False Assumptions
Flashback: I am standing in my underwear in a hotel room in Paris, packing for the next morning’s departure, when a shadow falls across me. I turn and see my travel roommate, her face livid with outrage, shouting at me in anger.
“I’ve been pounding on the door for ten minutes!” she fumes.
“What happened?” I ask, puzzled.
“The key didn’t work!” she heaves accusingly. “I’ve been standing here, knocking, like, fifty times! I was pounding on the door!” she repeats. “I had to flag down the porter to let me in!”
I stare at her curiously, wondering why a key card malfunction warrants a full-blown temper tantrum. I travel for work every week, and my hotel keys frequently fail. You walk down to the front desk with the key and ask them to reset it. Done.
It’s our last day in Paris, and I’d wanted to people-watch. I corralled a trio of timid seniors in our travel group and led them to a lovely outdoor café where we jubilantly toasted our newfound spontaneity over croque monsieurs and flaming drinks as beautiful Parisians strolled by.
It’s a hot day. I have returned to the hotel early to take a bath before our farewell party on the Seine River and threw open the French doors to a tiny balcony like a cartoon princess welcoming avian friends to tidy the room. I had not expected the roommate back for another hour and a half. Yet, here she is, rage mushrooming from her atomic bomb of fury while I pull on my clothes. Her lips move vehemently as I plug in my hearing aid. Loud, negative particles bounce off the walls, sucking up all the oxygen. My magical day rapidly dissolves.
The porter arrives, and she snatches the new key card from him, slamming the door in his face. Oh my god, I realize. She made him go to the lobby for her. She plops in a chair and kicks off her shoes, glaring as if I had locked her out intentionally.
I don’t know her well. We attend the same church and had mentioned a mutual desire to see Paris. I’d even invited her to dinner before the trip to discuss what it was like to travel with someone deaf. I gave her the chance to back out.
“I left the chain lock off —” I begin to say.
“The key didn’t work!” she shouts. “I was banging on the door! I knocked seventy times!” Her estimate goes up.
“So, you get a new key,” I reply. “Either way, you need a new key —”
“Never mind!” she snaps. “It doesn’t matter!” She begins to pack for the next day’s departure, throwing items into her bag in a silent rampage. I recognize the familiar flush of shame and debate whether to confront her. I go for it.
“Wait, it does matter,” I state firmly. “Don’t come in here and suddenly act annoyed because I can’t hear. My not hearing your knock is no different than if I wasn’t here at all.”
“I’m sorry!” she barks, flinging a shoe into her carry-on. It’s not an apology. She just wasn’t expecting me to call her out.
“We talked about this before we left,” I sigh exasperatedly. “What do you not understand about my being deaf?”
The trip had been congenial until her sudden outburst. Earlier that week, she had even confided that her mother was losing her hearing. The roommate wept when she told me her mother refused to talk about it with her. Her emotional tug-of-war struck a chord. My mother and I also kept at a mutual arms’ length from each other on matters of hearing loss. Still, I knew her mother’s frame of reference — the shame behind the stigma, that vague layer of disgrace constantly looming overhead. And as soon as the roommate unleashed her torrent of wrath about my not hearing, I felt my perspective silently shift: If I were your mother, I wouldn’t talk about it with you, either.
***
It wasn’t the first time I’d missed a door knock. I have a hundred versions of this story: Someone knows perfectly well that I’m deaf, knocks on the door, receives no response, and has a dramatic meltdown, venting accusingly, “I knocked really LOUD!” to which I respond pointedly, “I’m deaf.”
It’s a classic case of false assumption. People imagine everyone can hear exactly the way they do, which is forgivable. It’s natural to superimpose your own perspective on others as the starting default. The actual sin is then doubling down, insisting that everyone must hear and that any deviation from an audio approach is unacceptable. Few realize their mistake and exclaim, “Oh, how foolish of me! Of course, you can’t hear my knock!” No, the implication is clear: Only a freak can’t hear that.
False assumptions set the foundation for fearmongering. Deafness is an easy target in the sport of intentionally stirring up worry, typically based on a prehistoric-era principle that hearing sound is the only means to warn of impending danger. For example, a hearing man recently unloaded on social media to express his concerns about his deaf wife. He feared for his own safety because he stayed up late, and she removed her hearing devices at night. “Even if I screamed all night, she’d never hear me,” he complained, his choice of words betraying his underlying resentment. However, he had no health issues to provoke such worry. In his mind, he was a victim.
His false assumption was that his wife was required to save him (and more specifically, save him by hearing), completely overlooking that an accident could befall him anywhere, anytime, or while he was alone at home. To him, his screaming (and her hearing him scream) were the only options for his safety. Meanwhile, he rejected alternative suggestions, such as carrying a cell phone to call 911 himself (since he clearly could still vocalize in this imaginary hour of need) or wearing a smartwatch that automatically dialed 911 when it detected a fall. Instead, he proclaimed his wife’s deaf state unacceptable because it risked his life. Hypothetically. (*Cough* See chapter on gaslighting.)
Validating assumptions has been a critical step in every methodology I’ve learned in my project management career. An assumption is a statement considered true without proof (for example, “all customers have email capability”). However, an entire project can derail if an assumption is later proven false. Therefore, it’s essential to continually identify and validate assumptions to stay on track. In life, too, identifying and validating assumptions are important components of understanding bias.
“Have you ever been with a woman?” I once asked my friend and work sign language interpreter, Mark Alan English, a gay man.
“No,” he replied, shrugging.
“So, how do you know?” I asked.
He identified as gay since childhood, he said. He always knew.
“What about you?” he asked, turning the tables. “Have you ever been with a woman?”
“No,” I replied, surprised.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I’ve never been attracted to a woman,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Mark Alan.
“Oh,” I responded, and the moment resonated. I had unwittingly imposed my own preferences onto Mark Alan’s life, assuming that his gay perspective must have been secondary after rejecting a straight lifestyle instead of respecting it as his legitimate, equally valid default. Likewise, when weighing deaf versus hearing, we often look at the hearing perspective exclusively and then double down, failing to acknowledge hearing loss as a distinct and valid perspective in its own right for a growing segment of the population.
Unvalidated assumptions follow us everywhere. Hearing people assume that I want to hear just because they can hear. Their flawed logic leads to further assumptions: that hiding my deafness is a goal or that all consumers prefer to receive information solely through audio means. However, if people had validated their initial assumption, they would have understood that I didn’t care about hearing and even less about audio.
What I wanted was accessibility.
