People with hearing loss love to eat – because we are
human, after all.
But when we eat out, we enter one of our most challenging communication environments – The Restaurant. Whether it’s a hole-in-the-wall diner or a fancy establishment, most restaurants offer, along with the appetizer, main course and dessert, a fine selection of communication barriers: noise, bad lighting, poor sightlines, group chatter, noise, unfamiliar speech patterns, people who don’t understand our needs, and more noise.
To survive the eating out nightmare, we have four choices:
1. Choose a restaurant with a perfect physical and acoustical atmosphere (yeah, and good luck in finding that!
)
2. Go into super-advocate mode and try to make the environment as accessible as possible
3. Eat your soup, pay the bill and leave
4. Stay home and order in.
I have done all of the above, especially #2. But, sometimes #4 is the most attractive option, especially when you’re having a bad-hearing day. You know the kind of day – the CI or hearing aid seems dull and under-performing, you make an embarrassing hearing faux pas at the office (and you know they’ll be laughing for years), and pardon seems to your favorite word of the day. Struggling through a restaurant meal would be just more than you can take without breaking down in sobs.
But sometimes, the pull of the pub or bistro is just too strong to resist. We eat out on a regular basis, because I don’t always feel like cooking and frequently forgot to buy groceries – and we have lots of friends who also don’t like to cook or shop. But the most important reason for braving the restaurant nightmare is that I don’t know how to make Tom Yum soup, which I must have twice a month or I become crabby.
But if I had a couple of million dollars lying around, there would be a fourth option to offer: a communication-accessible restaurant! If word got out that there’s a place with good food catering to people with hearing loss, I bet I’d make a mint.
Just imagine, a barrier-free dining experience – you can tell by the welcoming sign in the entranceway.
Welcome To The HoH Grill
Eat Well, Hear Well *
* Quiet Atmosphere, Good Food
* Round tables with adjustable lighting and
looped upon request
* Spare CI/hearing aid batteries on site
* Visual alarms
* Carpeted, curtained, table linens
* Staff trained in articulation, sign language and technical devices
* Hearing People Also Welcome
Of course, there are a few extra things that would enhance a happy and communication-accessible dining experience that can’t really be advertised on a sign. This is the basic stuff that you learned – or were supposed to learn – as a kid.
* Don’t talk with your mouth full.
* Try to keep spinach off your teeth when talking.
* Face someone when you’re talking to them.
* If you can’t say something nice (or worth repeating), don’t say anything at all.
* One person talks at a time.
* Drink alcohol moderately. If you’re going to drink a lot, please understand that you may slur your words and/or become overly loud.
* The clatter of silverware and dishware can be teeth-jarring for hearing aid and CI users. Handle with care.
Apart from all that, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! Dining out should be a joyous sharing of food, drink and good conversation – for everyone, regardless of hearing levels.
