Funny story

[kdpeters]

I'm hearing, but I work for a non-profit that serves deaf and hard-of-hearing clients. One of my duties is to answer incoming calls on the voice line and the TDD line. For some reason, the TDD line gets a lot of people who've accidentally called the wrong number who weren't expecting the beeps from a TDD. To deal with that, I usually answer the phone before putting it on the TDD just to check. If there is no answer, then I put the phone on the TTY and start typing. If a person answers back, it's always because they've dialed the wrong number.

People often say or do silly things when they haven't completely thought through what it means to be deaf, e.g. "You don't look deaf". Dialing a wrong number is one of those situations where people tend to react out of habit to get off the phone quickly. Just yesterday, the phone on the TTY line rang and this is how the conversation went:

ME: ***** ****** for the Deaf

CALLER: What? I can barely hear you.

ME (louder, clearly enunciated): ****** ******* for the Deaf

CALLER: Oh. That's why I couldn't hear you. Sorry. (hangs up)

My co-workers and I had a good laugh out of that one. We thought we had heard them all.