Hard Of Hearing Handbag Syndrome
Sep 16th, 2007 | By Steve | Category: Thoughts
Do you have handbag syndrome?
Shops are very noisy places, there are a lot of people around, everyone is talking, tills are ringing - there’s a lot of background noise and a lot of distractions. Many hard of hearing people finds shops difficult - it can be difficult to hear the person who is serving you. How much money are they asking you to pay? If you can’t see the amount then you have to hear them.
To avoid this problem many people always carry big notes that they know will easily cover there shopping bill. Didn’t hear the £15.67 price? Pay with the £20 note and the problem is avoided. But, because you are always paying with notes, your handbag (or pocket) will soon fill up with loose change - handbag syndrome.
I’ve had handbag syndrome myself - well, I don’t actually own a handbag but I always pay with my Credit Card to avoid having to know the exact amount.
Sound like your too proud to ask again.
What wrong with asking again?
Hi Fintan,
It’s not that I am too proud or that I’m embarrassed, it’s just easier to pay up front and avoid the “can you repeat that” question.
I haven’t thought of this one before but now that I think of it I do have a gargantuan bag of change in my room. Funny article.
Your site is full of percipient observations. I’ll add you to my blog roll as well.
That’s really interesting. I usually counsel my NHS and private patients re. the very same.
I think whether or not a person can hear a statement such as £3.68 please in noise or otherwise is a good indicator of speech discrimination ability. The person hearing the remark has no other contextual information to anchor missing information to as they would in general conversation.
As you all probably know running speech has plenty redundancy built in and if we have a contextual framework we can fill in the missing information more often than not.
This is why some hard of hearing people often comment that they feel a bit slow witted at times as they are busy ‘constructing’ the partial information together and often the conversation has moved on before they are given time to interject.
I just tell them to put it on the POS display. If they don’t then they write it down. Teach them to get a POS display or fix it if it’s broken.
Nothing embarrassing about it. I can understand the ease to just pay and get change and walk off but it doesn’t help to increase deaf awareness. By doing what I do, it does help to increase deaf awareness - ie some shop I go in now have a pen and pad just under the counter for each POS to make things easier and so on.
JGJones,
You make a very good point: By letting the shop owner/assistant know that there is a problem then they become aware of it and hopefully fix it by installing a display system.