Hello! I'm a forum newbie, so bear with me haha. So I make things clear, I'm 20 and have been dealing with clinical anxiety and autism my entire life.
I started my first job at a small fish and chips store three months ago, working 2 shifts a week, 3 hours each. I got this job through a friend referral, which meant I skipped the job interview. This job has been causing a lot of anxiety for me however, despite the leniency from my manager and my co-workers, and most customers being very friendly people.
All the time, I worry that I'll do something wrong, like mess up packing an order or mishear a customer's order. I haven't gone near a single phone order due to this. The messing of packing an order has happened once, which has resulted me in getting a temporary panic attack, leaving me out of commission for 30mins. My manager had no idea how to handle it, since he had never worked with someone with clinical anxiety.
The anxiety only ramps up the closer it gets to time for me to leave for work, and it's gotten to the point where I had to lie to skip work one time because I was too frozen in my own anxiety to move. Despite the work itself being relatively easy-going, calm with not a lot of customers, my brain thinks otherwise. It's also caused me to dip somewhat in my schoolwork, just because I can't stop worrying about work.
It doesn't also help much that miscommunication is a thing that happens very frequently with my manager and coworkers, as they are not from an English-native background. I feel like I annoy my manager every time I ask him to repeat something to me. I have raised this issue to be more direct to me to him, but I don't think that got through clearly.
My last issue is the pay. Although I know I'm doing this for the experience, I am being heavily underpaid by casual working standards for an adult, so my main source of income is from my youth allowance. I'm too scared to raise it to my manager for fear of something worse happening. My job agency said that I should rely from my youth allowance instead until I get a full-time job, because my workplace can get into huge legal trouble for this.
This has been plaguing me ever since I started working. Any help would be appreciated, whether I should continue working, change jobs, quit entirely or find ways to cope around this. I have never taken medication for my anxiety before, and have been visiting a psychologist. Thanks for reading!
