It’s not easy finding work these days and for us Deaf folk it’s not just the recession that’s made things tricky.
Any job involving a telephone or “good communication skills” seems to be an instant no no and those jobs which a deaf person is perfectly physically capable of doing are still hard to come by due to lack of other people’s awareness. A deaf person? In the office?! With normal people?! Are you mad?!
So you can imagine my relief when I stumbled across a job advert for a brand-new Deaf media company.
Could it be?! At last! A real opportunity to get an actual long term job and in the industry that I’d trained for! If my tea hadn’t gone cold, I would have sworn it was a dream.
After checking that I hadn’t completely taken leave of my senses, I sent off my CV and application.
I got an interview, score!
I went to the interview and was offered a job, double score!
I signed the initial employment contract and officially became a filming assistant. My first day on the job required the use of my car, with expenses covered of course, so at 8am I drove my boss and other crew members all the way to Northampton. We were filming at a race track all day. I was the 2nd camera person and fulfilled my duties by capturing footage of the cars as they went hurtling by.
We eventually finished for the day and I began the long drive back to base. I clocked off at around 8pm and made my way home. I was exhausted but pleased with my hard days work.
Yet that was my first and last day with this company.
Not only was I never paid for the work I did that day, my “boss” also didn’t cover the cost of using my car for travel. Technically, it had actually cost me to work for him. For free. Crap.
At first I thought it was personal. Maybe he was one of these “Deaf elitist” types who didn’t like me because I wasn’t born deaf and could only sign “Hello, where is the toilet?”
But on investigating further, I found that he has done this to numerous members of the Deaf community and there are a lot of Deaf people out there who are less than happy with him. If only I’d known sooner!
I have since enforced a County Court Judgement against this man (which again, cost more money) and reported him to UK Action Fraud, as well as the Metropolitan Police, but this still feels extremely unsatisfying, justice wise.
All I’m left with is the dear sweet Limping Chicken as an outlet for my burning rage. I’m writing this in the hope that A) he will crawl back under his rock never to be seen again and B) it will not happen to another poor unfortunate soul, hoping to find a decent job.
What’s the world coming to when people, who should know better, leave you worse off than before? One of “your own” for goodness sake!
It’s hard enough trying to build up work confidence without scum bags like this around, so beware good people! It’s not just Hearies you have to watch out for, unfortunately sometimes you have to look out for Deaf people, too.
Now that paranoia and low self esteem have subsided, to a manageable degree, I’m off to job search again.
I wonder how much it will cost me this time….?
If you have had a similar experience and wish to report it, please visit Action Fraud: http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/
The Citizens Advice Bureau may also be able to help: http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/
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Andy
September 27, 2012
Well I put a guy in prison over something like this. Making people promises of payment which you then don’t keep is in fact a crime. So the police can be involved.
What happened in my case was that a man (not this one) approached me and asked me to work for him in running a grand charity darts match. He promised me a big financial return if I would do a lot of publicity work for him. It sounded good but he was very glib and I did not like his body language, which to me looked false.
So I checked out his list of supposed sponsors and none of them had ever heard of him! That was when I contacted the cops and the guy was arrested and did time for it.
I think the lesson there is always check out people you are going to work for, especially if the arrangement seems a bit unusual.
Teresa Garratty
September 27, 2012
I wish I could have had the same justice. I did report him to the police and have been assured that he is on the London Metropolitan database, so if someone else reports him, it should flag up. I will definitely be checking all future employment opportunities with a fine tooth comb!
Harry
September 27, 2012
…obviously the lowest of the low!!
Teresa Garratty
September 27, 2012
Too right!
Robert Mandara
September 27, 2012
It’s terrible that you’ve been treated so badly and I don’t blame you for letting off steam.
As for work in general, deaf people are often told that they can do anything that they want to do but it simply isn’t true. As you say, any job that involves the telephone or good verbal communication skills is usually off limits to us. The list of jobs that those two requirements exclude us from is in reality so long that there’s very little left, especially if you want a career rather than just a job. I’d love to find a list of great jobs for deaf people – not just jobs that we can do but jobs that we would want to do.
Teresa Garratty
September 27, 2012
I totally agree with you. I find a lot of entry level jobs require an “excellent telephone manner”, which makes it hard to even get started at the bottom of the ladder. Deaf people should be able to choose a career path just like everyone else, God knows their are enough talented and skilled Deaf people out there!
barakta
September 27, 2012
I was told by the RNID as was a number of years ago that a post I applied for which required telephone OR textphone skills had been adapted between application and interview so even if I was the preferred candidate (I genuinely believe I wasn’t) they probably wouldn’t give it to me because I can’t use the phone for voice as they needed me to be able to take voice calls. There was and remains no good way of bouncing voice automatically into TextRelay without the sodding 18002 nonsense.
I struggled to get a foot in the door of employment because of phones and a lot of my early employers made a much bigger fuss about it than needed and refused to consider sensible and reasonable adjustments for what was occasional phone use “oh no, we couldn’t do that, that wouldn’t be fair and the SAAAME as everyone else” even though colleagues would often be happy to exchange phone wrangling for “go and make the computers work”. The entry level jobs for my experience and expertise were mostly phone advice/helpline and helldesking.
I’m lucky I finally managed to find some jobs which didn’t do phones via a disability internship scheme which may have had its faults but phone-issues weren’t one of them. Once I had stuff on my CV that helped get the jobs I’ve had since.
Donkey
September 27, 2012
Teresa, its pretty shocking to read of your experience and best of luck bringing him to justice!! There is a possible solution to the “telephone barrier”, which is SignVideo, you apply for ATW support so that you can use this service in your workplace. It allows BSL users to make calls and take calls from “Hearies” – give it a go.
I have a friend who uses this VRS service. Hopefully more and more folk will embrace the power of modern technology to overcome some of the barriers experienced by BSL users ..
Once again, best of luck in your journey!
Teresa Garratty
September 28, 2012
Hey, that sounds interesting! Although I have had issues with ATW in the past (don’t get me started, there’s another article in there!) I’d be willing to try anything to get around the telephone issue. Not sure if all employers would be willing to get on board with it though…. I don’t know how SignVideo works BUT I should probably mention that I’m not fluent in BSL, just to make things more complicated! 😉
whatdoesthisdo
September 27, 2012
I have fairly recently employed a deaf member of staff and he is a great asset to the team – hope he does not read this otherwise he will get a big head… make that an even bigger head 🙂 .
I would love to think that “deaf people are often told that they can do anything” should be a true statement. From my personal experiences though hearing people really have preconceived notions and say the oddest things about deaf people in the work place, so I can see why it’s so hard to get employment.
Education and awareness I think really can help banish these out dated and ridiculous ideas but it’s getting to these people and managing to change their minds – hard to do when you are on the outside looking in. This is why I hope to be able to help changes peoples views from the inside but it’s a slow process.
Teresa you have brought up a very good point about the phrase “good communication skills” it had not even crossed my mind about what this little saying actually means to people.
You see it plastered all over job advertisements, in fact its one of those little things that gets added in to job advertisements no matter what the job seems to be for just by default and I have to admit I’m probably guilty of that myself without actually thinking how relevant the phrase is to the job.
Never thinking that it may put some people off applying for the job as to me good communication does not necessarily mean verbal communication but to others they read the phrase as verbal/telephone communication.
So from now on I will be more thoughtful of the wording about communication skills in job specifications such as specifying what communication skills/types are actually required.
Great article by the way.
Teresa Garratty
September 28, 2012
Thank you very much!
It may just be my own paranoia, but when I read “good communication skills” I do think of the telephone and general verbal communication with clients/customers as well. I think some employers see that as something they don’t want to put their clients/customers through, if that makes sense…?
Probably just my over active imagination running away with me though!
Good for you on trying to change peoples views, that’s the key! Raising more awareness!
deaflinguist
September 30, 2012
Good luck with your quest for justice – hopefully breaking your experience out into the open will expose this man. Good luck with your job search too! I had 18 heartbreaking months between uni and landing my first job, so I know how it is for you.
“Communication skills” covers a multitude of sins, as whatdoesthisdo says, so I’ll just start with this first. Employers want soft communication skills – people skills (they want to see that you’re a team player) and excellent written skills (they don’t want their staff to let them down in front of the public by poorly spelt adverts, for example). Organisations send their staff on business writing courses, for example!
I think it works to subtly emphasise your communication skills in your CV – giving examples of teamwork and leadership (in volunteer roles, at uni etc.) and your written skills. An example might be how you have used languages learnt, rather than just a record of your school grades: for example, I used to do written translation from French to earn extra money at uni. Putting this in my CV gently underlined my competencies in conversation (meetings with foreign students) and in the written domain.
E-mail is a commonly accepted business tool, and for many hearing people it has replaced the phone – certainly in my office, anyway. Hearing people have twigged that with e-mail you have a record of a conversation that’s better than not being able to read back your own scribbled phone transcript on a notepad! It’s worth pointing that out, and is a reasonable adjustment (unless working in a call centre, obviously). Technology means that Video Sign, as Donkey pointed out, Google Mail video, Skype, etc. could all be used in place of the phone at little or no cost. By embracing all the current technological possibilities you could show yourself as a very good communication professional! Putting your work online on this blog shows yourself as media-savvy and social-media aware, skills employers increasingly need.
Very good luck to you in your job search – please post again to let us know how you are getting on.
Teresa Garratty
October 3, 2012
Thank you very much! Your reply is full of useful advice and I shall most certainly put it to good use in the future. In fact, I have a meeting with the DEA coming up, (that’s Disability Employment Advisor, not Drug Enforcement Administration by the way. They should really get that seen to…) Perhaps I’ll be able to update you then!