Jim Pagel
So welcome to my world for a few minutes. I have one really frustrating problem now that I can't speak. I need to schedule something with a company without speaking. Seems like it wouldn't be that hard, right? Guess again. Yesterdays frustration was trying to schedule a carpet company to come over to my house and give me a quote on doing so. So i go online, find a store and I email them my request. In that request I add the following line. In Bold. Highlighted in yellow and it all capital letters. I CAN NOT SPEAK! PLEASE DO NOT CALL ME. EMAIL OR TEXT IS THE ONLY WAY I CAN COMMUNICATE. PLEASE HELP ME WORK THROUGH THIS DISABLITY.
So that should work, right? No it doesn't. They call me. I garble out I can't speak, text or email me but they don't understand. But for some reason they don't get that. So after I didn't get an email back for several hours. I texted Jim Pagel, my brother from another mother. And asked him if he would call them up and explain the only ways I can' communicate. He did so for me and that worked. For that I am thankful beyond words. .
I go through this all the time. I often have to go into the store and text what I want because people can not read any message in writing with Comprehension. My doctors office is bad with this too. The always call me even though I have communicated numerous times i can't not speak.
This gives me a feeling of invisibility. It is like I am not part of the world anymore. And if I tell them face to face I am mute, almost always they assume I am deaf. So I write all of this out on paper, and they still write back to me. I jump up and down and point to my ears saying in Pantomime I can hear! And that works about 80% of the time. but 20% of the they keep on writing answers back to me. I am invisible to most people now. And I hate it. I usually have to bring up ADA laws to get anywhere with the customer service people. When I do that then seem to figure it out.