Confessions of a Deaf Server

For the past few months I’ve been working as a server at Red Lobster. This is only a temporary job until I start grad school in the fall, yet it provides me with a good source of income. Today being Valentine’s Day, we had a big rush during lunch. Talk about oral communication. There’s nothing like getting slammed with three tables at once as soon as you clock in, taking orders and trying to make sure everyone gets what they want. It’s critical to get everyone’s order right and ensure the customers are satisfied; otherwise I don’t get good tips.

At first I was nervous about being a server, since it was quite a big transition from working behind the line as a cook to being the face of the restaurant. After all in high school and the first year of college I’ve worked as a cook at two local establishments and Bob Evans (also known as Owen Mills in some parts of the country) back home in Wilmington, NC. Being a cook still required quite a bit of oral communication with the servers and managers, yet the primary responsibility of being a cook consisted of reading the tickets and putting food on plates to feed the customers. Pretty easy compared to being a server.

As a server I have to introduce myself, welcome them to Red Lobster, present the Fresh Fish selection, and make the promise that the customers will have a great lunch or dinner. That’s all part of the routine when I first approach each guest. Each experience is different from the last, as so many different variables are present. There’s the guest who has an attitude from the beginning because they were slighted in some way as soon as they got in the restaurant. Then there’s the guest who is in a hurry to get out of there, when everyone knows that seafood takes time to cook, otherwise they’d risk the chance of getting food poisoning. I never know when I’ll get a good tip or I’ll get ripped off.

After a while I found my groove at Red Lobster. My 30-day review came along and the manager indicated that I was doing really well, even though there were a few areas I could improve on (pre-bussing the tables and wrapping up leftovers). This positive review pleased me and I continued on serving. Imagine that, a profoundly deaf individual doing well as a server at a high-volume restaurant.

Yet most people at work don’t view me as a deaf person. They just treat me like any others, with a few exceptions here and there as we have a few ignorant people who make idiotic gestures or state they know sign language when they don’t even know how to count numbers in ASL. All the servers are expected to walk hot food out, regardless of whether it’s theirs or not. Often someone will scream my name and ask “Aaron, walk this to table ## for me, will ya?” Of course I have to make sure I get the number right because there’s nothing like walking up to a table and hearing the words “I think you have the wrong table.”

I’ve had quite a few customers ask me where I’m from. The most recent question was today with my last table of the day. This woman, who was with her husband, asked me if I was Irish. I responded “No, but I’ve had people ask me that before.” I then went on to tell the condensed story that I’ve told over and over again where I was born deaf, learned Cued Speech, and received the cochlear implant at 7 years old. Yada yada yada.

Not one week goes by when someone asks me where I’m from, yet the responses are different when they learn of my story. I think the most humorous one was when I served a mom and her teenage daughter. The mom seemed to act as if she was on uppers, while the teenager seemed to be normal. You gotta love dysfunctionality. Anyways, she expressed her astonishment and said “well congratulations! That’s so incredible that you’re working here.” she went so far to offer to shake my hand (I shook it of course). In my head, I was just marveling at how ignorant she was and how common this response is. Is it really that big of an accomplishment to be a deaf server?

It doesn’t faze me that we have people out there who act this way, yet it reminds me of how there’s a lot of misconceptions about deafness, especially when it comes to spoken language. Historically deaf people have been viewed as having the inability to express themselves orally (in a clear fashion). That’s not the case anymore. With advancements in education and medical technology, more profoundly deaf people find themselves having the ability to communicate clearly through spoken language. At the same time they’re finding more success in fields where before now deaf people would have had much difficulty communicating with hearing people.

The more people realize that deaf people can communicate on the same level as hearing people, the less they will treat and view us differently.