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Fashion|A Watch Factory Embraces Workers with Autism
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/fashion/watches-autism-employment.html
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“It’s not just the focus in the first 10 pieces,” the owner said. “It’s being able to maintain that kind of a focus when you’re doing No. 400 and No. 401.”
By Janelle Conaway
Reporting from Mesa, Ariz.
Aug. 8, 2024, 5:06 a.m. ET
As part of his interview for a job at FTS American Manufacturing in Mesa, Max Cain was asked to take a table clock apart and then put it back together.
One of his hobbies is assembling Gundam model kits — the last time he counted, he said, he had put together 97 of the Japanese anime robots — so he completed the clock task in less than half the allotted time. And got the job.
Now, after working there for a year and a half, Mr. Cain said he got the same feeling of accomplishment from assembling watch components as he did from completing an arm or leg of one of those robots.
“It’s pretty satisfying,” he said during a break on one workday in June. “It boosts my confidence that there’s stuff for me out there.”
Mr. Cain, 21, is the fourth person with autism to work at FTS, according to Kunal Naik, its chief executive, who founded the company in 2018. (The initials stand for Fine Timepiece Solutions.)
Not every person on the autism spectrum would make a good watch technician, Mr. Naik said. But, “there’s a sliver that really identifies well with the work we do,” he continued, because they can concentrate on a task for a long period of time.
