What do you do when a colleague won’t help?
July 28th, 2008
This is a question I am often asked by deaf employees who work in a totally hearing environment. They often say “My hearing colleague says ‘Why should I have to help?’ You got the job on your own merits”. The real question here is don’t we all give each other a hand at work? How many times have we helped one another (or even covered for our colleagues’ mistakes) – what makes it so hard when it’s a deaf person who is asking? Why should our requests start the eye rolling and the tut-tutting? What is it with (some) hearing colleagues? We (as deaf people) all have stories about the workplace and how hard some people make it for the rest of us. It is clear it is often just that particular individual as very often the deaf employee has worked quite happily there until the new person arrived. My big question is why don’t HR departments help out more – (the answer is they hate conflict as much as anyone else).
