The Innocent Ableist
With many companies re-opening to onsite work, now that we’re at the “end[1]” of Covid, many of us face anxiety as we return to the office. This is especially true for those of us with both visible, and hidden, disabilities[2]. As an individual with severely damaged hearing, the office has always been a bit of a minefield. The benefits of “face-to-face” communication, so coveted by (often extrovert-leaning) management, are for me simply an added source of challenge and stress.
Gone from my life are the beloved days of casual conversation. If I can corner a single person in a quiet, non-sound-reflective environment, I can often enjoy a chat as long as I concentrate. Since I have only about 70% phoneme recognition, I need to focus on what people are saying with roughly the same level of concentration as driving through downtown LA[3]. Focusing at this level, I can usually fill in the gaps and get the right meaning from 95% of sentences.
The conversation is still very rewarding for me, but also exhausting. Add a second person and any sort of lighthearted banter (where there is a lot of back-and-forth versus a single, designated speaker) and the overlap of voices drops my word recognition to about 50%. Four of us — and I’m done. I nod, smile, and try not to say much for fear of mishearing something and responding with a ridiculously out-of-context faux pas. And forget about live meetings in a conference room. If you’re sitting next to me, I can hear you. One seat away, and it’s a best-guess situation on what you’re saying. Anyone further away than that, and you might as well be speaking French[4]. I’m probably not going to get it.
Ironically, the conversations most people with normal hearing despise, are the ones where I thrive. With modern computing, and its unending options for IP phones and video chats, I do much better with a remote call than I do in person. Every meeting participant is (usually) speaking directly into a well-situated microphone — often alone in a quiet room. My headphones block local outside noise and, with a variety of digital tools, I can adjust the sound to the speaker’s room, and even to individual voices. It is truly the great equalizer. No matter where you are, you’re right in front of me, speaking clearly and one at a time.
It’s not their fault.
Was all of the aforementioned whining cathartic for me? A little. But my goal here is to uncover a deeper truth, and come to terms with a larger frustration. That of the well-intended ableist. Ableists are those with occasionally overt, but mostly un-recognized prejudice against people with disabilities. Ableists are often the greatest source of frustration and social pain to the ”otherly-abled.” And, yes, nearly all of them are innocent.
“But,” I hear you think[5], “in our newly woke world, how can you say any form of prejudice is innocent? People should know better!” Great point, and yes. Yet I blame myself. I mean, not for the entire world of ableism, of course, but certainly for my corner of it. You see, I have made the self-destructive mistake of being smart, financially middle-class, and adaptable. Between my $2500 hearing aid[6],[7], my learned tricks for maneuvering people into the best possible environment for conversations, and lip reading — my disability has become hidden. Even after explaining my hearing loss, I remain so functional that they simply forget that I’m mostly deaf.
Enter my justification for all the previous bitching. Everything I described earlier is something that most normal hearing individuals would never think about. And it’s not their fault. They try. But unless you experience it first-hand, it’s like trying to imagine blue as a blind person. It simply never occurs to them that “a lunch meeting” (even with free food!) would be a problem until you explain it to them[8] — frequently after they have already perpetrated the ableism onto you and it’s too late (if you explain it to them beforehand you just become the wet-blanket who ruined the free lunch for everyone, versus the guy who “didn’t participate during the meeting” if you don’t.)
This is where I find myself now, in our third Covid[9] summer. My company (which I legitimately adore) has decided to open the office again — after I’ve grown soft having had successful conversation after conversation remotely. I work with data science, so I wonder to myself why sitting in a cubicle 40 minutes away from my home office brings value to my job. “It’s really an important part of the company culture,” most employers will tell us, ambiguously. So, I willingly defer to that collective wisdom.
Thus, here I sit, with the functionally-eared and their appropriately low “professional indoor voices” (most of which fall just below my hearing threshold for understanding.) I awake two hours earlier so I can attend meetings in person (after which I read the meeting notes to find out what happened.) Luckily, some of my meetings are still teleconferences since I work with an international team. “Yay!” I declare! Again, I can enjoy the clarity of individually mic’ed voices, while instead concentrating on not talking too loud for the others in the office[10].
I’m actually damn lucky
I do this to play my part in the obscure magic that is the “company culture,” which is (presumably) built upon the friendly, random, watercooler encounters with which I can rarely participate. I don’t know, maybe it’s really in the free gourmet coffee. But, honestly, I’m lucky! My company has heard my concerns, and has given me the opportunity to re-evaluate the situation in a few months — potentially reverting back to remote work. This is something that most people won’t get to enjoy, regardless of personal disabilities, so I really shouldn’t complain. But I probably will. At least a little bit.
[1] Don’t get me started on that.
[2] Including those with general anxiety disorder.
[3] OK, actually, driving through LA may be slightly more relaxing. But I like driving, and LA.
[4] In fact, I frequently don’t realize someone is speaking a foreign language until halfway through the topic…since “English at a distance” and “Another language” sound about the same.
[5] Get it?
[6] Only about $1100 out of pocket, thanks to “European socialism.”
[7] Yes, European socialism is in quotes on purpose.
[8] Conversing in a restaurant? Bwahahahahahahaa! *Wipes tear from eye*
[9] You know it’s not over, right? Right!?
[10] I frequently have no idea how loud I’m speaking. My own volume sounds dramatically different from moment to moment, depending on what my hearing aid noise filters are doing at the time.
