Ideas on helping a coworker?

[kokopup]

I can sympathize with your friend with hearing issues. I damaged my ears years ago shooting a pistol while I had a head cold. It did nerve damage, making it hard to hear the upper frequencies of the spoken voice. The result is I have a lot of problems understand a woman's voice in person and it is almost impossible over the phone. When watching movies I usually have closed caption enabled. Increasing volume does not help and repeating often does not help. Because of the nature of my loss, correction with hearing aids was not possible until digital technology came along. If your friend has the type of hearing loss I have, repeating, even louder, will not help. If there is a lot of background noise it is even worst. I was lucky while in the business world that most of my dealings were with men, whose voice I had no problems hearing.

[Marigold2]

I would be totally honest with her. Hearing loss can be a safety issue as well. Does she drive? Can she hear a car honking, a phone ringing, a doorbell?
In this tough ecomony if she losses her job finding another and keeping it is most difficult. Being honest is hard, but it is the kindest thing in the long run.
If she losses her job you will know that you were honest with her and she has to now be honest with herself.

[Pinot's Mom]

I have trained A LOT of people, and find the issue of information retention to be extremely frustrating, prevalent and unnecessary. Take notes! Lots of them! That is advise I give OVER AND OVER and it falls (no pun intended) on deaf ears. Yes, if there is a hearing issue it should be addressed, but especially if there's a hearing loss, careful and concise notes need to be taken. There also must be a comprehensive training manual of some type to cover all aspects of the position the trainee can refer to. I just find that those who take good notes, and refer to the manual, succeed. Those that don't bother with notes, don't succeed.

[catnapper]

Thanks everyone. I do think she's having hearing issues -- she hardly ever hears when the bell rings (the door has a bell each time someone enters, letting us know they came in the store) and you have to look at her when talking. And if you repeat yourself, with a louder voice, she gets insulted that you're "yelling" at her.

My coworkers are beyond frustrated and have given up. The manager took today off because its the only day he'll be able to for a week because SHE was off today and will be working the rest of the week.

She's the sweetest thing, and is trying SO hard. I just don't think she'll make it. She was a former teacher, even was a principal for a few years. She's admitted to me how humbling this is for her. I honestly think its the wrong feild of work for her. She keeps complaining our training is jumbled and not linear. She's used to how teachers are trained. Sales is a completely different game. You learn as you go and make up what you don't know.

She absolutely HATES when she messes up with a customer and we jump in to save the sale and explain "sorry, she's new and just learning our computer system" or "sorry, she's new and didn't notice she read the wrong price" (she's sold $1200 chairs for $600 because she gave fabric price for leather chairs - TWICE) Personally, explaining someone as new is the fastest way to diffuse a tense situation. Rather than the customer thinking she's completely incompetent, they understand and step back a little. She disagrees wholeheartedly. She HATES to let customers know she's new.

We hired two women at the same time... Miss A and Mrs. B. Miss A is the one I'm concerned about. Mrs. B has taken off like a rocket and is selling as if she's been at our store for a year. You'd swear Miss A has only been with us for 2 weeks based upon her knowledge and confidence.