Thee pens!! Thee pens!! Where are thee pens!

[jennie]

I suffered a traumatic brain injury when I was 17. While I recovered 99.9%, I still have occasional problems with word retrieval (I can be holding something simple like a pencil, and fail to be able to come up with the word "pencil"), and even more occasionally stutter. I've been treated badly occasionally in stores because of this. Of course, that makes it even worse, as stress makes the word retrieval and stutter issues even more obvious.



My 12 year old sometimes uses a wheelchair and is already starting to experience things like this. People will talk to him like he's a toddler and/or direct questions to me. My 13 year old who's perfectly healthy hasn't been talked to like that since he was 9 or 10.

Yes! This is the "Does he/she take sugar phenomenon *AGAIN!* People just don't TRY with wheelchair users, idle b*****rs (wanders away, muttering)

[An Haddock]

Not quite the same thing, but we sometimes have people use the wrong terminology and it can hinder our ability to troubleshoot their problem.

"So I've been having problems with my modem."

"Okay - did you try unplugging it for a few minutes?"

"No..."

"Who's your service provider? Did you call them?"

"Comcast... no, I didn't call them."

"Well what's the modem been doing?"

"It's not getting power."

"Oh, well, then you should take it back to Comcast and they'll give you another one."

"But I got it from Compucrap Computers. Do you think my data is okay?"

"..."

"..."

"...do you mean your computer tower?"

"The big box, yes."

"Do you get anything on your monitor?"

"On the computer?"

"*rage increasing* The monitor isn't your computer. The monitor is the monitor. The box is the computer."


I have this conversation at least once a week. I die a little inside every time.

[winner every time]

Working in the tourist entertainment industry, I've gotten very good at playing charades (so to speak) with foreign speaking and heavy accent guests, in order to figure out what they want. 9 times out of 10, if I use gestures to clarify what I'm saying, they'll mimic and do the same. Heck, some of my best conversations have been primarily smiles and hand gestures!

[Shalom]

Charades is it?

The other day, a woman who works in the village came into my store looking for something, but I couldn't figure out what. She patted her chest, held her hand above her head, then pointed at her tongue. There was some spoken commentary on this as well, but it was totally meaningless to me. See, in this store we have employees who speak Yiddish, English and Spanish. There might be a few of the older customers around at various times who could translate from Hungarian or Romanian as well. Unfortunately, not a one of us speaks Polish, and she doesn't speak a word of anything else.

I eventually figured out that the first two gestures meant that her blood pressure was high. Showed her a blood pressure machine, but she shook her head that it wasn't what she was talking about. Then I had a bright idea: I handed her a pen and paper and mimed writing down what she wanted, and she came up with "TRITACE". This isn't anything I'd ever heard of, but a minute on Google told me that she was referring to ramipril, which is an ACE inhibitor sold in the USA as Altace. Oh, so that's what she meant when she pointed to her tongue.

Unfortunately this isn't something I can sell her without a prescription in the USA. I tried to tell her this, but she doesn't speak a word of English and I couldn't get the point across. I finally had another idea. I pulled the front counter computer around so she could see the screen, pulled up translate.google.com, set it for English <--> Polish, and typed, "This is a translation progam. Type in Polish on the left side, and it will print in English on the right side." Then turned the monitor around and let her read, "To jest program tłumaczenia. Rodzaj w języku polskim, po lewej stronie, i będzie drukować w języku angielskim po prawej stronie."

After that, everything went a lot easier. We typed at each other for a while, with occasional intervals of hilarity when one or the other of us made a typo that resulted in something ridiculous printing out. She eventually informed us that her husband was a doctor, he would call in the prescription in the morning, and left happy.

So yeah, the charades didn't go over too well, but we did eventually communicate. Thank $DEITY for Google...

[rapana1]

OOh yay Google Translate!

[Jay 2K Winger]

I had a few deaf customers when I worked at the wholesale club. I don't know ASL, but I used simple gestures and spoke as clearly as I could while looking at the customer, which they seemed to appreciate.

There was one amusing time when my girlfriend tried for almost five minutes to remember the word for "where you put your plates and cups in the kitchen..." I kept suggesting "Cupboards?" And she kept insisting it wasn't that. When the conversation finally shifted away from the topic, it came to her, and she yelled out "CABINETS!"

[vikingchyk]

I think it's not the fact that they can't understand the person that upsets people....it's the fact that some people get huffy, angry or nasty about it. After all, it's not the listener's fault that the person has an accent or whatever, either. I totally agree we should be patient and try our best to help, but that can be difficult when the speaker him/herself is impatient and starts yelling.

I don't know if this is true for others with speech impediments, but my husband sometimes sounds. Very. Clipped. And. Forceful. Like. He's. Almost. Yelling. Or. Angry. When he's not. Just trying to get the words out.

[Seshat]

I - being Yet Another of our disabled members of our extended friendship circle - am in agreement with the 'be patient' crowd.

That said, I DO bring a translator with me. I just expect (should that word be 'hope'?) that the general public will attempt to communicate with me, and only rely on Bast, Toth, or whichever other friend is with me, when I'm just not getting it and things are getting ridiculous.
Or when Bast, Toth, random-friend or I make that decision, of course.


I've also worked with a couple of Deaf people who used sign language interpreters. It takes a while to get the etiquette of it if you're not familiar with it, but it seems to be that you address the Deaf person, and treat the interpreter as a piece of living machinery.
I can never manage to quite do that. I always take the time at some point to address the interpreter and thank them for their time and work.
'Always' meaning 'both times'. So .. not many times.

[vikingchyk]

But yeah, that is just an example of the attitudes I've had to deal with due to my stutter. I know I got really angry at one asshole who told me I was stupid because I stuttered - I told him that a large number of stutterers are actually highly intelligent, and certainly much more intelligent than he could ever aspire to.

Good comeback, because it's so true.

I know my husband is highly intelligent, because he picked me He questions my intelligence for picking him

[wolfie]

I kept suggesting "Cupboards?" And she kept insisting it wasn't that. When the conversation finally shifted away from the topic, it came to her, and she yelled out "CABINETS!"

So if they made a sequel to "The Indian who lived in the cupboard" where the lead character was a clergyman, would he be a Cabinet Minister?