I Would Rather Drive a School Bus Than Work at Carabin Law Again

I still build websites. I still solve technical problems. And I also drive a school bus.

If someone gave me a choice tomorrow between driving that school bus and returning to the management environment I experienced at Carabin Law, I would take the bus.

That is not because web development became too difficult for me.

It did not.

The workload itself was manageable. I knew how to do the work, and I still do the same kind of work today through my own small business.

The problem was trust.

This is a first-person account of my experience. Some events are supported by messages and records I retained. Other parts describe my own recollection and interpretation. Where I cannot know another person's motive, I will not pretend that I can.

I disclosed that I was autistic

At some point during my employment, I disclosed that I am autistic.

I did that because I believed I was working somewhere where I could safely be open about it.

I cannot prove what anyone else thought after that disclosure. I cannot tell you what was happening in someone else's mind.

What I can describe is what I experienced.

I felt that the working relationship changed. I felt that my judgment was questioned more, that technical decisions became harder to carry through, and that people with less practical knowledge of systems I was responsible for were increasingly trusted over me.

That experience changed the way I think about disability disclosure.

When technical responsibility and authority stopped matching

One of the clearest examples involved the firm's website.

My administrative access was reduced while I was still expected to help maintain and troubleshoot the site.

The firm had hired a Director of IT. At the time, my understanding was that he was still in school for cybersecurity and was essentially a one-person IT department.

I had already explained one of the basic rules I give anyone who wants to run their own WordPress updates: once an update starts, let it finish. Do not refresh the page in the middle of the process.

During an Elementor update, the process was interrupted by a refresh and the site went into a WordPress critical-error state.

What bothered me was not simply that someone made a mistake. Websites break. Updates fail. I have made mistakes too.

The bigger issue was that the person who now had greater authority over the website did not know how to recover it, while my own access had already been restricted.

I eventually got the site restored by contacting the hosting provider and asking technical support to restore the previous day's backup.

That was not a secret account or hidden access. It was a normal backup restore through the company that hosted the website.

The technical side of that incident deserves its own article, because the same recovery was later connected to an accusation that I had some kind of “backdoor.” I will cover that separately in a technical companion to this post.

Security decisions became trust decisions

Passwords became another point of disagreement.

I used unique passwords for accounts assigned to me. I was questioned about why I was not using what was described as a master password.

From my perspective, using the same shared credential across multiple systems was exactly what I did not want to do. If one credential is compromised, reusing it can expand the damage. Shared credentials can also make accountability harder because multiple people may be using the same access.

I considered unique credentials the safer approach, especially in a law firm environment.

Software licensing became another issue after I left.

Some of the commercial tools used on the websites were licensed through accounts that belonged to me, including Elementor Pro and BPS Pro.

I remember giving the firm some time to obtain licenses of its own, although I no longer remember the exact timeframe. After that, I disconnected my licenses from websites I was no longer responsible for.

Disconnecting my licenses did not mean deleting the websites or erasing the work that had already been built. My licenses were simply no longer attached to websites I no longer managed.

I resigned because the trust was already gone

My resignation did not happen because of the later payroll email.

The resignation came first.

I handed Kirsten Carabin a written resignation letter during a meeting that also included a representative from the television advertising company I had raised concerns about.

I left from that meeting.

My letter was blunt because I believed the relationship had already broken down.

I wrote that honesty and trust mattered more to me than money, titles, or power. I wrote that I believed I had been lied to about the new IT hire and about who had administrative access. I wrote about outside vendors whose work I had questioned, the website failure, and the growing gap between what I was still expected to fix and the authority I had been given.

That was why I left.

Not because I could not handle web development.

Not because I could not handle the workload.

I left because I no longer believed there was enough mutual trust for me to responsibly do the job.

The accusations came after I had already resigned

After I had resigned and left Carabin Law, I received a payroll email that contained serious allegations about my work.

The email characterized overtime as improper and unapproved. My recollection was different. My recollection is that overtime had previously been discussed and approved verbally, and that once I was told written approval would be required going forward, I kept my hours within the expected limit.

The same email accused me of creating “back doors” and “traps” to maintain unauthorized control over the firm's websites.

I dispute that allegation.

From my perspective, ordinary technical actions had been interpreted as something much more sinister. A hosting backup restore was not a backdoor. Disconnecting my personally controlled software licenses was not the same thing as destroying a website.

I cannot know exactly why that email was written the way it was.

But the timing matters to me. I had already delivered a resignation letter directly challenging management decisions and explaining that I no longer trusted the working relationship.

I learned to document important conversations

Another lesson came from how consequential conversations happened.

Some routine matters could be discussed in writing, while some of the most important conversations happened by telephone.

I cannot tell you why someone chose a phone call instead of an email or text.

What I can tell you is the practical result: there was less of a shared written record afterward.

That matters when two people later remember a conversation differently.

Months later, one of those disputes came back around

One of the outside consultants I had challenged while working there was involved with the firm's Salesforce work.

I had raised concerns about his work and felt that my concerns were repeatedly questioned or discounted.

Months after I left, Kirsten contacted me again.

That acknowledgment mattered to me, but not because I wanted to win an argument months later.

The original conflict had been about whether my professional concerns deserved to be taken seriously.

By the time that message arrived, however, I did not want to reopen the relationship.

I later sent a formal written notice asking that I not be contacted directly or indirectly and stating that communication about my active wage claim should go through the Texas Workforce Commission or legal counsel.

I also stated that information about my disability, which had been learned during my employment, should not be disclosed or used outside that employment context.

At that point, my goal was not reconciliation.

It was a clean boundary.

A friendly employer is not automatically a safe employer for disclosure

This is the part I think about most today.

Autistic employees are often encouraged to explain themselves so that other people can understand them better.

Sometimes that works beautifully.

Sometimes it leads to accommodations, better communication, and a healthier workplace.

Sometimes nothing changes.

And sometimes an employee may feel that the relationship changes afterward.

Things that previously looked like professionalism can start being interpreted differently.

• Thoroughness can be interpreted as rigidity.
• Direct communication can be interpreted as attitude.
• Wanting written expectations can be interpreted as inflexibility.
• Questioning a technical decision can be interpreted as being difficult.
• Following a security rule consistently can become a personality issue.

I am not saying autistic people should hide who they are.

I am saying disclosure deserves more thought than simply asking whether an employer seems friendly.

That is also why I think conversations about autistic masking at work need to include both sides of the issue.

Masking can be exhausting. But disclosure is also permanent once it happens.