Question:

How can you tell if someone is autistic? How do you handle a subordinate who is not responding to anything you try? What do you do when it is not easy to fire them and you're kind of stuck with them for the time being?

Situation:

I manage approx 20 people. I have been a manager for all of my adult life. I am extremely efficient, I have great people skills, and social understanding, thus have been made a manager of others since my early twenties. However, for the first time I am seriously stuck. I am at over a year without much progress.

I absorbed this new guy to be apart of my team... he is from another division. At first notice, his social ques are way off. I am thinking to myself, "This dude is kind of weird." As time goes on, he says and does things that everyone on my team reports to me as "odd". I don't mean just once and a while, I mean I am constantly getting reports. Nothing too crazy, just odd shit that "normal" people don't do.

On several occasions I have given this person paperwork addressing this and I keep signed copies of his acknowledgements of the paperwork. There have been some more serious issues lately that are related to more serious workplace topics. I squash this shit at my level always. However, recently it was leaked by another team member, who apparently over heard it, to higher superiors of his behavior. Specifically, the more serious matters.

Now I look like I cannot handle my job because this shit was leaked. What do you do when you have tried everything from punishment, to ignoring, to screaming in their face? I have tried to get closer to the person as well, but don't have enough time to do the work that needs to be done. And, anything I have done from a far does not seem to register. I even had him clean every toilet, in every building, for a week straight.

It is a mix between (1) he doesn't seem to get it (get how you're supposed to act and (2) maybe he does get it and this is just blatant disregard for authority. That is the thing, is I am kind of confused on what the fuck he doesn't get about how to act normal.