Monday, February 19, 2007

The Wonderful World of Pretending

So I am looking for work now. It occurs to me that I have a valuable opportunity to present to work as hard of hearing. How can I do this? Cotton and oil in my ears. It could be tricky to pull off since I have long hair and tend to pull it behind my ears which would leave my ear canal (and the cotton) visible.

Is this ethical? It depends on my ethics. There is at least one legitimate answer I can give for cotton: I am sensitive to sound and prefer to block it out when possible. Another one: I do work better when I can concentrate and block out nonessential noise. I say it is ethical, no different or worse than having a radio or iPod at work because someone doesn't like silence!

"Repacking" would be difficult at work and might require me to have a supply of cotton and olive oil on hand!

This is something I really want to do. But to do it successfully I need to be practical. Pretending to be HOH at work by use of earplugs can come back to bite me in the arse: it could negatively impact my work in such a way that questions could be asked such as why don't I have hearing aids if I can't hear people well. Hard to explain that when the NHS issues them at need...

If I was actually HOH (*sighs...*) I could use hearing aids to regulate when and what I hear and that would eliminate the need for earplugs. Silly Marie, always putting practicality before your own needs.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing your experience

Marie said...

I am glad to.

Anonymous said...

You're right, presenting as HoH at the start of a job is probably the best way to do it.

However, "gimmicks" such as oil+cotton is probably not the way to go, if only for logistical problems.

I think a viable solution is to get yourself a pair of over the ear aids, from eBay, and go that way. No questions asked ;) Of course, that might involve telling Casey...

Marie said...

You're right Sean. Unfortuntely to buy a pair of HAs off eBay I'd need to tell Casey since my bank balance is quite low.

There are a few ways I could go about it, though, such as waiting til I get paid and then buying them and keeping them hidden. But keeping them hidden is a whole new level of trust violation.

Anonymous said...

Hence my comment that you might have to tell Casey...

More active lying ain't good for when you finally *do* come out of that closet :-/