Sorry, just caught this. Yes, I am sure.
I would have to say that if I were a hearing/speaking-impaired person working with customers daily, I would expect to provide my own pad and paper so I could perform my job properly. I personally never have a pen and paper on me when I shop.
Sapphire wolf, I think you missed the point in Clint’s post. The problem wasn’t the physical labour involved in lifting a finger and pointing; the problem was not being able to communicate in the language of the land in a place where he had a reasonable expectation of being able to communicate with the employees he needed to communicate with. A waiter not being able to speak English could be a big deal; anyone with food allergies will tell you that.
Oh, I forgot to add my comments about the OP. I am fully in support of people of every walk of life being hired for any job they are capable of doing. I can’t lift 200 pounds; who wants to hire me as a furniture mover? Realistically, there are limitations on people all the time, and it doesn’t make the world a better place by hiring people for jobs they can’t do.
I don’t buy it.
It’s really nice you happend to have a paper and pencil and it all worked out, but if he knew he was going to a job where he’d have to commuicate with people who don’t know sign language, why din’t he (like the other hearing impaired folks some people mention here) have his own pencil and paper?
Likewise if the guy in the OP was in fact aware of his difficulty verbally communicating, why was he relying on it to do his job (helping people locate stuff)? Communication IS a two way street, if his attempt at verbal communication fail, he could certainly take her to the item on his own initiative rather than waiting around for her to say the magic words. After all, it is his job.
If someone comes into the bookstore I work at and ask me to locate a book and I say “It’s right over there” and they say “Sorry I don’t see it” I don’t stand there repeating “It’s right over there” till they ask me to take them it. I just take them to it.
Given that there are indeed lots of ways around physical handicaps and people with disablities are capable of being excellent employees, why should I feel the need to hold a disabled person to a different standard than I hold myself? Seems rather condescending.
**
As does this.
Whooooosh!
Gobear:
“Even Sven, I hope you noticed that in your OP you just mentioned a reason for the superiority of the free market system in that consumers have the choice to patronize businesses that treat employees well. Glad to see you have embraced capitalism.”
She hasn’t and neither have I. Just because someone is (god forbid) a socialist or a communist, doesn’t mean they don’t believe in a free market or choices. To say otherwise is sheer ignorance. People who want something better than capitalism are doing the best they can to work within and outside of the system. That hardly means they embrace your precious capitalism.
As for WalMart, I seldom go there as I hate it for the same reasons others do.
I second this recommendation. It’s a very interesting book.
At the risk of being whooshed myself . . .
I have heard of industries which do employ the mentally retarded, paying them next-to-nothing for their work. I remember reading an atricle in one of Russ Kick’s books by a handicapped individual who deeply resented the pitiful pay he recieved for his work. Does anyone els know about this?
My sister works at Wal*Mart. She’s been there less than a year and works at one of the Super Centers near Pittsburgh.
She started out at nearly $10 an hour to work at the customer service desk and now makes $10.50/hour working as a cashier in various departments.
I know that’s anecdotal, but it does put a dent in any claim that Wal*Mart employees are all poorly paid schlubs.
Oh, they’re paid pretty well around here-competitive wages and all. When I left Kmart, I was making 8 bucks an hour.
That being said, it’s still a suck ass job.
Featherlou, that may very well have been what Clint meant. What do I know? I’m horribly sick and am prone to Conclusion Jumping today.
However…what I interpreted wasn’t the possibility of trying to avoid an allergic reaction, or him being forced to point to the menu and shake his head at certain items. What I interpreted was that he was just making a big deal out of having to point something out on the menu. Period.
Umm, you may want to rethink who is ignorant here. Socialists and communists do not believe in free markets; that’s sort of the point of being a socialist or communist in the first place–state control of the economy. If Even Sven were being consistent in her politics, she would have said something about the government should do something. That she placed the choice in the hands of consumers I find highly significant.
And would someone please explain how I was whooshed? Is it legal to underpay mentally handicapped workers?
Same thing happened at our local Taco Bell. The woman they hired was quite competent, had a beautiful speaking voice…but she wasn’t…presentable. It never stopped me from eating the food (I have the stomach of a tv coroner 
), but I could never get over feeling guilty because of the flinch reaction I had every time I saw her. She really was that homely and she only worked the drive-in window. I haven’t seen her for a year–I hope she got a better job…
You were wooshed, gobear, by what I (and I’m sure many others) took to be a gross exaggeration, not a statement of fact. I really don’t think even sven meant the 20 cents statement to be taken literally.
Well, with Even Sven’s overweening earnestness and naivete it’s hard to tell.
$16,000 per year.
That’s what $8 an hour adds up to at 40 hours per week.
Where in the US is that a liveable wage? It might be competitive, but is it liveable?
Nope, of course not-although for me that wasn’t a problem.
It’s possible they could have hired the person as a back room stock worker and he just happened to be going from point A to point B when he was “snagged”. I don’t know if Walmart employs non-sales floor workers like this (many smaller stores do), but if they do it’s possible this is what happened. I can’t imagine Walmart would have anybody as a retail floor worker who can’t speak intelligible english. The Walmart store managers (of the entire store) I have dealt with (regarding leasing temporary warehouse storage space for store retrofits) may have been heartless crushers of the human spirit, but they were hardly idiots and most were quite intelligent and savvy.
The federal poverty line for a family of three was only a little over $13k in 1999. So its possible to make $21,000 a year and be over the federal poverty line.
Now, does living above the poverty line mean you aren’t dirt poor? Not in my world.
Around here, they pay $7.00 an hour. I think you pay depends greatly on the geographic region. If they can be “competative” at $7 an hour, that’s what they’ll pay, but if the local job market demands more, they’ll go upwards to meet it.
When I worked at K-Mart, I earned, (IIRC) $6.25, but this was back in the mid 1990’s.
Hey, Thea, I’ve got a question for you. some family friends work at Wal-Mart here in Canada. Though they despise the franchise, they say that unlike most minimum wage jobs, they get basic benefits packages. (Like my friends’ kids get some of their dental stuff covered). Is this the case at all in the U.S.? Is it still the case in Canada? (Haven’t talked to my friend in a few years.)
** Corrvin ** I tend to agree that communication is a two-way street. Dangerosa’s target example is a good on though – “be prepared” is a great motto. But on the other hand one day I realized that the ASL alphabet is pretty damn easy to learn. So in a pinch, I can finger-spell – no pen and paper necessary. For the many times it’s come in handy, I’d totally recommend that everyone learn to sign the alphabet.
And BTW – It was great in highschool 'cause my friend and I could exchange gossip without passing notes. My former housemate and then-business-partner and I also went and learned a bit more ASL so we could communicate backstage at a distance without using the headset. Handy, handy thing sign language.