An unrelated story, but sweet.
Near the end of the night, a party of 14 deaf people came in. Of course, I wanted the money, so I took them. The server at that section just got off so, sure I’ll take them. I’d work as much as possible.
They were so fun, one of them could read lips, which was extremely helpful. I wrote down all their choices, potato, veggie, salad dressing, etc. When they pointed to their entree, I had my list for all the extras. It worked out nicely.
I had fun with them, I even joked that they were being ‘too noisy’ and to had to settle down, they all rolled over laughing at that.
The head of that party sent a letter to the president saying what a great experience they had and they loved the service. I didn’t treat them as different, but realized they had different needs. I’ll never forget those people and how fun they were.
Speaking of apartments, I had to lie. Moving back to Wisconsin, I told my prospective landlord, my husband was coming, I was just getting an apartment for us to relocate and wanted to get the kids in school before September. I had my sister in law in tow, and had the relocation lie down pat since we’ve done that 3 time previously. They’d never taken a divorced mom with 3 kids under 8 who waitressed and was going to engineering school. I did what I did to survive. I never missed a payment.
Do you know who tips best and are most fun as customers? Gays (male, of course.)
That is a great story!
I experienced a memorable moment in a restaurant a few years back, also watching a group of deaf teenagers. There were probably about ten of them with a couple of adults with them.
They looked and acted like most rambunctious teenagers at a place like that do...but in this case, they were signing madly to each other.
There were two of them, face to face, signing furiously at each other. The longer they were face to face, the faster the signing got, and the higher their hands got, until their hands were directly in front of their faces, so they couldn’t probably have even seen each other’s faces.
Suddenly, one of the adults appeared right in front of their hands (facing me) and calmly placed his his hands on top of theirs, his left hand on one kid’s hands, his right on the other pair.
They stopped signing, and the adult slowly pushed their hands down to the bottoms of their thorax.
For a split second it didn’t hit me. Then it did all at once., and I nearly fell on the floor when it did:
“Keep your voices down.”