All Eyes on the Stutterer
A Person Who Stutters loves being in the hot seat :)
I feel other People Who Stutter would agree that while we might have varying frequencies of stuttering throughout our lives, being under pressure is always a high one. I believe having anxiety in any sort of situation increases my chances of stuttering, so I try to regulate it as best I can.
In reality, you can never predict how something will go.
In some strange way, I feel blessed for having past job experiences where high volume, fast-paced, and dealing with large crowds of people should have been included in the job description. I have had my faults and wins when it comes to my stutter and I having to deal with such crazed environments.
My new job has been nothing new.
At the moment, I work in retail. There is a position called “Front of Line.” As FOL, you are in charge of standing at the front of the two lines and delegate where the customer should go to checkout. Sounds simple enough and it is, to be honest. Frankly, I like this position because it is so similar to what I have done in the past. I am quite the seasoned shepherd to the herd.
Until eventually your luck runs out.
The other day I was tasked as Front of Line. After receiving several nodes approval from my managers about halfway through the hour, I was feeling pretty good about myself.
The reason why people hate this position is that your eyes must be tracking the registers at all times. Not only that, but you have to keep an eye out on if there is a senior on the side who needs special treatment, or if a customer asks you a question next to you, all the while making sure the next one in line hears you well enough to get to where you need to go. Most important — if you lose eyesight of the registers because you were distracted by a customer it could immediately slow down the cog in the machine.
And that distraction was my stutter.
I haven’t had a problem at this point multitasking for this position. But a customer asked me a question and I was stuttering the whole time trying to answer it. I was getting frustrated because it wasn’t coming out. My eyes are rapidly blinking so of course I am blind to the registers that are signaling they are ready to go. The customer is waiting. The line is waiting. The registers are waiting.
All on me.
I felt heat rise to my head as beads of sweat threatened to spring off my scalp.
As soon as I felt the word push through I tried to recover as quickly as I could before I could let out a sigh of relief.
For those few moments, however, time slowed, as my mouth buckled to take control of the words.
At that moment I felt an intense pressure of responsibility.
At that moment I felt as if I lied to everyone.
At that moment I felt embarrassed.
I have to remember that these moments are going to happen, whether the whole world knows I stutter or not. I have to remember that I am doing my best and that is okay. I have to remember that even if I am covert more at my job than I intended, that doesn’t mean that I can’t let them know of my situation and find out ways to best deal with it going forward.
It is going to be okay.
But man, I forgot how stressful that could be.
