People wearing hearing-aids always being shouted at

The way you phrase this – as well as having an old-world name like Cyril – suggest that you are a victim of this rather than a perpetrator. The quot issue is whether everybody instinctively raises their voice at the first glimpse of a hearing aid and the evidence is that they do. This is to completely miss the point of these devices which is that they are adjusted to normal room volume levels to make shouting unnecessary so it’s no wonder their wearers always look startled and start banging their ears and twiddling their volume controls.  Not only do the hard of hearing find themselves being addressed like a public meeting but they will also tell you that the very act of one’s shouting at them changes what people say and they complain  that they’re  always being talked to as if they are exceedingly old and very thick. The other thing about hearing aids is a myth perpetrated by their manufacturers in their attempt to make the ear-pods unobtrusive which is that the natural skin colour of everybody who wears them is bright pink. On a Barbie doll or a pig a hearing aid might blend in , but even then the natural feature it’s supposed to be obscuring is an ear-hole which is – well , a black hole, and a hairy one at that.  Nobody has glossy pink ears like that so choosing that colour as its camouflage just draws attention to it. It ‘shouts’ so it’s hardly surprising that people shout back.

(Cyril Dint, Paisley) - QQQQ*