Monday, April 20, 2009
Shushing, Equal opportunity
It is your responsibility as a librarian to inform library patrons when their headphones are too loud. Nevermind if the patron has impaired hearing and turns out to be using an assisted listening device. Disabilities are no excuse for noisiness in the library.
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4 comments:
I reckon I'll actually worry about that when the noisy person really is somebody with a legitimate disability, rather than a selfish git who thinks the world is his living room and that we all want to hear how awesome his music is.
Our Deaf patrons and their families are a lot more civil than many of our hearing ones.
I am all about sensitivity for those with hearing disabilities, but when I can identify the words to the pop song being played from 10 feet away, I feel pretty confident about ruling out assistance devices.
My favorite are the laptop users who sit there with their earphones on and their speakers blaring because they forgot to plug them in and didn't notice.
Interestingly, our deaf patrons are among our loudest because they have no clue how loudly they're . . . communicating.
One day I'm gonna rip the headphones off of someone's ears, box him in aforementioned ears, and stomp on aforementioned headphones.
My favorite headphone/disability fail was when I was helping a visually impaired gentleman who had his head phones blasting music so loud he couldn't hear what I was telling him when I was trying to guide him to his computer and tell him how to print. Since he couldn't see where the computer was, I was trying to explain it, but he wouldn't turn his music down.
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