[jurassic]

Please don't do this. While this author seems to have enjoyed the experience, many retail workers have enough to do without being jerked around by those pretending to care about the experience of people with disabilities. It seems ridiculous to me that the teacher thought it was a good idea to lead these children in an extended "lie" in order to teach them about tolerance and empathy.

Once when I worked in bookstore a man came into the store and faked being deaf. My coworkers and I jumped through all kinds of hoops to accommodate him and spent a lot of time writing notes back and forth to help this customer find a particular type of book he said he was looking for. After half an hour of scribbled notes, fetching books from the stacks, and iterating towards what he was describing the man bust out laughing and declared "Hahaha! I'm not actually deaf!!" and walked out without buying anything.

I felt stupid and annoyed that he had wasted so much of our time. Not only did that man's behavior distract us from other legitimate customers, the experience left me feeling guarded about whether to accept people at face value. I never encountered any other customers with hearing disability while I was at that job, but I'm sure I would have had skepticism from this hoax experience in the back of my mind as I tried to help them.

You are not helping anyone by pretending to have a disability.

[loupeabody]

Although it sucks that you had a bad experience with someone who was pretending to be disabled, I disagree that having the students pretend to be deaf was a bad idea.

First off, they each bought a MacBook, so catering to them was hardly a waste of time. Secondly, I feel like exercising one's empathy is always a good thing, especially during those extremely formative high school years.

Of course, it's very easy to dismiss another person's life circumstances (disabled or not) in passing. So, actually being treated differently as a result of changing your behavior can open up a world of insight about human nature. This article makes me wonder how I would've felt about having the same experience (as one of the students) when I was in high school.

The author noted that there was a "troublemaker" and that the kids were "mostly friendly", so maybe some of the students were of the same mindset as the guy who tricked you. Perhaps the article was sugarcoated quite a bit, but even so.

Pretending to have a disability solely to cultivate empathy can certainly be beneficial for one's social life. Maybe it's not the best way to exercise empathy, but I don't think it hurts.

[bingobangobongo]

When I worked in retail, our boss would have us send our friends across the street to our competitor's store to really screw with their employees. The theory was that this would make them less courteous to their real customers, which would send more of them our way. He always made a big deal about how courteous we were. This went on for over a year when one day we started noticing very similar "troll" customers appearing in our store and screwing with us. I'm sure you can guess what I'm going to say next: Hahaha! None of this story was true.

[sadface]

Sure, you're not helping anyone by pretending to have a disability, but you're a grown adult, not an impressionable child. Assuming these kids really did learn something from this exercise it will help them be more tolerant and empathetic in the future, which isn't just good for the kids but it's good for everyone they will interact with for the rest of their lives.

[mikeash]

It sounds to me that you simply encountered an asshole who happened to pretend to be deaf, and incorrectly blamed the pretending bit for the asshole bit.