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Trader Joe’s Employee Who’s Deaf Finds Creative Ways To Communicate With Customers In Face Masks
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Trader Joe’s Employee Who’s Deaf Finds Creative Ways To Communicate With Customers In Face Masks

3 min read

With people wearing masks to help slow the spread of COVID-19, Matthew Simmons had to find a new way to communicate at work.

Written content by Kelsey Hurwitz via Women’s Day

So much has changed since the Coronavirus pandemic broke out, and one place that has seen quite a bit of frenzy is grocery stores. Outside the stores, customers stand six feet apart and wait hours to get their items. Inside, customers quickly scamper about wearing masks, trying to get what they need and leave the company of strangers as soon as possible. All of this change has put pressure on grocery store employees, who are bravely working as essential workers during this time. But the change that impacted Trader Joe’s crew member Matthew Simmons the most was the implementation of face masks.

Trader Joe's deaf employee finds ways to communicate with customers in facial masks, follow News Without Politics, best unbiased news source
Simmons designed a custom Trader Joe’s T-shirt so customers would know he wasn’t ignoring them when he couldn’t see their lips moving under their masks.
MATTHEW SIMMONS via Women’s Day

Simmons, who works at a Trader Joe’s location in Vancouver, Washington, is deaf, and is usually able to assist customers and communicate with his team members by reading their lips. When everyone began wearing face masks, that quickly changed.

Trader Joe's deaf employee finds ways to communicate with customers in facial masks, follow News Without Politics, best unbiased news source
Simmons has had a much better experience using the white boards to communicate with customers who are wearing face masks.

“I had been noticing customers and crew members wearing their masks, and that caused me to have some anxiety, because as a deaf person, I rely heavily on using my lip-reading skills that I have acquired since childhood,” Simmons told Woman’s Day via e-mail. “When the customers wearing masks came up to me to ask a question on the floor, I always said ‘I am deaf, and need to read your lips so I can help you.’ Sometimes, customers didn’t want to lower down their masks and shook their heads ‘no’ and walked away from me. It made me upset because I couldn’t help and left me feeling defeated.” He also noticed the problem while working the registers when customers in masks were talking while he rang them up, and he couldn’t tell because of the masks. “I was not ignoring them or being rude, but I simply did not know they were speaking to me.” Read more from Women’s Day.

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