Brad is flying solo this week.
To disclose or not to disclose: that is the question.
Or is it?
This week I’m going to talk about disclosing my hearing loss during job interviews.
I’ve had the good karma to have only had a handful of jobs in my life. I got my first job at eleven. I was a paperboy for the Woburn Daily Times Chronicle. In high school. I worked for bookstores, Royal Discount Books which became Encore which became Buck-a-Book. I was aid-less during those years so I did not disclose during any of the interviews. I did disclose after I got the job the bookstore job though. I had too or else my boss would have thought I was ignoring him. And that proved to be a valid concern. When I switched stores, my old boss told my new boss about it when the latter complained that I was ignoring him.
In college, I started in IT for a large healthcare company. I worked there for fourteen years. I was promoted a half dozen times but only had to interview twice; when I first started and when I changed departments. I didn’t have my bionic ears for either of them. But again when I got on the job, I had to. It was shortly after that second interview whenI got my first set of bionic ears. That didn’t stop the need to disclose, though. Which was infinitely frustrating: I worked in the same department as my dad, who also used hearing aids at the time. (He’s got a CI now.) But having two people with aids in the same department did little to make it easier. Far from it. It made them take turns making fun of us. But that’s a blog for another day.
It wasn’t until I started interviewing for library jobs that I even mentioned my hearing loss. And I didn’t do it right away, either. I interviewed at the Cary Memorial Library in Lexington and then the WIlmington Memorial Library in, wait for it, Wilmington. And both times during the part of the interview when I was given the chance to ask questions. My first question was about the phones. I mentioned then that I had trouble with the phones due to my hearing loss.
Both interview panels expressed the thoughtfulness that you’d expect from librarians. But they also exemplified the misunderstanding that I expect from people with normal hearing. They both agreed to help in any way I needed with alacrity. But they also seemed to not take my concerns seriously. It’s not that they belittled my disability, it was that they underestimated the challenge I faced. When I got the world’s kindest and most helpful rejection email from Cary, my disability was not even alluded to. I bet that’s not always the case.
As Julie and I have mentioned many a time, we can’t be anything we want to be. You don’t want us serving and protecting, the chance of mishearing someone or not hearing something at all is too great. Certain jobs need hearing ability that’s beyond us. If we know this, you can bet your bottom dollar that people interviewing us know this. Which introduces a dilemma that I’ve, so far, been spared: to disclose or not to disclose. While the ADA ostensibly protects us from discrimination based on our hearing loss, it’s easy to just say why the person who was hired was chosen and not say a damned thing about why we were not chosen.
But I want to get back to the interviews themselves.
Surely I needed repetition a time or two? I’m sure I did. It was almost a dozen years ago, so I don’t remember the specifics, but seeing as how I never hear everything someone says, a “what” or three is a given. Especially since anxiety makes my hearing worse. It’s that same anxiety that, I feel, causes interviewers to underestimate my hearing loss. Everyone is nervous in an interview. Nerves make everyone’s hearing worse. I’m sure the interview panels just chalked up my hearing hurdles up to nerves. Nothing more.
I’ve never feared that my hearing would prevent me from getting a job. Not directly. I’ve only been up front about my hearing loss for a few years. I’ve never asked myself the Hamlet-esque question. But I was always nervous that my hearing loss would cause me to fumble enough questions to make a poor impression. I was, afterall, about to meet new people with new voices and face the gauntlet of hearing challenges unfamiliar voices set in front of me. I always took the entire conversational weight on my shoulders. Any problems hearing were mine and mine alone. Because that’s the lie society made me believe.
Fortunately, I see the lie for what it is now. That’s not to say it wouldn’t be a struggle to disclose should I have an interview any time soon. I’m still too green a self-advocate to do what I know I should do with ease.
How much do we say?
Everywhere we find ourselves,
the choice must be made.
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