Get surprised by people being nice?

I'm a massage therapist right? Well to keep my license up to date I have to get CE's, continuing education credits, every two years. Most of these are courses on line or a DVD and workbook you can order on line. There are work shops you can go to in person, which obviously would be better for me!! But they tend to be more expense and involve traveling.

I ordered a course for neuromuscular therapy back in march. it came with a workbook and 2 DVDs, which of course have no captions. I've been at a loss for how I was going to do the test, since I can't understand anything he says in the vidoes and was afraid there'd be questions on the test about what was discussed in the videos. Now i could ask my kids to watch them with me and tell me what is being said, but I'm sure it would be too technical for them to even understand what he's talking about to relay it to me. I don't like asking for help so I haven't want to ask anyone sit through over 2 hours of videos, of a very boring subject to them, just to tell me what the heck the guy is saying.

The other day though I got an idea. There's a website address of the company that made the DVD's on the back, different from the company I ordered them from. I went to the website and found the email address for them. I emailed them explaining I'm hard of hearing, and how they don't have captions for their videos, is it possible to get a transcript for what is said? i also copy and pasted the confirmation order email I got proving that I actually bought the course.

I really thought I'd get a response like, "we're terribly sorry. We don't have anything like we can't do anything for you" or something like that. But a couple hour later I got an email from the guy in the video (he's a therapist and teacher) he sent me the scripts. Not the transcripts, but the scripts that were written before they taped, what he was going to say. He said they may not be exact, but they should be very close to what is said. I figure that's good enough, and more than I thought I'd get!!!, because this is the information he intended to get across. He also asked not to share the scripts or post them on the net. naturally not!!

I was so surprised!! I really thought it was a shot in the dark. Have you ever been surprised by somebody doing something nice for you? Something that certainly didn't have to do? It doesn't have to have anything to do with your hearing or lack of it either

Yes, my major required me to take a linguistics course, and I had the teacher from Hell. She insisted, since my speech was excellent, that I should be required to hear what all of my classmates heard or I wouldn't pass the course. The material was difficult because you had to understand the various sounds of the English language, and even my mother, an RN, had trouble understanding the book we used. I had problems doing the exercises at the end of the chapters and went to the book publisher online to complain that there was no guidance to see which answers were correct. Much to my surprise and delight, they sent me the teacher's edition, which helped tremendously.....

Laura

Thats awesome that they did that! I wouldve been in panic mode in that situation XD kind of reminds me of the other day at work (i work at jcpenney) and occasionally ill get paged over the intercom, and probably 70% of the time i dont hear it, so on black friday i was putting out some toys, luckily i was underneath the intercom when i got paged so i call the supervisor talk to her for about 10 seconds then i get a phone call from my reporting supervisor, the one that knows me the best, and she just says "oh i was just calling you to make sure you heard that you got paged" i laughed and said something along the lines of omg, i appreciate the concern but for once i heard it, wasnt in the back room! haha

I just thought it was a nice gesture, but i guess she doesnt realize that i dont hear the phone ringing most of the time either, luckily someone let me know it was ringing XD haha

-kelsey

Yeah, I done this before when I asked someone to provide video script from the IT video training course, and I knew that there's no CC in it. I asked to see how much to get interpreters for one week training and it's about $8000, 8 hours, 5 days for 2 terps. I was like holy mackerel! So, I spoke to one person who is or was responsible for training and not meeting the ADA law or not provide CC in video. So, I thought an idea about if he have scripts with all the training. One week later, he responded that he have to talk with people higher up and that they are willing to provide a script for me. The only problem is that the script files are huge! Only limited to 10 MB attachment. So I allow him to use one of our FTP (File transfer protocol) so he can upload huge files.... and it was nice for him to send it to me.
That was years ago..and today..it's disappointing that they still don't provide CC in video.... even fook'in M$ don't provide it. It's odd though that they all have international languages, that you can easily switch from English to Japanese or to Dutch..but nothing for deaf? It baffle me...

Yes, many times I am caught off guard by people being nicer than I expected.

There have been many, many instances where people initially are rude or inconsiderate to me in the beginning, and after they realize that I am not a typical asshat and treat them with respect, they do a complete turnaround and show courtesy.

(or maybe they felt sorry for me and figured I've suffered enough.....)

SneakerNet said:

Yeah, I done this before when I asked someone to provide video script from the IT video training course, and I knew that there's no CC in it. I asked to see how much to get interpreters for one week training and it's about $8000, 8 hours, 5 days for 2 terps. I was like holy mackerel! So, I spoke to one person who is or was responsible for training and not meeting the ADA law or not provide CC in video. So, I thought an idea about if he have scripts with all the training. One week later, he responded that he have to talk with people higher up and that they are willing to provide a script for me. The only problem is that the script files are huge! Only limited to 10 MB attachment. So I allow him to use one of our FTP (File transfer protocol) so he can upload huge files.... and it was nice for him to send it to me.
That was years ago..and today..it's disappointing that they still don't provide CC in video.... even fook'in M$ don't provide it. It's odd though that they all have international languages, that you can easily switch from English to Japanese or to Dutch..but nothing for deaf? It baffle me...

Click to expand...

I know right!!!

I hadn't even thought about the fact that there might be a script for what the guy was planning on saying. I'm glad 1) he still had it in his Microsoft word!! the date on the file said 99' so he's hung onto to it for a long time! 2) that bypassed the company I bought the course from and went straight to the website on the back of the box, AND that the guy is diligent about taking care of his business. I'm sure if I had gone to the company I ordered it from they wouldn't have known what they could do for me, I'd just be up shit creek.

I still can't believe how quickly he responded either, I'm n the east coast and I got the email back from him at like 1am.....have no idea where he's located or what it was went he sent it out, it was only a couple of hours after I had emailed him.

green427 said:

Yes, many times I am caught off guard by people being nicer than I expected.

There have been many, many instances where people initially are rude or inconsiderate to me in the beginning, and after they realize that I am not a typical asshat and treat them with respect, they do a complete turnaround and show courtesy.

(or maybe they felt sorry for me and figured I've suffered enough.....)

Click to expand...

True true true. I got surprised again by somebody today being nice and going a little above and beyond what they would normally do for someone to help accommodate me.

That's awesome. I wish more people tried to go "above and beyond". I think my UPS driver does a lot for us. We order a TON of stuff online so he's here quite regularly. One time we were not home and he put our boxes in the back of our truck in the driveway and left a note on our door so we knew where to find them, which I thought was awesome. And he's always mindful if we're ordering gifts for our kids and the boxes have a photo on them, he'll hide them in the garage or at least give me a heads up the photo is on the box so the kids don't see it.

As a small business person I try to be that kind of person when I have the opportunity. In fact, I am surprised at how surprised and appreciative people are when I do things I just consider good customer service, nothing extraordinary.

My wife went to McDonald's for lunch one day. She used the drive-thru. In the past, she always had no problem making her order at the window. That day, she wasn't wearing her hearing aids and couldn't speak very well (had a sore throat). So, she wrote down her order to give to the person at the first window. That person directed her to the second window. So, she went to the second window and gave that person the same paper. That person then pointed her to the parking spot (for people whose orders are taking longer than expected). She never even got to pay. Five minutes later, some came up to her and handed her order to her. She tried to pay, but the woman said it was okay. This made my wife wonder... did someone pay for her order or were they just being nice or getting in the spirit of Christmas?

I was auditioning with my saxophone once and had a technical problem less than an hour before my audition while I was still warming up and a random guy walked over and spent some of his valuable time before his audition to help me fix my sax.

Another time I got a frog stuck in my seat belt (long, disgusting, and borderline unbelievable story) the doodah that the belt slides through had pulled the skin off the frog and I was too scared to pull it out because it was still alive and my neighbor happened to be driving by and saw me flipping out beside my car and he got it out for me. He was laughing the entire time. (at me.. not the frog). I could have left this off, but considering the situation, I was SOO grateful that I didn't have to handle it.