Fluorescent lights are pretty high on my list of intolerable things. They wield a malevolent power over people with brains that are wired like mine. This is what happened when I worked in the most brightly lit office I’ve ever encountered.
A few years before I knew I was autistic, I was sent on an interesting job to do some research and analysis.
The workplace was friendly, fun, and ahead of its time in being inclusive. I already had some knowledge of the research topic, it was the type of work I’m good at, and the managers were genuinely interested in making improvements from my recommendations. Best of all, my new colleagues made a special occasion of taking me out for a long lunch of fish ‘n’ chips and craft beers on my first Friday. I knew this was going to be a good project.
And it was good – except for the fluorescent lights, that is. I might not have known I was autistic but I did know a single fluorescent light was enough to fry my brain in fast order.
My new workplace had hundreds of them.
The office with too much lighting, and never enough
Whoever had installed the lighting must have taken their inspiration from Roy and HG and decided too much fluorescence was never enough*. The rows of lights reminded me of swimlanes (to stretch the sporting analogy) except that, unlike an Olympic pool, they seemingly went on forever. Let’s just say that if you ever found yourself in need of a dark corner for an assignation, that office wouldn’t have accommodated you.
The lights were, as my luck would have it, also so diligently and efficiently maintained that there was never an outage of even one ceaselessly tormenting tube.
If one fluorescent light could leave me with overcooked cognition, what would hundreds of them do? If you’d asked me while I was under their malevolent influence, I wouldn’t have been able to summon any words to tell you.
What it feels like when my brain is being fried in fluorescence
If I carefully pick through the ways in which my cortisol-drenched nervous system manifested itself, I can give you an inadequate description now though. Imagine this: your brain feels like Darth Vader has it in his clenched fist. Everything you see has a kind of electric grey pall from the flickering, which also creates an inexorable metallic headache without any centre. Your entire body – your joints, your muscles, your lymph glands – feels like it is coming down with the flu. Your abdomen feels like it’s made out of concrete and you feel low-level but constant nausea. You get up to refill your water bottle but can’t quite fully connect to the sensation of your body moving in space. Of course, there’s no way you have any capacity to work out whether the person you meet at the water cooler is up for a greeting, a chat, or wants to be left in silence with their thoughts. Whichever option you take at random, you have a 66.6667% chance of being wrong.
Worst of all for the task at hand, you can no longer understand the information you’re supposed to be reading. The paragraphs, the words, the letters, the punctuation, all become meaningless, abstract shapes only tenuously attached to the page. Your frustration rises and your anxiety is real because there’s a definite possibility that you can’t deliver on a project you came highly recommended for.
You feel like this for 7.5 hours a day, longer if you do lunch al desko. Then you go home, mentally and physically spent, and basic self care like preparing even a moderately nutritious meal is beyond your ability. You get up to do the same thing all over again the next day, all while being unfailingly cheerful with your workmates.
Autistic coping styles can make neurotypicals think we’re not up to the job
My brand of autism means I internalise these reactions. That creates big health issues for me but means outwardly I pass unnoticed until a manager questions the veracity of repeated sick leave. Others externalise in ways neurotypical managers and colleagues can find socially unacceptable. Either way, our styles of coping with inaccessible working environments can put serious doubts in neurotypical minds about our employability.
Physical and sensory accessibility is a prerequisite for us to do our best work[1]. But negotiating accommodations is bound up with the complexities of disclosure and navigating the power relationship with our employers.
Why fluorescent lights are like Thestrals
In spite – or maybe because – of my tortuous relationship with the fluorescent light, I’d never bothered to learn about its provenance until I came to write this post. I thought I’d read somewhere it had been invented by Nikola Tesla, whom many people claim was autistic despite the obvious clinical difficulties of diagnosing someone who is a long time dead. I liked to fancy he’d created it as a sign by which autists of the future, able to sense something that neurotypicals can’t, might identify themselves. Kind of like the Thestrals in Harry Potter.
Of course, the actual history of the fluorescent light is far more prosaic than that, and Tesla didn’t invent the one we know today. Even so, the strange power it wields over those of us affected by its cold and relentless flicker is real.
How I got the job done by faking a sickie
But what about the research I was sent into that office to do? Remote working wasn’t really a thing back then, and it would never have occurred to me to ask for accommodations. With a deadline looming, I feigned illness and completed the report at home before emailing it back to myself at work. The managers were happy with my recommendations and my workmates organised a farewell lunch at a Chinese restaurant. At least that workaround turned out well in the end.
Image credit: Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash
*You’ll get that reference if you come from the same time and place as me. If not, here’s an article about Roy and HG. There are heaps of videos on YouTube.
[1] Waisman-Nitzan, M., Gal, E. & Schreuer, N. (2021) “It’s like a ramp for a person in a wheelchair”: Workplace accessibility for employees with autism. Research in Developmental Disabilities. 114. doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2021.103959.