Are you DEAF?!!

[repsac]

I have to pass this on, after reading one of the war stories. This is just a minor rant, so you don't really have to read it.

I am deaf. Legally.

What does that mean? Well... I can hear to a degree. Certain sounds, levels, or noises give me no trouble. However, there are times when I can't hear a word. It depends on the person's voice really. If they enunciate what they say or mumble. Plus, if I'm in a location where there's excessive noise around me, I can't hear a word. My shop, has a bell, but it also has a light that flashes when the door opens.

I don't wear aids, though I really should. Maybe someday I'll get around to it.

I can't tell you how many times this has caused problems for me. Think about it really. You have someone that's disabled, and yet there's no outward sign of it. Nothing at all. Customers rarely understood this, save perhaps the handful that has picked up on the signs. Signs like always looking them in the face when they speak; or watching their lips. Yes. I can read lips well enough to figure out what someone says.

I'd like to relate two stories. One funny, one not. You be the judge of the SC.

1.)

While I worked at Lowe's, I managed to hide my disability rather well. This may have seemed strange of me, but people treat you differently when they know. Since I was in a position where it didn't really matter, few people saw my problem. There were a few close calls, but one is burned in my mind.

Almost a year ago, I was having a "bad" day. My hearing was off to the point I almost asked to go home. My supervisor knew my issue, so he'd have let me. Still, I only had an hour or two left; so I figured why not.

This woman walks in with something. I forget what it was, but when I asked her what the problem was she mumbled her answer. She was the type (we all know them) that didn't open her mouth much when she spoke, so I couldn't quite follow what she said. I asked her to repeat it and she looked at me a moment before mumbling again. This time I caught part of it, but not enough. I asked her to repeat once more, to which she replied rather loudly (which I actually heard) "ARE YOU DEAF!?" looking at her a moment I smiled serenly. "Yes." I said politely. "I am." SC picked up her stuff and walked out. Unfortunately, that "outed" me, and life at the store wasn't the same again.

2.)
Sometimes the words hurt.

Sometimes they hurt a lot. I remember a time, just before I left, when a fellow associate and her friend (the SC) were chatting about me. Back and forth they went, and I caught most of it by watching their lips. The whole conversation being about whether or not I really was deaf. I'll not go into it, but it really hurt me to see them talk like that. It was, as though I had become a big joke. To the point that she would make loud sounds just to see if I would jump, then turn to her friend and say something like "See. I know he's faking."

There's not much of a story with number two, I know. Still the point remains that words...even those not heard but read, can hurt.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

You know, what you described is pretty much how I hear (or in my case, don't hear.) I mean, it's not as severe as what you describe, but I have always been hard of hearing. Male voices are the worst, because they are deeper. High sounds I can hear pretty well. The lower they are, though, harder I find them to hear. It's getting worse as I get older, so I have that to look forward to.

Some asshole once snapped that at me, for the same reason. "Are you deaf?" I just looked at them and said, very coolly, "Well, not entirely, no, but I am very hard of hearing. Thanks so much for asking." I like the embarassed look on a jerk's face very, very much.

I do not understand people who think it's funny. I really don't have much of a sense of humor about it. It is embarassing, and inconvenient. If they think its funny that I can't follow speech if there are competing sounds and have to keep asking for the speaker to please repeat themselves, I bet a guy tapping down the street with a white cane makes them freaking pee their pants.

[Luna]

Wow. People are very insensitive.

To my knowledge, I don't have any hearing problems - but my ears like to play tricks on me. At new job - we'll have a 20 kid screaming party going on in the back part of the store. I can hear them. Yet I have a hard time hearing the customer who is directly in front of me at the register at the other end of the store away from the party.

I've had a couple customers ask me if I'm deaf since I've started new job - and I usually reply something like, "I'm not sure but I do have trouble sometimes.." or "I can't really hear mumbling - sorry!"

What those co-irkers did to you Repsac is harrassment. Please tell me you don't work there still?

[TequilaSunrise]

I work with two deaf ladies, and they are the sweetest ever. Sometimes I catch SC's yelling at them, and a few of them have asked, "ARE YOU DEAF?!" That's when I walk up to them and say, "Yes, she is." THe look on their face is priceless. Me likey.

[tonydanza]

I have 2 deaf people, and 1 legally deaf person at my work. (legally deaf meaning they can still slightly hear. They're all really sweet and they do what they can, and are very helpful.
One time I thought it was comical because she motioned to me that she wanted to use my scan gun, and she held up an item. I scanned it, and the gun will make a beep noise after it's scanned an item. It beeped, but anna grabbed the gun and scanned it again. I didn't realise for a few seconds as to why. It was cute.

[Retail Associate]

My hearing is so bad that I turn on close captioning while watching TV. I have never had my hearing tested so I don't really know the extent of my hearing loss. All I know is, I can't hear! (I'm old so I figure it's just the natural order of things.)

It is very embarrassing and inconvenient. I have to constantly ask co-workers/customers to repeat themselves. I know it's a pain especially since I always have to carry the phone at work and I can't hear a blasted thing people say on that phone. There have been times when I had to bring the phone to a co-worker so the customer could get their question answered.

I, too had a co-worker who thought it funny and was always sneaking up on me making loud noises trying to scare me. I'm not easily startled but she finally 'got me' one day...scared the crap outta me...she laughed her head off. It does hurt your feelings.

[purplecat41877]

I'm not officially deaf but I've had to ask people to repeat things since I couldn't really hear what they were saying. Sometimes I've had trouble hearing what someone was saying when there were others talking over me.

[LostMyMind]

I am deaf. Legally.

I feel your pain, nothing sucks more than being able to hear alittle bit and folks assume that you're faking. I'm also legally deaf (nerve damage since birth), I have 60% word recognition (with perfect working aids) in a perfectly quiet environment. So you can imagine how badly it gets when you throw in noise or 2+ people talking at the same time.

I almost didn't get my disability because of an idiot who thought if you can talk, you can't be deaf. So he thought I was a scammer and stonewalled everything (including falsifying records, calling doctors and telling them to adjust the records, etc..) None of my disabilities by themselves is a problem, but all of them together makes it almost impossible for me to work 40hr a week. Lucky for me, I had several records he couldn't screw up so once a judge saw that. I think it took him 10 mins in the "court" to award me disability judgement. But because of that idiot, instead of fighting for a year or two. 3 farking years. I wonder how many folks can go 3 years with zero income. I'm still about that.

I can't stand to wear my aids because they hurt my ears too much (specially around kids). While it's a curse and blessing. The curse is we don't hear thing we want to hear. The blessing is we get to say we didn't hear it. (I love playing that on telemarketers, no offense to telemarketers here)

2.)
Sometimes the words hurt.
<snip>
Still the point remains that words...even those not heard but read, can hurt.

Being able to read lips, aye, another one of those curse and blessing. My PnP RP buddies gotten wise to that through. When they don't want me to hear something, they cover their mouth and whisper. Sometimes they'll even forget that I can't hear everything all the time. But they never forget that I see everything all the time.

My curse is people will assume that I'm "checking them out" or "staring" at them. When all I'm doing is gathering data. So I don't look like a idiot bumping into things (or kids, people) when I walk. When you have "ear" problems, generally you have balance problems which is another story.

So repasc, you're not alone here. Sucky Co-worker section is a good place to vent about idiot co-workers who can't seem to get a clue.

[amarisse]

i have an auditory proccessign problem so i can hear fine just it doenst make its way to my brain right. I've gotten written up on plenty an occasion when i didnt react the way they wanted. or thought i was insolent when i appeared to ignore them. It sucks that to disclose things tends ot make people act different.

[protege]

My father is completely deaf on his right side. He lost his hearing while playing soccer some years ago...a player on the other team tripped him. He was fine until his head hit the ground Because he has total hearing loss on that side, no hearing aid will help him. He's taken *lots* of crap from people because of it. He's not *ignoring* you, he simply *can't* hear you!

[XCashier]

To my knowledge, I don't have any hearing problems - but my ears like to play tricks on me. At new job - we'll have a 20 kid screaming party going on in the back part of the store. I can hear them. Yet I have a hard time hearing the customer who is directly in front of me at the register at the other end of the store away from the party.

I have a similar problem, Luna. I can't shut out background noises. It is difficult to carry on a conversation with anyone if there is a lot of machinery running or people talking in the room.

My former coworkers also had the bad habit of walking away from me when they were talking to me. First of all, that's really rude, it tells the person that they are not worth talking face to face with. Second of all, I had no idea they were still talking to me, and since they were facing the other way, I couldn't hear most of what they said anyway. Then of course they got mad at me when I didn't do as they asked. I had to talk to the boss, and she talked to them. I don't think they realized what they were doing!

Walking away from people while talking to them, mumbling, refusing to open your mouth or speak clearly, all of these are symptoms of an increasingly rude society that will continue to have communication problems. So many problems could be avoided if people would just learn to communicate correctly and consider other people's feelings.

[Boulder_Bear]

refusing to open your mouth or speak clearly,

I don't have any hearing problems, but I do have a slight speaking problem. I have really small lips. In other words I cannot open my mouth very wide. I have had people get mad at me when they think I am mumbling, and I always am having people ask me to repeat myself. I know it would suck to not hear, but it sucks too, when just because your lips are small you can't open your mouth very wide to speak.

The dentists always have a fun time with me.

[Jester]

This thread is getting very somber, it seems. Time for a little levity! (What are jesters for, right?)

My own "disability" is that I am slightly colorblind. Not colorblind per se, but in the words of the eye doctor, "slightly color deficient" when it comes to reds and greens. Some fun examples of this:

--The time in the college dorms when I saw this girl walking out to the dumpster with a perfectly good beige rug. I asked her what was up, and she told me she was tossing the rug. I said I would take it. She gave me a funny look, but gave it to me. As I was carrying it into my dorm room, my neighbors gave me funny looks also, and then one of them clued me into the problem: "Yo, Jester, what's with the pink rug?" Pink? Oops. Looked beige to me.

--The time I showed up for work at the brewpub, where our uniform was black pants and shoes, white dress shirt, and a tie. I had just laundered my uniform, so everything was clean. When I walked in, someone asked me why I was wearing a pink shirt. Huh? It was the same white shirt I had worn before, no problems. I figured they were just messing with me. Then a few other people asked me the same thing. What the? Thinking this was some big joke, I asked my best friend (who worked there) about it. She looked me dead in the eye and said, "Jester...that shirt is pink." Finally convinced, I went to a local store and bought a new white shirt. (Seems that somehow a red pen had leaked in my black apron, which I washed with the white shirt, and, well, you can figure out the rest.) When I brought the new shirt in, one yahoo I worked with asked me, "Now can you see that the other shirt is pink?" No. I can't. Still looks white to me, genius.

--Oftentimes in a store, I am forced to ask a total stranger what color something is, if I am not sure. This is embarrassing, but since I am about as shy as a hurricane is dry, not that big a deal.

--Sometimes I mess with people. Had some freshmen in the college cafeteria convinced that I wasn't sure if they were blonde or brunette. My buddy could barely contain his laughter. Another time, I was at a new eye doctor, and his nurse was giving me the standard tests. One of which is the colorblindness test, which some of you may be familiar with, in which they show you a bunch of pictures of colored dots, and you tell them what number you see in those dots. Since I was a child, there were always a few pictures where I saw no numbers, just dots. Hence the slight colorblindess. But that time, when I told the nurse I didn't see a number in the one picture, she asked if I knew I was slightly colorblind. I looked at her in shock, and asked her if she was sure. I know, I know...I'm evil.

No, this "disability" rarely if causes me problems, and never major ones, and the only time I have trouble with it at work is when someone is complaining about the doneness of their steak/burger. "Do you see any pink in there?!?!" Um, no, but then I wouldn't.

Thought y'all would enjoy the laugh.

[Buglady]

i have an auditory proccessign problem so i can hear fine just it doenst make its way to my brain right. I've gotten written up on plenty an occasion when i didnt react the way they wanted. or thought i was insolent when i appeared to ignore them. It sucks that to disclose things tends ot make people act different.

Right there with you... ADD and a mild auditory processing difficulty mean that every so often, especially under stress, my hearing simply switches off - or worse, I can "hear" the sounds but my brain can't make them line up right. It's unbelievably frustrating and until I finally got my ADD diagnosis, I honestly thought I was going insane.

[MystyGlyttyr]

A bit more levity to it...while I do have some hearing loss (70% in the right ear...turns out they say "Don't try this at home" for a damn good reason), it's not nearly as bad as my, er...perception. Very often times, I AM ignoring someone...I know they're talking, I hear their words, I just don't care to acknowledge them because they're not helping me do my work, asking for help or saying anything that interests me. Very often people will talk a while, see my utter lack of reaction, and then say "Oh, she must deaf or something," and walk away. The fact that I'm moderately proficient in sign language doesn't hurt either...