Deaf Girly's and the world of work

The fab peeps over on Twitter will know that since I quit my job to write a book and be an au pair, then got a permanent job for one year and then left it again, I've been going it alone in the world of employment. With varying degrees of success.

But this morning as I was walking to one of the offices I am working at, I suddenly realised I should in fact feel incredibly proud of myself.

When I first started out working in London many many moons ago, I used to look at the freelancers who came into our office on a regular basis and wonder how they did it. How they slotted into a different team, got to know different people and different ways of working and didn't panic about it.

I mean, me getting a job in the big bad world was the reason I started this blog. Learning how to be deaf in a professional environment sent my head into a spin, I cried every day - in a cupboard where I did much of my work. I loved that cupboard, it was my safe haven away from the people who could use the phone and be efficient in the world of new millennial media.

In my 20s, I clung to every job like my life depended on it. My food and rent certainly did depend on it. I was terrified of redundancy and so eager to climb the ladder that I think I lost perspective of what made me good at what I do in the first place.

And then in 2013, I had that brainwave to quit my job, rent out my flat, write a book and be an au pair. All of which were varying degrees of successful... But all of which taught me an awful lot about myself and my capabilities as a deaf person.

And then I finished the first of many drafts of the book, got a job while being an au pair (RESPECT TO WORKING MOTHERS HERE BECAUSE THIS WAS A MENTAL TIME IN MY LIFE), then stopped being an au pair, left my job, continued to rent my flat, and had to rent another one...

You still following?

So what does a thirty-something deaf girl with a patchwork CV and an unpublished book with bills to pay do?

I did something I'd never thought I could do... I went freelance.

To be fair, at the start I kept it local. I contacted former colleagues who gave me work and gradually built up my confidence again. But then - because I really did need a bit more money - I sent my CV out to random places to see what happened.

And that had varying degrees of success.

There was the company who contacted me and were really interested having seen my
CV but then on finding out I was deaf, told me I wouldn't be suitable for the job and they needed a hearing person who could communicate well... All without finding out whether I can communicate well and dismissing the fact I have a CV showing 13 years of communicating well. *scowls

Then there was the office who gave me chance but was so frantic I swear I only peed once the whole time I was there...

Shortly after the 'you're too deaf to do this job' rejection, I got an email from another company I'd sent my CV to. They offered me some work – a trial. I accepted. But as the dates drew nearer I found myself getting more and more anxious.

What if my deafness let me down? What if I was required to use the phone and there was no other alternative? Should I have told them in advance about my disability? What if they had a problem with me not telling them about my disability? The worry list went on... and on... and on... I almost talked myself out of doing the work.

On my first day, I went through all the possible disaster scenarios before shooing myself out of the door reminding myself that the need to earn money was greater than my anxieties about being deaf.

On arrival, I discovered my lovely manager had a Scottish accent, which meant revealing my deafness in the first second of our meeting. And he didn't bat an eyelid. Not even a tiny flinch. He just accepted the information. I passed my trial.

And since then, in the three months that I have worked at this office, my manager has continued to accept the information I give him about my deafness. He's made phone calls for me, repeated things without any issue, reminded me of people's names and he always, always comes over to speak to me rather than shouting.

It's amazing.

I am lucky. I know I am. Not all offices are like this. But I think quite a few are. And now, when I realise that freelancing is going OK, and I'm not falling apart in a deaf-related anxious heap, I can't help but beam to myself.

It's made me realise that some of the things I've avoided in the past because of my deafness are do-able... and it's made me wonder what else is...

I'm just off to make a list!

Happy Tuesday peeps

DG
xx

Deaf Girly loves LV insurance

OK, so regular readers will know when I am not happy with a service, I often shout about it here.

But what about when I am?

Since I moved house a few weeks ago, I've been faced with all the usual life admin tasks of changing addresses on things. This has been a mega pain. Mainly because it involves quite a lot of compulsory phone calls.

The calls I least enjoying making are to insurance companies. This is because they normally have to quote a load of compulsory blurb down the phone at me that I haven't got a chance of understanding.

So a few weeks ago I emailed Liverpool Victoria (LV) my car insurance company to let them know I had moved house and needed to change my address.

I heard nothing.

One of the reasons I chose LV is that London Aunt and Pa speak so highly of them. Pa especially likes the fact they have a UK call centre. And so I have insured my car with them for 2 years.

In that time, I have had to indeed contact them after a moronic lady reversed into my car in KwikFit car park less than five minutes after it had passed its MOT. I ended up doing a conference call with LV and HannahBanana where she lip-synced with the lady on the other end of the phone so that I could sort out my claim. And LV was nothing but accommodating about this slightly unusual scenario.

So anyway, after realising that I probably wasn't going to hear back over email from LV, I tweeted them. Their twitter handle is @LVcares. And guess what? They really do. They wrote back straight away. They told me there was a live chat service on their website that I could make the address change on.

Now, I had noticed the live chat function but had dismissed it as only for general enquiries as my previous experience of these sorts of things usually don't allow sensitive data to change hands.

So I clicked the link they sent me on twitter and then selected the Chat Now button.

A chat window popped up, I entered my details and within 10 seconds had someone asking how they could help.

And then within 10 minutes the whole thing had been done. New documentation will be emailed to me within three hours and…

Well that's just it. There is no 'and'. I managed an essential piece of life admin without having to lift the phone. And I am still in quiet shock about it.

You see, this is quite literally life changing. If more companies are going to adopt a secure live chat function then sooner or later I will be able to organise my entire life this way. No more getting emotional when I can't hear what the other person is saying. No more putting off crucial things like changing my car insurance details.

So it's three cheers for LV on this rainy grey Wednesday. They just totally made my day.

*beams

Deaf Girly and the phone call

Yesterday my phone rang. 

My phone almost never rings, and when it does, I rarely answer it.

But, now I'm a landlord and whatnot, I thought I'd better answer it as it was a London number.

At the other end of the phone was a man with an accent. I have no idea what kind of accent, I just know that none of the words he was saying made any sense at all.

I heard two things: policy and ignoring my calls.

Now being a landlord this worried me. I told him I couldn't hear him very well and he continued to say the same sentence over and over again.

Like it was scripted.

I then told him I was going to pass the phone over to someone who could hear and walked through to the kitchen where London Cousins 1 and 2 were chatting. Neither of them were particularly keen on talking to a strange person on the phone, so we stood there discussing it for a moment to work out who would take the call.

The caller hung up.

Confused about what was so urgent that he accused me of ignoring his calls but then hung up, I Googled the number. Turns out it was a known telepest. One that tells you your life insurance policy was expiring and you'd been ignoring their calls about it…

So I had heard two bits right. And I don't have a life insurance policy.

Thanks to iOs7 I have now blocked this number but what made me grin, just a little bit, was that he hung up on me. 

A known telepest found a phone call to me so annoying he had to hang up the phone.

Teehee!

Obviously I'm going back to not answering my phone for numbers I don't recognise but if I ever am dumb enough to pick up the phone again, I think I am going to try this tactic on purpose. Tell them I cannot hear them. Remind them that if I was known to them, they would know I was deaf, and then maybe go off on one about deaf awareness and…

Yes, I would hang up on me, too.

And this isn't just for those of us that can't hear. Hearing peeps why not go for it, too?

Or as one person helpfully suggested online yesterday as I was googling, to simply say to the person at the other end of the line, 'I've done what you asked, but there's blood everywhere.'

Obviously I'm not so keen on that option incase a SWAT team descend on my house via helicopter and cart me off somewhere, but whatever option I choose, the war on random phone calls to Deaf Girly starts here.

Happy Wednesday peeps.

DG

x

Life without my iPhone

So, anyone who has seen me in since my birthday, will know that I broke my beloved iPhone in a moment of clumsiness as it slipped out my back pocket and down the loo.

*sob

Seriously, I think I sucked all the air out of my flat when I realised what I had done and watched my main port of contact with EVERYONE disappear in a little fizzle of the screen.

And since then, everything’s been a pain.

Firstly, it turns out I had the wrong insurance in spite of the fact I used my big amplified phone at work to call and check and asked the lady on the other end of the phone to confirm twice it was OK to keep my existing insurance with my new phone.

Then, when Pa spoke to O2 to try and sort things on Sunday, they told him to call back on Monday. Monday wasn’t good enough in my book, so Jenny M rang back and the person she got was very accommodating. Although, he broke the news of the £150 insurance excess, in addition to my new, more expensive monthly insurance payments.

At this point, I looked at my generously given 30th-birthday cheques sat on the mantelpiece and realised quickly what I was going to be spending them on.

Then, Jenny M was told that iPhone 3GS phones were out of stock – evidentially I am not the only person throwing them in the toilet. But Jenny M was also told that I would be texted when the stock arrived and informed of a delivery date.

However, in the interim, I had a million questions for O2 – they really must love me there – and so emailed the Disability Customer Care email with all of them.

No reply.

So then, I got two texts through in two minutes offering me two different delivery dates.

By this time, I was totally confused; so I cranked up my work phone’s amplifier and took the plunge to call O2 again, with my colleague on stand-by to help if need be. The first guy I spoke to was lovely, he then put me through to an insurance guy who was also lovely and said that I could choose a delivery date. So I replied to the first text message, but being a Blackberry handset that I am using at the moment, the texts were all grouped together so then I had a panic about which date I had confirmed for…

So I rang O2 again and got the most wonderful man on the other end of the phone. After the 50th pardon, I apologised for my hearing loss and he replied, ‘You can say pardon as much as you need to.’ along with a whole host of other reassuring things to help put me at ease during the stressful process of making the phone call.

And while we were nattering, hey presto! another text came through from O2 Insure informing me that the first text had been an error and I could only have the later delivery date.

This was fine, I just wanted to know when to be around to collect my new beloved iPhone.

I have been documenting my daily life without my iPhone on Twitter, not least because I cannot get over how much I relied on it to get me through the day. From the Tube App, which would have been very useful in yesterday’s chaos to Run Keeper to track my run home from work.

I haven’t been able to write my blog on the bus to work in the morning and have no Twitter feed until I log in at work. I have only been able to communicate by text, so had a very long-winded chat with Snowboarding Boy the other day about our dinner arrangements that normally could have been sorted easily on MSN. The list is endless…

Then today, the lovely Twitter peeps at O2 noticed my plight and DM’d me to find out what was going on. And they’re going to check that my iPhone is going to arrive on Monday and that everything is OK. Wonderful service as always from the O2 Twitter peeps, so thanks guys.

I finally feel as though things will actually work out… but just make sure, does anyone know where I can buy a waterproof iPhone case that’s drop resistant, and generally Deafinitely Girly resistant?

If so, drop me a line, as this is not a week I want to repeat again any time soon!