Autistic people often have a hard time finding a job and it was no exception for Andrew D’Eri. Andrew’s Father and older brother had an idea to open a business employing mostly autistic people. Since Andrew’s dad was already an entrepreneur and his brother a business school graduate they had the means to make this a reality.
“We wanted to build … an example big and bold and out there that other companies could go ahead and want to emulate,” Andrew’s brother Tom D’Eri, 25, told ABC News, adding that they wanted to find a business that would educate the community by putting autistic employees in front of the customers.
The D’Eris started doing research and found that it was common for people with autism to be unemployed not because they could not do the work but because our society views people with autism as those we should feel sorry for and not as contributing individuals in our labor force.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that about 1 in 68 people have autism spectrum disorder.
“Typically people with autism are really good at structured tasks, following processes, attention to detail,” Tom D’Eri said in video on YouTube. “So we saw that they’re really important skills that people with autism have that make them, in some case, the best employees you can have.”
That research birthed the Rising Tide Car Wash in Parkland, Florida, in 2013. It employees 35 autistic people according to D’Eri. Andrew at 24 finally had his first Job. But things did not start off so smoothly. It took weeks for Andrew to start taking to the job and for the family to start seeing noticeable changes in him. Andrew has had issues with empathy and trying new things in the past and when his father offered him a bite of a new food he wanted to spit it out until his father gave him the whole sandwich.
“Typically, that wouldn’t happen,” Tom D’Eri said, he went on to say that Andrew helped some people on the plane with their bags after starting work. These are just a couple of the examples of the changes the family started noticing in Andrew. He was willing to try new things and empathize more with people.
Many children with autism are bullied in school and being able to work helps them build confidence in themselves.
“They come to us with very little purpose and very little hope for their future,” D’Eri said in the video. “But once they start working with us they start getting positive reinforcement of doing a good job, a customer being happy, getting a tip, that really starts to open them up.”
I hope more business follow suit and start employing people with autism. It will not help with a cure but it sure does improve the lives of some of the people that struggle with autism. Find the Rising Tide Car Wash using the self-service car wash nearby me website.