Deaf at the
Dragon
by Erin Geld
Editor:
When we talk to people with hearing loss about employment, the most
frequent comment we hear is that they don't want a job that requires
telephone work. It certainly makes sense to me. I don't recall anyone
ever saying that they didn't want to be a wait person in a restaurant. I
don't believe people avoid mentioning that job because they think it
would be easy, but rather because it's so out of the question that they
don't even consider it!
Here's Erin
Geld's narrative of her experiences as a wait person at the Green Dragon
Café. And
some surprisingly mature philosophy from a young adult. Erin is a junior at Cornell University.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Having
stood at many a coffee shop counter, tapping my Cornell card irritably
while watching baristas flail around for my caffeine fix, I have always
known that Cornell food facilities were primarily intended to supply
ready reinforcements to stressed, exhausted students. When waves of
people come in between classes, employees must switch into high gear,
moving the line as quickly as possible, dashing for the customer's order
the second it comes out of their mouths. Not the first workplace you
would suggest for a hard-of-hearing person. A nice, quiet library
circulation desk would be more appropriate. However, being the restless
ants-in-your pants type, I really, really wasn't interested in sitting
and zapping books on an hourly basis.
I wanted
something fun - so I applied for a job in the Green Dragon Café.
Friends convinced me that my fears of mishearing orders from
ill-tempered customers were exaggerated, and on the following Sunday, I
found myself (slightly hung-over) at an introductory meeting with a
handful of other newly hired Dragons. We signed up for shifts, learned
where they kept the milk and were on our way.
I am now
working the busy lunch periods, during which I rarely stop, between
grabbing Snapples, chicken cesar wraps and wrestling with the espresso
machine. I had little time to think about how much of a handicap my
hearing loss was to my job. I did find myself employing strategies to
make work easier - for instance, I preferred to station myself at the
more-or-less central location of cash register, where it would be easier
to communicate with the customers and co-workers.
Later,
friends asked me how my venture at the Dragon was going - if the hearing
thing was as difficult as I thought it would be. I mostly joked about
the difficulty of understanding the unusual number of heavily-accented
international architecture students, but also admitted that I did
frequently experience annoyance when I had to ask a customer to repeat
their requests a third or fourth time. It doesn't happen often, but when
it does I always feel a sharp, familiar twinge of inadequacy.
It took me
some time to realize that this inadequacy had little to with the
embarrassment at the hearing loss itself. It was a little more
complicated than that - it was how I expressed my hearing loss to those
around me.
This
summer, I worked in a non-profit organization, the League for the Hard
of Hearing, in New York City. This was the institution that had
diagnosed a profound-to-severe hearing loss and fitted me with my first
hearing aids when I was two-and-half years old. Growing up, I had enough
speech and comprehension therapy that I could be called
"mainstreamed" and (other than my sister) I didn't know any
other deaf or hard-of-hearing people. I resisted being labeled as
disabled - I was only hard of hearing and I did just fine,
thankyouverymuch. Working at the League was an eye-opener. Here, my
feelings on hearing loss couldn't help but change.
On an
assignment researching hearing loss happenings in Europe, I came across
an exhibit in London's Victoria and Albert Museum that featured designer
hearing aids. For someone who has a creepy-looking tube coming out of
her ear, followed by an ugly skin-colored widget, the design proposals
on the website were stupefying. Some, with shimmering strands of silver,
were made to look like elegant jewelry, while some were bold, funky
statements in color and other hearing aids were chic, disposable (!)
inserts for milder, everyday losses. The objective of the show was to
challenge the stigma of hearing disability and make hearing-aid products
as stylish, desirable and accessible as eyewear. Could it really be
done? Did I buy it?
I don't
like wearing my hair in a high ponytail because you can see my hearing
aids. I stopped wearing one in my nearly-deaf right ear when I was
self-conscious mess of a 14-year-old. To this day, I haven't put it back
in and most people wrongly assume it's a fully functioning ear. I never
thought twice about playing down the role of my hearing aids, even
though the impact of my hearing loss on my everyday life and personality
is immeasurable. I try to hold out as long as I can before telling
someone. It was always the natural thing to do. It's a strange feeling
when I eventually tell someone of my disability - it's a little like
admitting a bad secret.
What if I
decided to break a lifelong tendency and actually started being vocal
about my hearing loss? What if I started wearing a pretty, draping
attachment to the hideous doohickey? What if I wore "I'm deaf!"
written on a baseball cap?
It's
frightening, but I probably should. What the hell, I am disabled. Not
totally disabled, but disabled. Being hard of hearing, without question,
presents difficulties in my everyday life. If I wore that hat to work at
the Green Dragon, people would probably speak louder and clearer and I
would not have to go through the awkward motions of admitting a
disability at every embarrassing mix-up incident.
Ultimately,
it might even prompt some dialogue regarding disability and handicaps in
everyday life that go beyond wheelchair ramps. Disability is a living,
breathing thing that is rarely solved by a new gadget - technology can
only do so much - it requires daily engagement and resolve. The worst
discomforts in a disabled person's day and life come from stagnant,
resigned attitudes, for to believe that disability is a final condition
is the greatest handicap of all.
