I don’t like to shop.

I don’t get attached to things.

I moved every year during and just after my undergrad degree. Moving is hard. The less stuff I had, the easier the move went. That means non-attachment is the easiest tenant of Buddhism for me to adhere to. But it’s more than that. Shopping is a challenge for me and my bionic ears. 

Here are some of the forms that challenge can take.

Greeters

Picture it: Royal Discount Bookstore, Woburn, 1997. Teen Brad is in all his angsty, timorous, hearing-aid-less glory. He also still sees his introversion as a character flaw. So when Sean tells him he’s on greeting duty, he wants to cry. Having to say “Hello, can I help you?” to any and everyone who walks in is his worst nightmare. 

Fortunately, he wakes up before too long. 

Royal’s parent company, Lauriat’s Booksellers, made the Woburn location an Encore Books, which all too soon sold was to Buck-a-Book, which all too soon went out of business. That meant Sean soon didn’t give a flying fig and I was freed from the horrors of conversations with a stranger. 

I hated the high-pressure greeting even more than having to ask customers if they wanted a loyalty card. At least then I wasn’t bugging them. They were already expecting a conversation. Back in high school, I chalked up my aversion to conversation to my shyness. I didn’t even give a thought to my hearing loss. 

Now, anytime I walk into a store and hear someone says something, I realize that the short, sometimes one word, greeting presents a big problem for my overworked, underperforming ears. I recently had to weave my way through two such sentinels. They were talking to each other and all-but-blocking the door. I didn’t have my usual option of making like a stone on water and skipping off to the side away from them. One of them said “Good evening”, the other said..something. I didn’t know if it was to me. As I beat feet away from them they went back to their conversation. This gave me pause. Was I supposed to be part of the conversation?  

I don’t know. But as I made my way into the depths of the store, my worries shifted to shoppers. 

Shoppers

I treat my shopping excursions like a treasure hunt. A treasure hunt that has a pack of pirates in my trail. Zombie pirates. Zombie pirates on roller skates. I keep my feet moving and my eyes forward. There’s no time for chit-chat, no time for small talk, no time to help a fellow shopper find the toilet brushes. I know how ridiculous this entire paragraph sounds. I also know my worry about having to quickly acclimate to the volume, speed, accent, etc of a speaker (or two) rarely manifests. 

So, like my feet avoiding greeters, I’ll move on from this section quickly. 

Helpers

I have problems asking for, and accepting, help. Shopping is no exception. Most of the time I know what I want and I know where it is. I don’t need help. But once in a blood moon, I need to ask for help. Such interactions are fraught with all the normal hard of hearing challenges; accent, volume, speed, enunciation. These interactions are longer than those with cashiers (more on those gems in a moment) so I’ve got time to acclimate to the person’s voice. But unlike cashiers or even greeters, these people often turn their backs and even walk away from me. Both of which make it harder for me to hear what they’re saying. I know what I need to do. You know what I need to do.

I need to self-identify. 

Easier said than done. The habit of putting the onus on me to hear better is one that I’ve honed with decades of not talking about my hearing loss. I’m getting better but I don’t want to be there, nor do I want to be asking for help, so I’m not thinking straight. I bluff my way through a goodly portion of these interactions. Which means I run the risk of coming away with the wrong thing or coming away empty handed. 

On those occasions when I do have something in my hand, I move onto the next challenge.        

Cashiers

I know they say self-check machines are replacing jobs. But I just don’t care. Technology has been replacing jobs for centuries. This is just the latest incarnation. That’s not to say I’m unsympathetic to the loss of jobs, I am. I feel badly for people who lose their jobs in the name of automation and, more importantly, in the name of a company cutting costs. That second name is why I’ve come to terms with my harmful opinion. Because it’s a systemic problem. The system is too focused on the bottom line and cares not a jot about the breadline. If companies or, GASP, the government were required to re-train people whose jobs were automated, I feel we’d all be better off. 

But let me step off my nearly-Socialist soapbox and get into why I feel the way I do.

Rare is the cashier who enunciates. Rare is the time when I understand what they say to me. I don’t have enough to go on. Even if they enunciate, they’re invariably looking down, they’re inevitably speaking low, they’re indubitably too busy scanning my items to give me much of their attention. What about those rare chatty cashiers, you ask? Are they any better? Depends. The chatty Carl can make it easier. If he has an accent I can understand, if he speaks slowly enough for my brain,  if he enunciates then it’s a less stressful experience. But that’s a lot of ifs. And there’s another if: If he’s talking to me. 

There’s one grocery store that I refuse to go to because every time I go, the cashier and the bagger will be exchanging the hot goss around school. They don’t even greet me. Which, if you remember, is not something I even want. But because I can’t make out everything they’re saying, I don’t know if they’re saying something to me. So I must turn up my active listening. It’s as exhausting for me as it is rude of them. 

I’m saved by the predictability of the transactional nature of the interaction. I want their things. They want my money. There’s a limited number of things they’ll need to say to me. That tamps the stress down. But it doesn’t extinguish it.

What about you, dear reader, can you relate to my challenges? Do you have challenges of your own? Do tell!

A place for my stuff, 
Carlin warning about too much,
Does not concern me.