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Sara Mae Hickey, left, owner of Puzzles Bakery and Cafe trains employee Anne Cushing on using the ordering terminal on Thursday, March 12, 2015, in Schenectady, New York

Puzzles Bakery and Cafe employee Anne Cushing uses a ordering terminal as she goes through training on Thursday, March 12, 2015, in Schenectady, New York

SCHENECTADY, N.Y. – Eighteen part-time employees gathered for orientation at Puzzles Bakery & Cafe, listening to owner Sara Mae Hickey cover company policies like the 90-day ”introductory’’ period, protocol for handling difficult customers, clocking in using the iPad that also serves as a cash register and underlining that the business was an “integrated workplace.”

It’s rare to hear that term, but more than half of Hickey’s workforce has a diagnosis of a developmental disability, primarily autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and Hickey wishes she had more jobs in her Schenectady cafe.

When she started Puzzles, which will hold its grand opening on World Autism Awareness Day on April 2, she set out to solve a problem she understands well as the sister of a young woman with autism who requires constant care and has a limited vocabulary.

Hickey had 18 jobs to fill, and had more than 400 applicants, some of whom came to the interview with their job coach or parent desperate to feel like valuable contributors to society. Some had college degrees and work experience, some were in the culinary program at community college, others had never held a job before and said they would never admit they had autism spectrum disorder in a job interview, fearing it would count against them.

“I think it’s pretty amazing in a way because everybody has disabilities. It’s not just autism. We all have flaws,” said Zach Portolano, an 18-year-old culinary student at Schenectady County Community College who asked to take a selfie with his new co-workers at the orientation session. ”We’re not perfect, but they make you feel it. That’s what I love about this place.”

The rapidly rising rates of autism spectrum disorder – a number that was 1 in every 150 children in 2000 and now stands at 1 in every 68 – has created its own unemployment crisis. It’s estimated that 35 percent of young adults on the spectrum attend college and 85 percent of adults on the spectrum are either unemployed or underemployed, according to Marcia Scheiner, president and founder of the Asperger Syndrome Training & Employment Partnership in New York City.

Like the autism spectrum itself, the lack of employment is across the board. Adults with ASD and graduate degrees are finding it impossible to survive a job interview or stay employed once they land a job. There aren’t yet as many opportunities for employment for adults whose ASD is more severe as there are people who need those jobs, though companies like Wegmans and Walgreens are transforming that.

Parents, accustomed to having to advocate for their kids on the spectrum through school, are continuing the fight all the way into the workforce.

“For us who have loved ones on the spectrum, it’s a crisis now,” said Jason Kippen, the father of a child on the spectrum who founded Spectrum Employment Services in Troy to help match employers to adults with ASD. “But with the exploding numbers of people that are on the spectrum, this will affect business, commerce other things in this country.”

Workplaces are supposed to accommodate employees with disabilities. If an employee appears for a job interview while using a wheelchair, that’s not going to be held against them, or at least it shouldn’t be. But often, particularly for people who are considered ”high-functioning’’ members of the autism community, the disability is invisible.

In the workplace, it could mean being overwhelmed by noises or the lighting in the office because those on the spectrum can be sensitive to sensory input like harsh light and sound.

It can make it impossible to think clearly and serve as a distraction to a person who otherwise might excel at a specific task. Sitting in a meeting with a dozen co-workers might be so anxiety-producing the employee isn’t able to communicate clearly, but if he or she were on a Google Hangout participating online and removing the stress of a room of co-workers, the employee could easily share his or her thoughts.

Kippen has been an advocate of sorts for Gabriel Grieco, a 25-year-old with ASD from Petersburgh, who graduated from the University at Albany in May 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science but has yet to find a job in his field.

Grieco transitioned from a special needs school to a public school successfully, attended college and has lived in his own apartment, though at the moment he lives with his family. But his search hasn’t yielded a job in his field, and he’s worked the overnight shift at Walmart stocking shelves since 2013.

”It bothers me. It does,” he said. ”I really want to get a programming job soon because I’m not getting any younger, and they like young people, so the sooner I get one the better. The longer I wait it feels like the less of a chance I am going to get one. Here I am already 25, and I’m just working at Walmart. I’m not able to utilize my skills.”

Christina Gleason, who owns Phenomenal Content, a provider of web content and editing services, didn’t realize she had Asperger’s Syndrome until she was 33 and her son was flagged for it, eventually leading to her own formal diagnosis. It explained so much, she says, about her own experiences to that point.

She has a combined bachelor’s/master’s degree in applied social and community psychology, and has held an assortment of jobs over the years, from hotel clerk to mental health worker to content manager for an Internet marketing company. She’s always been able to navigate some of the challenges, but prefers self-employment where she can do a lot of her communicating from her home in Clifton Park, and she can do it in writing.

”My supervisor (at a previous job) once asked me if I was shy – explaining to me that my tone often came across as condescending, but she didn’t think I meant it that way. She was right; I didn’t. But that’s another thing that can come with Asperger’s – when we’re having trouble in uncomfortable social situations, we can adopt a formal tone while we carefully try to navigate a conversation, and it comes across as condescension,” she said. ”Coworkers were often one of the hardest things to deal with for me. I have trouble with small talk, and that’s how most people seem to converse with their coworkers. And while many people in an office job enjoy chatting to waste time or take a break, it was always a distraction that broke my focus on tasks. It’s also not helpful when people interpret your tone as condescending, even if you didn’t mean it that way. If the noise level in an office gets too loud, or if the workload gets overwhelming – like when the hotel lobby is full of guests waiting to check in and the phone keeps ringing – it can trigger a meltdown. Since I never knew what was ”wrong’’ with me until recently, I learned how to postpone my meltdowns so they don’t happen at embarrassing times. This usually means I’ll end up crying in a bathroom or in my car later on.”

But there’s a clear benefit to employing workers on the spectrum, Scheiner said, and it’s not just in the state tax breaks. Workers on the spectrum have strengths uncommon in the general workforce.

“They’re not terribly flexible, they don’t like change, and they like routine,” she said. ”If they’re in an environment where they’re comfortable, they tend to be highly productive, they tend to be highly accurate in what they do, and they don’t leave. … So your productivity is better and your turnover is lower, and every employer can calculate what that means to them in dollar savings.”

For Hickey, who started Puzzles, it’s also a social mission because people on the spectrum deserve to feel as valuable and productive as the rest of us. During the orientation, her employees asked to take a photo together so they could post it on Puzzles’ Facebook page. They wanted to talk about adding sriracha-flavored items to the menu before they’d even served their first sandwiches. The excitement in the room was like nothing you’d find in a training for part-time retail work.

Portolano, who was so happy to be in a place where he could be open about being on the spectrum, put on his hat and apron as soon as it was handed to him.

”There’s such a need,” Hickey says. ”There’s such a need for what we’re doing, and that’s why it’s ultimately my vision and my goal to open in other locations and hopefully act as a model for small businesses.”