I, like many autistic individuals, process communication in a very literal manner. One of my biggest challenges is how frequent and accepted non-literal communication is. Ran into a great example at a car wash and thought it would be useful to share it. Click play on the video to check it out.
In this case I get what the message is trying to say which often is not the case. Funny thing to me is if you order a car wash while there is a car already in the wash the message is literally correct and states "The car wash is in use" and then instructs you to wait. I have to wonder how many people approved the messages and no one caught that the ready message does not refer to the car wash but to the customer's state of readiness?
While I recognize that to many this is being picky I am using it as a blatant example of how common it is to say one thing but not mean what the words literally mean. This creates misunderstanding not only with autistic individuals but can mislead both other particularly those who are not native speakers of the language being used. While I am not multi-lingual I don't think it is too much of a stretch to assume the same "it's close enough" phrasing happens in all human languages. So whether the mis-interpretation is from the way the person processes or due to a second language challenge the problems created are the same.
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