going to get you anywhere, and life is too short to do something that you don't like doing.

Many years ago, I can recall looking out the window and watching a guy riding a lawn tractor at the facility I was working at. I wanted to be the guy on the lawn tractor. Two years later, I was managing a farm where there was only one employee, and I was the caretaker. I was the guy riding the tractor. I wasn't making a boatload of cash, but I was doing what I wanted to do at the time. And that was the right thing to do.