I was trying to think of the deal that I’ve had to work
hardest to get, and this one springs to mind as it involved learning something new and making an ass of myself. I have a rather flippant way of
telling stories so just in case anyone thinks that it is my intention to make fun
of an impediment; let me be clear, It’s Not!
There were four of us in the showroom that day, and there
was no Sales Manager to watch over us, I was actually working but the other 3
had taken a time out and gathered at my desk to chat and drink coffee. If there’s
one thing that I hate its walking into a shop where the staff stare or ignore
you and you feel like you don’t belong there. The customer had come in through
the big roller shutter door which was open at the back of the garage and we hadn’t
heard him approach, all 4 of us turned to look at him when he coughed to
attract our attention.
You only get one chance to make a good first impression
and we’d all blown it big style. It got even worse, we were near a new
Industrial estate and the flow of people coming in to ask for directions was
relentless, even more, irritating was that they all seemed to think that we
should leave customers who were looking at cars, just to deal with them. More
often than not when we the salesman was interrupted the customer took it as an
opportunity to escape, and would say “It’s ok I was just going anyway”, you would lose the chance to sell a car just
because the guy seeking directions couldn’t read a map, was too impatient to
wait his turn, and Sat Nav hadn’t been invented yet.
A lot of the direction seekers were foreign lorry drivers
so as we Brits do when communicating with foreigners, we just shout in English
and assume that it will miraculously translate into their language. We were all
fed up of being interrupted when we were in the middle of our sales patter so we
had started to just ignore them, treating them like they were invisible and
concentrating on our customers. The guy standing in front of us was holding a
pad and a pen so we all thought here we go again and wrongly jumped to the
conclusion that he wanted directions, and that we’d spend the next half hour
shouting directions in “Frenglish” like Officer Crabtree from Allo Allo.
He must have sensed the hostility that we all felt
towards yet another person who we thought was going to waste our time and was here
to pick our brains but not contribute to our wage packets. He just stood there
like a rabbit caught in the headlights, clutching his pen and paper. I was the
first to speak as the others turned away and continued to drink their coffee, “Where
you looking for mate?”, I asked. The guy seemed to be making a lot of effort to
speak, but just a couple of noises came out almost like a stifled yawn, I
said “Pardon” but another one of the lads, laughed and said, “sorry mate I don’t
know where that is”, The guy scribbled on his pad and thrust it towards me, it
said, “I’M DEAF” then clearly upset he turned to walk out.
I felt dreadful, I grabbed my pad and pen and ran after
him, I apologised profusely for our unacceptable behavior via my pad and asked
him to come back into the showroom, he wouldn’t but he wrote on my pad “I may
come back next week, with my friend” . I had recognised the sign he made as he left
the showroom, Loose Fist moving from side to side, it was the same sign that I used
to demonstrate my anger to other motorists who’d upset me. I knew the gesture
for OK which is used by Scuba Divers “O” made touching thumb and forefinger together,
I didn’t want to upset him again and I just hoped it was the same in sign
language and it wasn’t another version
of the same gesticulation but meant you were a W***** and you also had a small
(you know) He seemed alright so I gave him my card, and wrote on it the days I
would be working.
This was in 1984 so there was no internet and I had to
resort to the Yellow Pages, I located the Royal Cross School for the Deaf, which
was in Preston and not too far away from us. The receptionist listened as I explained
my predicament. I needed to learn sign language in the next 6 days, she gave me
the name of a tutor, suggested the books I needed to read and wished me good luck.
I confessed that I wasn’t confident that
I would be up to the task, but she assured me that Chimpanzees and
Gorillas had been taught to “sign“. Koko the Gorilla had a vocabulary of 200 to
300 words, that was probably more than I knew in English, if she’d known that my teachers at school were
the first ones to coin the phrase “It would be quicker to teach a Monkey”, she
would have realised that It was a new brain I needed not luck.
I had managed to learn the sign language alphabet and a
couple of other general signs, so when I saw him come into the showroom accompanied by his friend I stood up and saluted him, this is the “sign” for hello, (or so I had
been told) I probably looked like the Benny Hill character Fred Scuttle and my
deaf customer started to laugh, the more I tried to sign the more he laughed, before
long tears were rolling down his cheeks, I must have been like the “Officer
Crabtree of Sign Language, but it taught me a lesson and showed me how
frustrating it is to be forced to try to communicate in a language that only a
very tiny percentage of the population can understand.
There was a slight flaw in my plan that I hadn’t
envisaged when he signed back to me his fingers moved so fast that I hadn’t got
a clue what he was saying. I am pretty sure he was doing it on purpose to show
me how he had felt when we greeted him the first time. His interpreter friend
saved the day when he grabbed my hands and laughing he said: “please stop doing
that, you're causing a draught”. From then on he translated and between the 3 of us we negotiated a deal.
Even though I was as good at “signing” as I am at Chinese writing my customer had appreciated that I had thought
he was important enough for me to try and learn.
Barrie Crampton 
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