My boss is getting deaf and won't accept it.

In My Humble Opinion
1

:frowning:

This creates a massive problem for me. He comes in first, listens to the messages on the answering machine, and leaves me a list of names & telephones numbers and what I should do (set up appointment, deal with insurance, whatever.) The trouble is, how do you ‘get back to’ Larry Dalton at such and such a phone number to find out what he needs, when it turns out that noone at the number has heard of any Larry Dalton? And so messages go unanswered until a quite reasonably irate Gary Burton calls back in a few days, and wants to know why we didn’t call back and now he’s completely out of his prescription?

You also need to know my boss is sensitive about his age, and wants to be seen as younger than he is. Mostly his vanities aren’t important: if he wants to believe his combover hides his bald spot, fine. No skin off my nose. But this one is making it impossible to do my job properly.

I managed to convince the boss to get caller ID – on the ego-saving grounds that ‘people nowadays mumble’ – but only about 1/3 of the calls show names and/or numbers. I’ve tried to convince the boss NOT to delete the messages so I can relisten to them, but I’m fighting a decades long habit.

I’ve even ventured the words ‘hearing test’ but got it brushed aside. After all, he’s just had a physical about two months ago, and everything was fine. (In defense of his doctor: my boss has no trouble with people speaking face to face, I guess he does a lop of lipreading without realizing it.)

Anyway, I’m starting to go nuts. It takes tons of extra time to try to figure out these misunderstood messages, hunting through patient lists for names that could have been misinterpreted, calling variants of the numbers (he screws up 2s and 3s most often, but sometimes 5s and 9s), apologizing, soothing irate people and on and on. Naturally I can’t tell them the truth, and as a result it looks like the office ‘system’ or me personally is screwing up, over and over.

The solution is obvious – at the least, my boss needs to let me retrieve the answering machine messages, and sooner or later he needs to get a hearing aid – but how do I get this through to him in a way that won’t get me fired, or poison the relationship between us?

Any ideas?

2

Howsabout:

“HEY, GEEZER! CLEAN THE DUST OUTTA YER EARS OR GET A HEARING AID, YOU OLD FART!”

[sub]Somehow I feel that, like most of my advice, this will go unheeded.[/sub]

3

Keep track of a week’s worth of incorrect messages and show them to him. Just give them to him and walk away. Wait a day or two. With any luck, he will stop getting the messages off the machine, or save them, or something. I think you need to let him see the problem in a way he can’t argue with, then let him save face by coming up with a solution without having to admit the problem.

4

What?

5

Tell him that “audit requirements” are that 2 people check the phone messages to prevent errors and to conform with ISO-9087. This means the first person writes down the messages and then someone else checks them BEFORE they are deleted. Head Office require this for ISO certification.

6

After 6:00pm and weekends, ISO-5109.

7

Hook up another machine to the phoneline. Do not let the boss know about it. Compare to what he comes up with.

8

My God, don’t ask, you are so full of it you could be a management consultant. Please take that as a compliment, not as an insult. I am in awe

9

I agree 100% with what Brynda said. Write out each error clearly with dates, times, names and so forth.

10

I’m not sure that would work.

If you hook up two answering machines, one answering machine would pick up, bypassing the other.

If you use an in line recorder (like what Radio Shack offers), you end up hearing a series of beeps (indicating recording) which the ans mach would likely pick up. Of course, maybe that last bit wouldn’t matter, as higher pitched sounds seem to be lost first in many people. But, the tones might screw with the ans machine’s remote features.

I guess it couldn’t hurt to try it out when he isn’t around, see if everything meshes.

11

Oh yeah. Well the only people I know that aren’t insulted by a comparison to management consultants ARE management consultants. Oh, and drug dealers and politicians but I guess that is taken as read.

12

This has possibilities, thanks, Brynda. I think maybe I could keep the ‘wrong’ messages, one to a sheet of paper, in a stack on my desk with a suitable label on top. Something like, “Messages pending until able to ID the caller.” As this is happening to at least five messages a day, the stack should grow into something he can’t ignore within a week or two, without my having to confront him at all. (Yes, I prefer ‘no confrontation’ – in general, I like my job and workplace.)

As to don’t ask’s suggestion: it’s amusing, but my boss is getting deaf, not stupid.

13

I’ve been somewhat hard of hearing most of my life. The one time I went to an audiologist, he basically said, “yep, you’re hard of hearing. But since you manage okay (while asking people to repeat themselves and sort-of lip-reading) why spend $2-4,000 on hearing aids until you need them”. But even knowing I have a problem hasn’t stopped me from occassionally complaining to my niece that she was mumbling. My sister firmly told me that my niece wasn’t mumbling, it was my hearing.

Is there someone above your boss, a store manager perhaps, (you’re a pharmacy tech, right?) that you could explain the problem to? Because medicines are certainly something that shouldn’t be left to guesswork. I understand that these are refills of standing orders, but what if in the past a patient had two meds with similar names and the pharmacist wrote down the wrong one? Not a good scenario.

StG