My experience

It was my first ever job that I got, I was in year 9, and it was a retail job. I had been looking for a job for ages by then, and one day my dad came home and said that this little shop in Erindale was hiring as one of her employees had left, and I should go check it out. So that evening, mum and I went down so I could hand in a couple of resumes and get the job hunt on properly. The first store I walked into was the one my dad told me about, I walked in there and said t her, “Hi there, Im Mackenzie, My dad was here earlier (he was a regular) and he mentioned that you told him one of your girls have left and your looking for someone new?” she looked at me and said “yes that’s correct” I told her that I was looking for a job and that I had my resume if she was willing to look at it, she took the resume and had a quick look and said “are you free on saturday for a few hours?” I immediately said yes and asked, “Why?” She proceeded to say she wanted me to do a trial shift, and if it works out shell hire me. I said thank you, and I’d see her at 10 am on the following Saturday. I ran out of the store back to the car to tell Mum she wanted to take me for a trial shift. We were both so happy and went home to tell Dad. 

 

Saturday came around, and I got all dressed and looked nice for my new job. I walked into the store, and she introduced me to her husband, who was her partner in the store (I think). He started running me through all the paperwork and made sure I understood everything. After this shift, she said she was happy for me to become an employee for her. My next shift was the Monday after. One Monday, I was struggling to understand her a bit, so I told her that I was Deaf, and there were no adjustments that needed to be made at that moment,t but if she was to speak to me, to make sure that she was looking at me, and that I was facing her. She turned around and said,d “Oh, yeah, I know I could tell from the way you speak, you got a bit of a lisp” I can’t lie,e that took me by surprise, and I just laughed it off, but it made me feel a little bit self-conscious. I have been doing speech and language therapy for pretty much my entire life, and lots of people have told me that they wouldn't have known that I was deaf because my speech and language were perfect. 

 

After a few shifts of working there, the phone rang, but it wasnt like a samsung or an apple phone, it was a landline phone and I didn’t realise we had one, my boss asked me to pick it up but I told her I would be no help as i would not be able to hear the person on the other end of the phone, she seemed annoyed by the fact that I would not be able to pick up the phone and I just thought that it was really weird behaviour comig from her, especially since I told her that I was Deaf. 

 

She never made any accommodations for me in the workplace, ever, until just before I left, she made sure she got an iPhone that could link to the landline phone, and that would ring off there instead so that I could hear the person on the other end of the line. It was good working there for a little bit, but I just found it weird how she got annoyed that I couldn’t pick up the phone.