Another One Bites the Dust

How do you handle shop clerks, hotel check in people, doctor’s office secretaries or receptionists who can’t seem to manage effective and successful communication? What do you do when they can't speak your language?

Yeah, I’m talking about me. Given the number of deafies in the state of Massachusetts you’d think that anyone who works with the public would have chatted with one us at some point.

If deafness is described as the "inability to hear and understand any speech," there are approximately 13,300 deaf persons in Massachusetts.

 That’s a rough estimate from the Mass.Gov site.

Interesting and awesome side note:
There used to be so many deafies on Martha’s Vineyard that the island had its own sign language.

Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) was a village sign language once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, U.S., from the early 18th century to 1952. It was used by both deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness did not become a barrier to participation in public life. Martha's Vineyard Sign Language played a role in the development of American Sign Language.

The language was able to thrive on Martha's Vineyard because of the unusually high percentage of deaf islanders and because deafness was a recessive hereditary trait, which meant that almost anyone might have both deaf and hearing siblings. In 1854, when the island's deaf population peaked, the United States national average was one deaf person in 5728, while on Martha's Vineyard it was one in 155. In the town of Chilmark, which had the highest concentration of deaf people on the island, the average was 1 in 25; in a section of Chilmark called Squibnocket, as much as a quarter of the population of 60 was deaf.

You can read more at Redeafined Magazine.

 Back to me and shopkeeps unclear on the concept of winning customer service—honestly and normally, most of the clerks (and others whose job is to work with the public) I encounter are fabulous. There’s the pharmacy helper at Walgreens who speaks slowly and clearly. The baker ladies at Fratellis show me what they’re asking about (e.g., holding up a cake and pantomiming a scribble onto it, while they make a question mark look with their faces). My primary care doc and her secretaries do both of those as well as write things down for me. The Post Office here in Quincy, Massachusetts is the best—they’ve a deaf clerk. Woo hoo! Even if I don’t end up in her line, all the other P.O. clerks here understand how to make with the groovy, happenin’ communication action with a deafie.

Oh yeah and then there’s the brilliant new MBTA office in downtown Boston, complete with staff who either know sign language OR have, bare minimum, these eight handy dandy tips down cold.

So what am I kvetching about now? Oh yeah, I was at CVS to pick up some dental tape. I went over to use one of those always mega glitchy self checkout machines. Unsurprisingly, I hit a speed bump right out of the gate—something wrong in the bagging area. Que? The fucker’s telling me that assistance will be right over. Sure.

Not being big with the patience yesterday, I figured I’d just go to one of the clerks at the long bank of registers. Except there wasn’t even one person there. Lovely.  Just as I was about to give up and leave, the self checkout helper came over.

Fab except she was speaking a zillion words a sec. I put up my crossing guard stop hand and said ‘I’m deaf so....” That’s as far as I got on my here’s-the-best-way-to-communicate-with-me spiel as she zipped on with whatever random palaver she was on about.

I feel as though I should always be patient and view situations like this as educational moments for both me and the clerk who may have never encountered a deafie before.

None of us are at our most persevering or composed every single day though and just then my forbearance was out havin’ a smoke.

What’d I do? I interrupted her. Once again, I put up my stop-talking-and-listen hand and said ‘I’m deaf. Therefore, I have no idea what you’re saying. I want to buy this dental tape and I’ll be using my own bag. Make it happen.”

And she did.  And, between the invariably bug ridden checkouts and the customer service challenged clerks, it’s unlikely that I’ll shop at that particular CVS again.

So then, how do you handle folks who can’t seem to manage effective and successful communication?
Another One Bites the Dust—Queen