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> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-

by imgabe 5y ago

> Richard Dahan, who is deaf, said he had struggled at his former job at an Apple Store in Maryland for six years because his manager refused to provide a sign-language interpreter for him to communicate with customers, which federal law requires under some circumstances. This just doesn't seem like a reasonable accommodation for a retail job. Your whole job is to communicate with the customers. If you need to hire another person to do the communicating, what are you doing there? Why not just hire the interpreter? This is like if you're in a wheelchair and you get a job to hang drywall. They pay you, but then have to hire another person to actually hang the drywall while you...point out where to put it?

daenz 5y ago
Speaking is only a small part of communicating. A sign language interpreter is just the person's "voice" but their approach on how to treat a customer is still theirs, not their interpreters. EDIT>> For those missing my point. If Chris Voss suddenly needed a sign language interpreter, he'd still be incredibly valuable for his ability to negotiate. A person's skills in communication aren't solely tied to their ability to speak.
- nvahalik 5y ago
  Have you worked in retail sales?
- meragrin_ 5y ago
  Sorry, but the interpreter is going to need to be trained to have an understanding. They would likely be paid just as much if not more. It adds quite a bit of friction because interactions will take at least twice as long. It is not a reasonable accommodation. The interpreter would probably be able to help the customer faster alone.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Your message changed my mind on this. Not because one person can negotiate better. Because the package of the two provide a different energy. People feel more comfortable in groups and more pressured one on one. The interpreter is seen as neutral but an upstanding person. Grouping the three presents a natural barrier which gives the customer space. If the interpreter can fullfill the wingman role by neutrally suggesting to go forward with a purchase to someone on the fence you have a real business.
diebeforei485 5y ago
It's unclear from the article, but there are plenty of roles (eg. if you work at the Genius bar, etc) where it doesn't make sense to hire an interpreter.
dstaley 5y ago
The ADA already requires Apple Stores to provide interpretation services or other reasonable accommodations for customers, so it's not much more of an ask to provide those for employees as well.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Apple stores offer this on a scheduled basis, https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/25/apple-retail-store-sign-language-interpreter-appointments/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/25/apple-retail-store-sign-langu... It's a completely different thing to expect a company to hire 2 people (with 2 full time salary and benefits) when 1 will do. Especially for a low skill job that has no real shortage of potential workers.
  - ProAm 5y ago
    > to hire 2 people (with 2 full time salary and benefits) when 1 will do For one of the most profitable companies in the world, this doesn't seem outrageous (1 extra employee per store, maybe full time, likely not) especially given the fact that Apple doesn't support right-to-repair they will naturally have more foot traffic than most similar businesses.
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      It's not even so much about the actual cost, as much as the absurd inefficiency and waste of human potential.
      - nosianu 5y ago
        When I first visited and then lived in the US for about a decade (coming from Europe) I was surprised about what I perceived as purely a jobs program kind of jobs. Examples: People at road construction sites holding "Stop" signs, packagers in supermarkets, money collectors in toll booths (even before electronic devices, just using a machine was easily and cheaply possible and frequently and successfully used elsewhere), and a few other jobs that appeared to be unnecessary and purely intended to keep some people busy. Things like that, and how the defense budget is actually used as a jobs program in large parts, were quite eye opening for me. I came from former East Germany and we always thought US as the most capitalist of all places, but when I first visited for a few months of travel not long after reunification I was very surprised to find some things that we in East Germany even used in jokes comparing East and West, and now I found out that e.g. "employee of the month" (with a special parking lot no less), that we thought was a typical socialism thing, and we even had a joke about that which implied and presumed that something like that could never exist in a country such as the US, was something they actually had. Also, the reverence to uniforms (military and police especially) was very East German. I think the US is confused about how capitalist they really are. Under the hood they try to solve the same problems as everybody else and come up with very similar solutions, only that they need be be branded differently because you can't do any "socialism" openly.
majormajor 5y ago
I bought an iPhone from an Apple Store employee who couldn't speak but used a phone to communicate with me by typing out their messages. It was perfectly fine. I'm a bit surprised speech to text these days wouldn't basically take you as far as you need to go for a deaf employee. That said, if you take away jobs with a large communication component from the deaf, that rules out A LOT. I think reasonable accommodations should be provided, versus saying "most jobs are unreasonable for you to have."
- meragrin_ 5y ago
  > I think reasonable accommodations should be provided Since I saw no defense of the interpreter, are you agreeing hiring an interpreter is not a reasonable accommodation?
  - majormajor 5y ago
    I think that depends on what other options are available and how well they work. I don't have an NYT subscription to see if there's more detail in there, but I don't necessarily take every complaint at face value. It wouldn't surprise me - since this person was there for 6 years - if other accommodations were provided that many people would consider "reasonable" and a sign-language interpreter wasn't actually necessary to perform the job, but there's just long-lingering bitterness over not getting precisely the accommodation that was desired.
- imgabe 5y ago
  I’ve also been a customer at establishments with deaf employees and none of them ever had a sign language interpreter. Providing an iPad to type messages on is a reasonable accommodation. Customers who don’t like it can work with another employee or go elsewhere. But hiring a second entire employee who basically shadows you and does your job for you seems like a bit much.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    > Providing an iPad to type messages on is a reasonable accommodation Doesn't that make communication slower? When I want to buy something, I certainly don't want to start chatting on a tablet to get my point across. It seems like a poor choice of position for that employee.
dandotway 5y ago
+1 As a society we want to do all we can to accommodate the handicapped so they can work, and many deaf persons are extremely effective lip-readers able to handle retail customer interactions. If Richard's lip-reading isn't up to the job, a non customer facing role would be better for Richard, either that or have Richard do email and message chat customer interactions that are compatible with his deafness.
- babesh 5y ago
  I suspect that it goes beyond lip reading. Deaf people can't speak as well because there is no feedback mechanism of hearing their own voice. So you need a mechanism for them to communicate outbound in addition to the inbound lip reading. That can be via writing, text to speech, a human interpreter, etc... The problem is costs. I wonder what people would say if you required mom and pop stores to have sign language interpreters? It would drive many out of business. Now look at spiraling Medicare costs. We have similar expectations for the elderly and it is increasingly untenable. We need a lot more automation to maintain or increase this level of social support services. Another issue is what we classify as a disability. As another commentator mentioned, what about lack of strength, intelligence, etc? There is a vein of American culture that is trending that way. It basically spreads the costs to other parts of society, directly and indirectly. Tricky since most people are actually disabled temporarily or permanently in one way or another. Color blindness, myopia, bad hearing, on crutches from tearing an Achilles, etc...
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Lip-reading has been extremely difficult in the last 18 months.
adoxyz 5y ago
Common sense feels very uncommon these days.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
s5300 5y ago
It is definitely a bit of a conundrum though. One must keep in mind that the United States is and near or more always has been a welfare state. We're supposed to have governments and organizations to come up with solutions to these types of societal problems we encounter. The way you seem to be looking at it - yes, I mostly agree that the company should not outright be expected to essentially hire another fully time employee to work as the deaf employees interpreter. But in the 21st century, in the developed country that is the United States, I very much feel as if there should be some way to quickly and reasonably pair this employee with a student(s) of a local sign language or whatever school/program in which they come and go assisting in translation services for part of school credit/curriculum/outreach. Anybody learning a language will tell you there's nothing better than real world experience. This gives the disabled (in the form of being deaf) person a meaningful occupation/independence, and students an assured way to get important experience. However, since the US is a highly capitalistic machine, we seem to not have reasonable things such as this set up on any meaningful scale. Lots of downvoting. Do HN users have beef with disability accomodations or something?
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  > One must keep in mind that the United States is and near or more always has been a welfare state. If one must keep that in mind, may one ask what definition of "welfare state" has applied to the USA since its founding?
  - s5300 5y ago
    Religious groups typically look after their own. Take care of the poor, needy, and disabled. For quite a long time, most US states were essentially religious areas/boundaries, which is why much of New England is seen as quite puritanical to this day. Go read about the history of Mormons and Utah. The reason the surrounding borders are so weird is because the U.S. gov essentially tried to thwart a larger land grab by the LDS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret Their tenants were largely about taking care of each other. So, in short - there were a lot of welfare states, mostly segregated by religion. As time went on, they mostly morphed into an encompassing welfare state. Do you disagree? HN is definitely a tough crowd when it comes to ideas of helping the less fortunate it seems. Hopefully your future physical therapists won't charge too much when your ruined backs and wrists are hurting, despite the fact capitalism says "why shouldn't they reap your pains for all they're worth"
015a 5y ago
Literally, nothing is unreasonable for Apple. They're among the richest companies on the planet. I'm over Corporate Equity and treating them the same as the mom & pop grocery store down the street. Yeah, it'd be unreasonable for small businesses. Its not unreasonable for Apple. Tim Cook could personally, out of his own salary, pay the salaries of every Apple employee in New York. He could give them all a 200% raise, and he'd still make twenty times more than ICU nurses who work 20 hour shifts to save his life if he ever needs it. As an employee, it would help me feel pride to contribute toward a company that is willing to not just meet the law, but go beyond it and provide valuable and gainful employment for people like Richard. As a customer, it would make me proud to walk into an Apple Store and work with someone like Richard, to see that Apple were willing to pay an entire second salary simply to be accommodating. Comparatively, the salaries of an entire Apple retail stores' worth of employees is exactly the same as you accidentally dropping your change at a register, a penny rolls under the checkout lane, and you say "nah its not worth it". Now, the reality of the situation is that, Apple Corporate would probably be fine with this, but the real problem is with this Middle Manager. To be clear, it reflects poorly on Corporate, and its their responsibility to set terms and culture to ensure Bad Store Managers don't pop up. But, they will. What matters is Apple's response, not necessarily the history of what happened (though, six years is a very long time).
- Bud 5y ago
  You don't actually know Tim Cook's salary, do you? Please stop pretending that you do. Hint: the vast majority of his compensation is, and has always been, via stock grants.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    You do know that high earners play this game to avoid the sort of tax liabilities ordinary people have to pay? They aren't nobler by taking a $1 salary.
    - Bud 5y ago
      Yes. The fact remains that Tim Cook could not do what was claimed out of his salary. Period, paragraph. Just as obvious: Tim Cook wouldn't do this if he weren't confident in his leadership. Apple stock is up more than 10x since he took over.
magpi3 5y ago
The employee is deaf. He needs an interpreter to understand the customer's speech. He does not need the interpreter to respond to that speech. He would be performing his job. Your drywall analogy is insulting.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  > He does not need the interpreter to respond to that speech. How familiar are you with the deaf? If this was a lifelong affliction they (likely) won't verbally communicate and even if they do it's not something that can be parsed clearly enough for retail.
barbazoo 5y ago
It's a form of inclusion that might not be perfectly efficient as you point out but greatly improves lives of people with disabilities.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Then society should pay for it directly.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Pulcinella 5y ago
    Society compensates Apple quite handsomely.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Apple’s customers compensate Apple. Society is free to tax companies’ profits to pay for assistance to deaf people.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  There are other ways to include them and improve their lives.
emodendroket 5y ago
Does the interpreter know a whole lot about computers? I wouldn't say the employee is useless here.
luffapi 5y ago
Only on HackerNews does someone read this story and decide the handicapped retail worker is the bad guy.
- thebraxton 5y ago
  Saying that the accommodation is unreasonable doesn't mean he is a bad person. Apple has one view and he has another, one can be wrong without being bad
  - luffapi 5y ago
    It’s not unreasonable at all. The person is deaf, Apple should provide any resources the employee needs to do their job. 1. It’s the right thing to do. 2. If Apple can afford multi-billion dollar toilet shaped offices, they can hire interpreters.
    - samhwr 5y ago
      I think it’s a harder question than either side is willing to accept. You have someone who isn’t of much use as an employee, but by no fault of their own. It’s a horrible situation for them to be in, and it’s one we have to think about as a society, but it’s unclear why Apple specifically is obliged to provide them welfare at its own expense.
      - luffapi 5y ago
        It’s not a hard question at all. Apple has the money to easily accommodate all of their workers. It would even be a PR win. Tim Cook and the other execs are just anti-labor to their core and (don’t realize?) how clear their actions are being read by future potential employees.
        samhwr 5y ago
        I’m not sure why having the money is relevant. Plenty of companies, people, and governments ‘have the money’. The question is why it is specifically Apple who are obliged to provide welfare for this person at their own expense. I have huge sympathy for human beings who are unable to work, and a humane society should provide for them, but I don’t see why it falls to Apple. This kind of populism (“person X or company Y should be arbitrarily forced to pay for thing Z, ultra vires, because they can”) feels like a lazy way to avoid solving a deeper societal problem which goes well beyond this one person.
S_A_P 5y ago
Is this is someone who is either looking for an angle to litigate with a rich company or has completely unrealistic expectations or both? I feel like if you had a real conversation with this person and got to the root of how they feel they would know their ask is unreasonable. I’m sure they may also feel like they have been dealt a bad hand and want to find a way to be compensated. While this route may make a few lawyers happy I really doubt that winning a lawsuit against Apple for not hiring a sign language interpreter will bring them any peace. What I have been noticing and I could be completely wrong and or biased here is that we have a large population of folks in the US that are struggling with mental health issues and that manifests in a lot of odd ways. This seems to be one of them.
- licebmi__at__ 5y ago
  Or maybe there could be more nuance to the case. What of he was hired for a different role and then suddenly he had to attend customers? What if the manager just didn’t like him and set him up for failure? Why would we put the wrong in him if the company hired him on the first place?
  - Socketier 5y ago
    Exactly, it's similar to the media frenzy around the woman who got seriously burned by Mcdonalds coffee and sued them. The reaction was mostly incredulity and mocking her, but the reality was that the coffee was exceptionally hot for decontamination convenience (a corporate money saving measure) and the cup was insulated such that the average person wouldn't ever expect it to be so dangerous. Best to withold judgments until get more of the facts are revealed.
    - vlovich123 5y ago
      I thought it was made so they could offer “unlimited” coffee but making it so hot increased the drinking time so customers were far away before finishing?
      - 5y ago
autoliteInline 5y ago
>This is like if you're in a wheelchair and you get a job to hang drywall. You could view it as a full employment plan. The next logical step is to have a deaf man who only signs in Irish Sign Language. The first interpreter converts that to ASL, the second into spoken English.
- amirhirsch 5y ago
  I suppose they would have to discriminate against deaf people in their search to hire an interpreter for their deaf employees or it’s interpreters all the way down.
  - autoliteInline 5y ago
    Imagine the game of 'telephone' you could play. By the end of the last interpreter, the guy at the Apple Store would get an order of Granny Smith apples and his vintage Mr. Coffee machine would be repaired by a passing street musician.
prpl 5y ago
There’s a lot of weird comments in here by people who don’t know anything about deaf people. 1. Text is a common medium for communicating with the deaf. Younger deaf people in particular will be fine with this 2. VRS is also an option, but it would be awkward in that scenario. VRS is subsidized by the government. VRS predates Facetime but both have been complimentary for deaf people 3. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to expect Apple to run their own VRS-like service optimized for deaf retail employees and situations, considering they make Facetime, and counting all the other anecdotes of interaction with deaf people here. The same should be true for any huge retail operation - Macy’s, Home Depot, Costco, etc… If you go to a hospital they already have something like this.
- junon 5y ago
  Eh. Idk. I know sign language, I've worked with a lot of deaf people throughout my life, and have quite a few deaf friends. I also worked a few years as a "sales associate" (retail guy) at RadioShack. I don't think these two mix well in practice. People are moody, in a rush, and don't generally have accessibility or the needs of others in mind when going to a store. Trying to communicate when you're also trying to convince someone to give you money is paramount. Any hiccups and both sides get frustrated which just sours the whole thing. This is more of a reflection on people than it is retail, deafness, etc. It's a terrible reality but it's reality. It's a really, really tricky, touchy and all around uncomfortable problem to solve.
  - leesalminen 5y ago
    There’s a blind retail employee at my local Apple Store. He’s been there for years. I knew that it’d end up taking a few extra minutes to buy whatever when working with him, but it never pissed me off. I appreciated how hard he tried and admired the fact that he’d even be willing to work in a loud, crowded Apple store. Plus, he had a really sweet dog with him who was very friendly. Maybe it would be harder with a deaf person vs. blind. Maybe I’m just an outlier here. Dunno.
    - junon 5y ago
ModernMech 5y ago
> Why not just hire the interpreter? The interpreter has a job already - it’s to interpret. If they wanted to be an Apple specialist I think they would have applied for that job. Interpreting and doing the job of an Apple specialist are not the same thing. It’s possible the interpreter would be a terrible Apple specialist. Why not just hire an interpreter? It’s a win-win-win: a deaf person had a job, an interpreter has a job, deaf customers are better served, hearing customers are better served. And to top it all off Apple still makes a ton of money! What does an interpreter really in the grand scheme of things when you’re a trillion dollar company like Apple? What’s the cost of an interpreter really to them? I get this idea that corporations are profit maximizing entities, but we’ve really taken it a bit far when we can’t pay a little extra for common decency even when record profits are coming in. Like, maybe if times were tough we’d have a different conversation, but Apple isn’t exactly hurting for cash here. We’re not even asking for decency, just to follow the law. They’ll bend over backwards to help out a thug like Putin when his lawyers send a takedown demand, but to do a solid for their deaf customers and employees… well they can’t be bothered.
- clavicat 5y ago
  > Why not just hire an interpreter? The message it sends is “you’re so incapable that we need to hire another person just to make up for your deficiencies”. And if it becomes a norm across the corporate world, companies will become even more reluctant to hire deaf people if they know that they are getting one employee for the price of two.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    > The message it sends is “you’re so incapable that we need to hire another person just to make up for your deficiencies”. It's my understanding the interpreter was requested. I don't think that's the message being sent here. The message would be more like "we comply with this reasonable and lawful request because it makes you, our valued employee of 6 years, even better at their job". And you're not getting one employee for the price of two, you're getting one employee and a one assistant. Executives get assistants all the time and no one blinks an eye. What, are they so incapable of scheduling their days themselves?
tinus_hn 5y ago
You could have one Apple store in an area that always has a deaf person/sign language interpreter at hand and market it to people who want or need that! Apple does pretty well in the accessibility department, they could use someone demonstrating it.
webmobdev 5y ago
> If you need to hire another person to do the communicating, what are you doing there? Why not just hire the interpreter? A good question to ask Apple. Why are they hiring such people and then ignoring their workplace demands that would allow them to do thier job satisfactorily? Is there some federal program that allows them to claim some tax benefit by hiring the disabled? Is that why Apple doesn't care about them or their job performance?
wrestlerking 5y ago
What if they want to move up? How does the incidental learning work with the iPad? Are they experiencing equal employment opportunities as others? How can they contribute during the meetings without an interpreter? Should our expectations of them be lower because they are disabled?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by imgabe 5y ago

daenz 5y ago

Speaking is only a small part of communicating. A sign language interpreter is just the person's "voice" but their approach on how to treat a customer is still theirs, not their interpreters. EDIT>> For those missing my point. If Chris Voss suddenly needed a sign language interpreter, he'd still be incredibly valuable for his ability to negotiate. A person's skills in communication aren't solely tied to their ability to speak.

nvahalik 5y ago
Have you worked in retail sales?
meragrin_ 5y ago
Sorry, but the interpreter is going to need to be trained to have an understanding. They would likely be paid just as much if not more. It adds quite a bit of friction because interactions will take at least twice as long. It is not a reasonable accommodation. The interpreter would probably be able to help the customer faster alone.
ipaddr 5y ago
Your message changed my mind on this. Not because one person can negotiate better. Because the package of the two provide a different energy. People feel more comfortable in groups and more pressured one on one. The interpreter is seen as neutral but an upstanding person. Grouping the three presents a natural barrier which gives the customer space. If the interpreter can fullfill the wingman role by neutrally suggesting to go forward with a purchase to someone on the fence you have a real business.

diebeforei485 5y ago

It's unclear from the article, but there are plenty of roles (eg. if you work at the Genius bar, etc) where it doesn't make sense to hire an interpreter.

dstaley 5y ago

The ADA already requires Apple Stores to provide interpretation services or other reasonable accommodations for customers, so it's not much more of an ask to provide those for employees as well.

anonporridge 5y ago
Apple stores offer this on a scheduled basis, https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/25/apple-retail-store-sign-language-interpreter-appointments/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/25/apple-retail-store-sign-langu... It's a completely different thing to expect a company to hire 2 people (with 2 full time salary and benefits) when 1 will do. Especially for a low skill job that has no real shortage of potential workers.
- ProAm 5y ago
  > to hire 2 people (with 2 full time salary and benefits) when 1 will do For one of the most profitable companies in the world, this doesn't seem outrageous (1 extra employee per store, maybe full time, likely not) especially given the fact that Apple doesn't support right-to-repair they will naturally have more foot traffic than most similar businesses.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    It's not even so much about the actual cost, as much as the absurd inefficiency and waste of human potential.
    - nosianu 5y ago
      When I first visited and then lived in the US for about a decade (coming from Europe) I was surprised about what I perceived as purely a jobs program kind of jobs. Examples: People at road construction sites holding "Stop" signs, packagers in supermarkets, money collectors in toll booths (even before electronic devices, just using a machine was easily and cheaply possible and frequently and successfully used elsewhere), and a few other jobs that appeared to be unnecessary and purely intended to keep some people busy. Things like that, and how the defense budget is actually used as a jobs program in large parts, were quite eye opening for me. I came from former East Germany and we always thought US as the most capitalist of all places, but when I first visited for a few months of travel not long after reunification I was very surprised to find some things that we in East Germany even used in jokes comparing East and West, and now I found out that e.g. "employee of the month" (with a special parking lot no less), that we thought was a typical socialism thing, and we even had a joke about that which implied and presumed that something like that could never exist in a country such as the US, was something they actually had. Also, the reverence to uniforms (military and police especially) was very East German. I think the US is confused about how capitalist they really are. Under the hood they try to solve the same problems as everybody else and come up with very similar solutions, only that they need be be branded differently because you can't do any "socialism" openly.

majormajor 5y ago

I bought an iPhone from an Apple Store employee who couldn't speak but used a phone to communicate with me by typing out their messages. It was perfectly fine. I'm a bit surprised speech to text these days wouldn't basically take you as far as you need to go for a deaf employee. That said, if you take away jobs with a large communication component from the deaf, that rules out A LOT. I think reasonable accommodations should be provided, versus saying "most jobs are unreasonable for you to have."

meragrin_ 5y ago
> I think reasonable accommodations should be provided Since I saw no defense of the interpreter, are you agreeing hiring an interpreter is not a reasonable accommodation?
- majormajor 5y ago
  I think that depends on what other options are available and how well they work. I don't have an NYT subscription to see if there's more detail in there, but I don't necessarily take every complaint at face value. It wouldn't surprise me - since this person was there for 6 years - if other accommodations were provided that many people would consider "reasonable" and a sign-language interpreter wasn't actually necessary to perform the job, but there's just long-lingering bitterness over not getting precisely the accommodation that was desired.
imgabe 5y ago
I’ve also been a customer at establishments with deaf employees and none of them ever had a sign language interpreter. Providing an iPad to type messages on is a reasonable accommodation. Customers who don’t like it can work with another employee or go elsewhere. But hiring a second entire employee who basically shadows you and does your job for you seems like a bit much.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > Providing an iPad to type messages on is a reasonable accommodation Doesn't that make communication slower? When I want to buy something, I certainly don't want to start chatting on a tablet to get my point across. It seems like a poor choice of position for that employee.

dandotway 5y ago

+1 As a society we want to do all we can to accommodate the handicapped so they can work, and many deaf persons are extremely effective lip-readers able to handle retail customer interactions. If Richard's lip-reading isn't up to the job, a non customer facing role would be better for Richard, either that or have Richard do email and message chat customer interactions that are compatible with his deafness.

babesh 5y ago
I suspect that it goes beyond lip reading. Deaf people can't speak as well because there is no feedback mechanism of hearing their own voice. So you need a mechanism for them to communicate outbound in addition to the inbound lip reading. That can be via writing, text to speech, a human interpreter, etc... The problem is costs. I wonder what people would say if you required mom and pop stores to have sign language interpreters? It would drive many out of business. Now look at spiraling Medicare costs. We have similar expectations for the elderly and it is increasingly untenable. We need a lot more automation to maintain or increase this level of social support services. Another issue is what we classify as a disability. As another commentator mentioned, what about lack of strength, intelligence, etc? There is a vein of American culture that is trending that way. It basically spreads the costs to other parts of society, directly and indirectly. Tricky since most people are actually disabled temporarily or permanently in one way or another. Color blindness, myopia, bad hearing, on crutches from tearing an Achilles, etc...
sokoloff 5y ago
Lip-reading has been extremely difficult in the last 18 months.

adoxyz 5y ago

Common sense feels very uncommon these days.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

s5300 5y ago

It is definitely a bit of a conundrum though. One must keep in mind that the United States is and near or more always has been a welfare state. We're supposed to have governments and organizations to come up with solutions to these types of societal problems we encounter. The way you seem to be looking at it - yes, I mostly agree that the company should not outright be expected to essentially hire another fully time employee to work as the deaf employees interpreter. But in the 21st century, in the developed country that is the United States, I very much feel as if there should be some way to quickly and reasonably pair this employee with a student(s) of a local sign language or whatever school/program in which they come and go assisting in translation services for part of school credit/curriculum/outreach. Anybody learning a language will tell you there's nothing better than real world experience. This gives the disabled (in the form of being deaf) person a meaningful occupation/independence, and students an assured way to get important experience. However, since the US is a highly capitalistic machine, we seem to not have reasonable things such as this set up on any meaningful scale. Lots of downvoting. Do HN users have beef with disability accomodations or something?

throwawaylinux 5y ago
> One must keep in mind that the United States is and near or more always has been a welfare state. If one must keep that in mind, may one ask what definition of "welfare state" has applied to the USA since its founding?
- s5300 5y ago
  Religious groups typically look after their own. Take care of the poor, needy, and disabled. For quite a long time, most US states were essentially religious areas/boundaries, which is why much of New England is seen as quite puritanical to this day. Go read about the history of Mormons and Utah. The reason the surrounding borders are so weird is because the U.S. gov essentially tried to thwart a larger land grab by the LDS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret Their tenants were largely about taking care of each other. So, in short - there were a lot of welfare states, mostly segregated by religion. As time went on, they mostly morphed into an encompassing welfare state. Do you disagree? HN is definitely a tough crowd when it comes to ideas of helping the less fortunate it seems. Hopefully your future physical therapists won't charge too much when your ruined backs and wrists are hurting, despite the fact capitalism says "why shouldn't they reap your pains for all they're worth"

015a 5y ago

Literally, nothing is unreasonable for Apple. They're among the richest companies on the planet. I'm over Corporate Equity and treating them the same as the mom & pop grocery store down the street. Yeah, it'd be unreasonable for small businesses. Its not unreasonable for Apple. Tim Cook could personally, out of his own salary, pay the salaries of every Apple employee in New York. He could give them all a 200% raise, and he'd still make twenty times more than ICU nurses who work 20 hour shifts to save his life if he ever needs it. As an employee, it would help me feel pride to contribute toward a company that is willing to not just meet the law, but go beyond it and provide valuable and gainful employment for people like Richard. As a customer, it would make me proud to walk into an Apple Store and work with someone like Richard, to see that Apple were willing to pay an entire second salary simply to be accommodating. Comparatively, the salaries of an entire Apple retail stores' worth of employees is exactly the same as you accidentally dropping your change at a register, a penny rolls under the checkout lane, and you say "nah its not worth it". Now, the reality of the situation is that, Apple Corporate would probably be fine with this, but the real problem is with this Middle Manager. To be clear, it reflects poorly on Corporate, and its their responsibility to set terms and culture to ensure Bad Store Managers don't pop up. But, they will. What matters is Apple's response, not necessarily the history of what happened (though, six years is a very long time).

Bud 5y ago
You don't actually know Tim Cook's salary, do you? Please stop pretending that you do. Hint: the vast majority of his compensation is, and has always been, via stock grants.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  You do know that high earners play this game to avoid the sort of tax liabilities ordinary people have to pay? They aren't nobler by taking a $1 salary.
  - Bud 5y ago
    Yes. The fact remains that Tim Cook could not do what was claimed out of his salary. Period, paragraph. Just as obvious: Tim Cook wouldn't do this if he weren't confident in his leadership. Apple stock is up more than 10x since he took over.

magpi3 5y ago

The employee is deaf. He needs an interpreter to understand the customer's speech. He does not need the interpreter to respond to that speech. He would be performing his job. Your drywall analogy is insulting.

slothtrop 5y ago
> He does not need the interpreter to respond to that speech. How familiar are you with the deaf? If this was a lifelong affliction they (likely) won't verbally communicate and even if they do it's not something that can be parsed clearly enough for retail.

barbazoo 5y ago

It's a form of inclusion that might not be perfectly efficient as you point out but greatly improves lives of people with disabilities.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Then society should pay for it directly.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Pulcinella 5y ago
  Society compensates Apple quite handsomely.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Apple’s customers compensate Apple. Society is free to tax companies’ profits to pay for assistance to deaf people.
slothtrop 5y ago
There are other ways to include them and improve their lives.

emodendroket 5y ago

Does the interpreter know a whole lot about computers? I wouldn't say the employee is useless here.

luffapi 5y ago

Only on HackerNews does someone read this story and decide the handicapped retail worker is the bad guy.

thebraxton 5y ago
Saying that the accommodation is unreasonable doesn't mean he is a bad person. Apple has one view and he has another, one can be wrong without being bad
- luffapi 5y ago
  It’s not unreasonable at all. The person is deaf, Apple should provide any resources the employee needs to do their job. 1. It’s the right thing to do. 2. If Apple can afford multi-billion dollar toilet shaped offices, they can hire interpreters.
  - samhwr 5y ago
    I think it’s a harder question than either side is willing to accept. You have someone who isn’t of much use as an employee, but by no fault of their own. It’s a horrible situation for them to be in, and it’s one we have to think about as a society, but it’s unclear why Apple specifically is obliged to provide them welfare at its own expense.
    - luffapi 5y ago
      It’s not a hard question at all. Apple has the money to easily accommodate all of their workers. It would even be a PR win. Tim Cook and the other execs are just anti-labor to their core and (don’t realize?) how clear their actions are being read by future potential employees.
      - samhwr 5y ago
        I’m not sure why having the money is relevant. Plenty of companies, people, and governments ‘have the money’. The question is why it is specifically Apple who are obliged to provide welfare for this person at their own expense. I have huge sympathy for human beings who are unable to work, and a humane society should provide for them, but I don’t see why it falls to Apple. This kind of populism (“person X or company Y should be arbitrarily forced to pay for thing Z, ultra vires, because they can”) feels like a lazy way to avoid solving a deeper societal problem which goes well beyond this one person.

S_A_P 5y ago

Is this is someone who is either looking for an angle to litigate with a rich company or has completely unrealistic expectations or both? I feel like if you had a real conversation with this person and got to the root of how they feel they would know their ask is unreasonable. I’m sure they may also feel like they have been dealt a bad hand and want to find a way to be compensated. While this route may make a few lawyers happy I really doubt that winning a lawsuit against Apple for not hiring a sign language interpreter will bring them any peace. What I have been noticing and I could be completely wrong and or biased here is that we have a large population of folks in the US that are struggling with mental health issues and that manifests in a lot of odd ways. This seems to be one of them.

licebmi__at__ 5y ago
Or maybe there could be more nuance to the case. What of he was hired for a different role and then suddenly he had to attend customers? What if the manager just didn’t like him and set him up for failure? Why would we put the wrong in him if the company hired him on the first place?
- Socketier 5y ago
  Exactly, it's similar to the media frenzy around the woman who got seriously burned by Mcdonalds coffee and sued them. The reaction was mostly incredulity and mocking her, but the reality was that the coffee was exceptionally hot for decontamination convenience (a corporate money saving measure) and the cup was insulated such that the average person wouldn't ever expect it to be so dangerous. Best to withold judgments until get more of the facts are revealed.
  - vlovich123 5y ago
    I thought it was made so they could offer “unlimited” coffee but making it so hot increased the drinking time so customers were far away before finishing?
    - 5y ago

autoliteInline 5y ago

>This is like if you're in a wheelchair and you get a job to hang drywall. You could view it as a full employment plan. The next logical step is to have a deaf man who only signs in Irish Sign Language. The first interpreter converts that to ASL, the second into spoken English.

amirhirsch 5y ago
I suppose they would have to discriminate against deaf people in their search to hire an interpreter for their deaf employees or it’s interpreters all the way down.
- autoliteInline 5y ago
  Imagine the game of 'telephone' you could play. By the end of the last interpreter, the guy at the Apple Store would get an order of Granny Smith apples and his vintage Mr. Coffee machine would be repaired by a passing street musician.

prpl 5y ago

There’s a lot of weird comments in here by people who don’t know anything about deaf people. 1. Text is a common medium for communicating with the deaf. Younger deaf people in particular will be fine with this 2. VRS is also an option, but it would be awkward in that scenario. VRS is subsidized by the government. VRS predates Facetime but both have been complimentary for deaf people 3. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to expect Apple to run their own VRS-like service optimized for deaf retail employees and situations, considering they make Facetime, and counting all the other anecdotes of interaction with deaf people here. The same should be true for any huge retail operation - Macy’s, Home Depot, Costco, etc… If you go to a hospital they already have something like this.

junon 5y ago
Eh. Idk. I know sign language, I've worked with a lot of deaf people throughout my life, and have quite a few deaf friends. I also worked a few years as a "sales associate" (retail guy) at RadioShack. I don't think these two mix well in practice. People are moody, in a rush, and don't generally have accessibility or the needs of others in mind when going to a store. Trying to communicate when you're also trying to convince someone to give you money is paramount. Any hiccups and both sides get frustrated which just sours the whole thing. This is more of a reflection on people than it is retail, deafness, etc. It's a terrible reality but it's reality. It's a really, really tricky, touchy and all around uncomfortable problem to solve.
- leesalminen 5y ago
  There’s a blind retail employee at my local Apple Store. He’s been there for years. I knew that it’d end up taking a few extra minutes to buy whatever when working with him, but it never pissed me off. I appreciated how hard he tried and admired the fact that he’d even be willing to work in a loud, crowded Apple store. Plus, he had a really sweet dog with him who was very friendly. Maybe it would be harder with a deaf person vs. blind. Maybe I’m just an outlier here. Dunno.
  - junon 5y ago

ModernMech 5y ago

> Why not just hire the interpreter? The interpreter has a job already - it’s to interpret. If they wanted to be an Apple specialist I think they would have applied for that job. Interpreting and doing the job of an Apple specialist are not the same thing. It’s possible the interpreter would be a terrible Apple specialist. Why not just hire an interpreter? It’s a win-win-win: a deaf person had a job, an interpreter has a job, deaf customers are better served, hearing customers are better served. And to top it all off Apple still makes a ton of money! What does an interpreter really in the grand scheme of things when you’re a trillion dollar company like Apple? What’s the cost of an interpreter really to them? I get this idea that corporations are profit maximizing entities, but we’ve really taken it a bit far when we can’t pay a little extra for common decency even when record profits are coming in. Like, maybe if times were tough we’d have a different conversation, but Apple isn’t exactly hurting for cash here. We’re not even asking for decency, just to follow the law. They’ll bend over backwards to help out a thug like Putin when his lawyers send a takedown demand, but to do a solid for their deaf customers and employees… well they can’t be bothered.

clavicat 5y ago
> Why not just hire an interpreter? The message it sends is “you’re so incapable that we need to hire another person just to make up for your deficiencies”. And if it becomes a norm across the corporate world, companies will become even more reluctant to hire deaf people if they know that they are getting one employee for the price of two.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  > The message it sends is “you’re so incapable that we need to hire another person just to make up for your deficiencies”. It's my understanding the interpreter was requested. I don't think that's the message being sent here. The message would be more like "we comply with this reasonable and lawful request because it makes you, our valued employee of 6 years, even better at their job". And you're not getting one employee for the price of two, you're getting one employee and a one assistant. Executives get assistants all the time and no one blinks an eye. What, are they so incapable of scheduling their days themselves?

tinus_hn 5y ago

You could have one Apple store in an area that always has a deaf person/sign language interpreter at hand and market it to people who want or need that! Apple does pretty well in the accessibility department, they could use someone demonstrating it.

webmobdev 5y ago

> If you need to hire another person to do the communicating, what are you doing there? Why not just hire the interpreter? A good question to ask Apple. Why are they hiring such people and then ignoring their workplace demands that would allow them to do thier job satisfactorily? Is there some federal program that allows them to claim some tax benefit by hiring the disabled? Is that why Apple doesn't care about them or their job performance?

wrestlerking 5y ago

What if they want to move up? How does the incidental learning work with the iPad? Are they experiencing equal employment opportunities as others? How can they contribute during the meetings without an interpreter? Should our expectations of them be lower because they are disabled?

deleted 5y ago

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