Last week, The Boy casually mentioned he'd been in the ER a few days earlier with a ruptured eardrum. I frightened him with scenarios of septicemia until he finally called his primary for a referral to an ear specialist.
"Yeah," he said laconically, "Dr. Sherman said it might heal on its own, but probably I'll need a surgical repair. He had diagrams and everything."
Like me, The Boy has a high threshold to pain and discomforts, which explains why he ignored ear aches for the past year. Turns out that exposure to the noise in the coffee shop plus wearing a headset for the drive thru turned up to "max" had busted a a drum already stressed from 12 years of marching band and jazz combos. A tendency to wax build-up created a perfect storm for poor Mr. Eardrum.
The Boy's problem is not an uncommon one among people who work in the fast food service sector.
If workers get any training in headset safety, it's to keep the volume turned down. "Dr. Sherman" explained that some headsets also create a vacuum in the ear canal that causes unnecessary pressure on the ear drum.
The problem with turning down the volume in the head set and wearing it to reduce vacuum means that you can't hear the customer over the noise in the shop, which uses blenders and coffee grinders (85 decibels, about the levels of city traffic) plus piped in music and the traffic noise in the drive thru area. So The Boy is now using his headset in his "good" ear, and probably wrecking that.
As an old lady with fatigue problems, I am an avid user of drive thrus. As the mother of a 22-year-old with hearing worse than mine, I am now getting off my tired fanny and going in to do business face to face, ashamed of my unwitting contributions to hearing loss among those who often cannot find work in more hearing-friendly environments.
What our convenience costs others is a question to ponder, in keeping with previous posts about technology and its social costs.
More on young people in noisy jobs at OSHA.
I don't use drive thru's if only for the squawk box speakers. Why, in this advanced technological age, they can't improve the quality of those things is a mystery to me. It seems some sort of sound cancellation with directional microphones would help. But, of course, that means spending money for the health of employees so screw that.
ReplyDeleteI don't have hearing problems that I know of, but the squawk box speakers always sound like the grown-ups on a Peanuts cartoon. And there's a lot of static, and sometimes the sound cuts out. So,yes, why don't they utilize some technology? Just give everything on the menu a number. Have a keypad or touch screen where people can enter in the number, and a place to type comments such as "no onions". Let the staff concentrate on filling the orders, because now they're expecting them to both listen to the incoming orders and fill orders. Would cut down on stress and hearing issues.
DeleteOne problem is people like Raber who YELL INTO THE OUTSIDE SPEAKER. well, that won't happen now because I make him go in.
DeleteNeedless to say, but I will, there are no drive-thrus here in Gotham City, at least that I know of. But there are lots of other ways to have your ears beaten up. Subways, loud bar music (though the advent of ear buds, etc. and the law have reduced squack boxes in public and on trains).
ReplyDeleteAnd then this: Did I report on my encounter with the ambulance driver with the siren designed to kill your ear hairs (probably part of the sonic experiments that are felling U.S. diplomats in Cuba and China!). I am convinced that this ambulance driver and the hospital he works for are in cahoots with the hearing aid industry.
But there can be an up side. Past week-end with a mixed-age group, more than half over 65, led to many amusing nods and eye-rolls when someone was asked to repeat what they had just said (but briefer, please).....and memory lapses were indulged with group sourcing and/or a google search. Almost better than a party game. (When was the Shinecock Canal dug? Turns out it was first an Indian portage. When was The Handmaidens' Tale published? 1990? etc).
Talked to a reporter recently whose husband has found, in her opinion, the perfect hearing aid (Phonak). Also now have the book that Ann C. recommended, "Shouting Won't Help." I will get to it soon. Cheers....
Margaret, hope you weren't a passenger in that ambulance.
DeleteI wonder if sirens are louder because everyone has hearing loss ...
DeleteThe curious "fact" is that police and fire sirens are not nearly as loud...though you can certainly hear them, and at night they do not race down the street sirens blaring, but only at cross streets.
DeleteKatherine, I will make it a point of honor never to get into an ambulance from this hospital!
I wonder if it's a guerilla advertising technique. Makes you look. We have an ice cream truck that looks like a meth lab and crawls through the streets playing "Turkey in the Straw" real loud. I would never let the kids but anything out of it. The people had paddle pops stored in a Coleman cooler in the back that were of indeterminate age.
DeleteI would not stare too long and directly at their superluminescent LED flashing lights either. Just saying.
DeleteFunny you should mention this. In my not quite nose-to-nose with this guy (who was parked), I also said why are those lights on. You're not only making people deaf, you are causing epileptic fits in people susceptible to bright flashing lights. He only replied with his three blocks away number vis a vis the sirens.
DeleteMy near and dear was urging me into the door lest there'd be a fisticuffs with our health-care "mercury."
Can you believe it? There isn't only ambulance chasing, there is ambulance causation (or, what's a better word?).
I'm concerned that the brightness of the lights might exceed eye safety limits but epileptic fits could result, too. Some of the police car strobe lights are ridiculous in that they dazzle motorists. I think an OSHA type investigation needs to be made of these alert devices, both visible and audible. They get a free ride because it's supposedly for first responders.
DeleteI wonder why the further info on Phonak Bluetooth add-ons that I provided for Peggy's friend's husband have disappeared?
DeleteJim - I don't check this thread every day, but I never saw your previous comment with the product recommendations - maybe it came and went quickly? It is possible it never got posted to the blog?
DeleteJM: Try again... Did you hit publish? I lost a whole novel by forgetting to hit publish! You would have loved it.
DeletePeggy: see my comments today to Anne C's string on not being able to comment. That covers a good benefits to the Phonak hearing aids.
DeleteJean, I hope your son doesn't have to have surgery. But if he does I hope his employer provides decent health insurance.
ReplyDeleteYes, assuming they don't fire him for getting sick, which happens all the time here. The Boy has been training new employees on safe usage of existing headphones, but there are better ones he's agitating for. I support him, of course, but good luck fighting the man in a "right to work" state.
DeleteWe're a "right to work" state too. It's code for "a right to get fired at will" and a "right to work mandatory overtime", etc. It hasn't affected me because I'm not on a production line. Then they wonder why they have trouble keeping people in those positions.
DeleteI've heard "right to work for less", too. I want a "workers of the world, unite" state.
DeleteThe idiot Legislature here just passed another law that limited informal collective bargaining over working conditions. I am vague on details. But this is the kind of thing you get with term-limited dunces who do whatever the state Chamber of Commerce says. Now they're busy passing anti Larry Nassar laws.
DeleteYes. Term limits keep the dummies dumb. Meanwhile, the lobbyists go deeper and deeper into their "craft".
DeleteAren't the term-limit dummies trolling for lobbying jobs?
DeleteWell, see, that's the problem. Some state.reps see their two terms as a "starter job" to a series of elected positions. Those who make it to the fed level fill Congress with morons. Those who don't go to lobbying because they think that's how government works--legislator to lobbyist = ca$h.
DeleteBut it has been a disaster for the state as reported here by the now-disgraced Jack Lessenberry, who was canned for putting the touch on some students at Wayne State years ago. Too bad because the guy always made sense: http://michiganradio.org/post/truth-about-term-limits
I would get rid of term limits and at the same time, introduce an alternate voting system like instant runoff. We need more choice, not less.
DeleteIn Illinois, our Republican governor (probably will be ex-governor after November) was elected on a reform platform. Imposing term limits on Illinois elected officials was among his most prominent planks. Everyone knows that the term limit movement was really targeted toward one individual: Michael Madigan, the Speaker of the Illinois House and the de facto pasha of Illinois governance; things happen only and insofar as he permits them to happen. Like the other representatives in the House, he's elected only by a single House district, so 40 or 50 thousand Illinoisans or so who live in Madigan's district and keep sending him to Springfield are basically deciding how the entire state will be governed. He's been in government for decades and shows no indication of stepping down. He's able to block, and has blocked, each and every reform that the governor promised to enact.
DeleteIn general, I come down on the side of those who state that we already have a method of limiting terms - they're called elections. Cases like Madigan's are conundrums, but changing the laws for the entire state because of one individual seems like using a cannon to shoot a fly.
In his autobiography John Densmore, The Doors drummer, described in detail why he always kept his drum kit behind the amplifiers during concerts, and, throughout the book, he'll refer back to the point, like "...We set up in Miami, and I made sure my drums were behind the amplifier line. Then Jim..." I've always thought the book should be required reading for rock fans if just for the subtle instruction he was giving them about protecting their ears.
ReplyDeleteAnd I wish our ambulances, police cars and fire trucks had Doppler sirens, like Europe has. My neck doesn't swivel as well as it once did, and trying to figure out where our noise is coming from is literally a pain there. I guess it's one of those smart things that we don't do just because Europe does. Like health care and the metric system.
One of my favorite gripes is non-adoption of the metric system. What is the problem? Are we that inflexible? We even lost a Mars probe due to engineers using both standard and metric systems. It adds another layer of things that can go wrong. Takes more brainspace, too. I have to know one inch = 2.54 centimeters. One quart = 1.06 liters. One kilogram = 2.2 pounds. Also, I needed two sets of tools to work on an american car.
ReplyDeleteYeah. When foreign cars got popular, I thought that was the sure end of the American system. Instead, everyone bought metric tools and tossed the tools that worked on Fords.
DeleteI'm grateful for this post as I had no idea that working the drive-thru posed this health problem.
ReplyDeleteStanley re: the metric system: if we weren't Number One In The World in the things that really matter (money and nukes), we'd feel more pressure than we do now to conform with the rest of the world.
I didn't either, but I think the lesson is that hearing is already likely compromised before people put on the head sets.
DeleteWe were glad The Boy was not inclined to play sports (he ran track for a couple years and enjoyed it) because of head injuries. But all that band practice was messing up his hearing. Ditto college jazz band, where some of the musicians messed around by attaching synthesizers with amplifiers to their horns.
Judging from these posts, we live in a world with a lot of ambient noise (and light) that are not only affect moods (see Margaret's post on wanting to bean the siren operators), but physical well being.
One of the reasons I hesitate to move away from this podunk town is because it is so blessedly quiet (and dark).
I wear a headset quite a bit during the workday, for conference calls, which are a primary activity in my job. Now I'm wondering if that's an explanation for why my hearing has been declining a bit.
DeleteJim, my boss puts his phone on speaker for conference calls. I don't know if it's to protect his hearing or just a preference.
DeleteJim, mention it to your doc. Some headsets are less harmful than others. A lot depends on how high you have the volume. Do a little digging, and you might be able to get your employer to Do you and everyone else a favor by providing better gizmos. I
Delete(Oh, Lord, I am being kind of insufferable. "Bossy" is my middle name. What can I say? I am the elder sibling and the very oldest of all the cousins, as they like to remind me. I am widely ridiculed for having a college education being a "perfesser," and telling people what to do, but when somebody gets sick or dies, or decisions need to be made, they call apart and call me.)
Jean, I don't think you're being insufferable at all. I'm grateful to anyone who can give me advice on dealing with doctors and the medical system.
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