Perspective: Make time to know your client

This will probably be my last column in the Texarkana Gazette. I am set to retire from being a marketing professor at the end of the Spring 2020 semester. Some people have said "Congratulations!" while others have said, "Gee that's sad, I'm gonna miss having you around." I suspect my students have other opinions, but these two comments that I have received miss the mark on the reasons why I must retire at this point in my career.

The short answer as to why I must retire is that I'm simply getting old. But the issues of getting old with me are not that I have become irrelevant in a changing world, but that my health has naturally suffered in ways that some in our world and many employers have ignored - and this especially includes academe. One of the most difficult "disabilities" that I suffer from as a professor has to do with multiple issues with my eyes. The long answer as to why I must retire is that although technology has changed in ways that should permit me to work for many years to come, academe has not adopted that technology no matter how cheap it is.

I have had four operations on three detached retinas and two lens replacements (due to cataracts caused by the retina laser surgery) across a period of five years. The doctor asked me to stay at home for ten weeks of healing after each of the three hospitalized retina operations - but I was back in front of my classes two weeks after each of these. The doctors are happy that my eyes are healthy - but I keep asking them why I can no longer see anything. They have stuck instruments into my eyes on five of these six operations and according to the doctors, this has caused a number of issues.

I now have mild tunnel vision - I cannot see someone standing next to me anymore and when I am in an elevator, the clean stainless steel walls look like they have paisley's painted on them. I presume that comes from laser-welding the edges of my retinas to my eyes. Macular degeneration in both retinas won't allow my eyes to line anything up - so reading with both eyes is difficult, and the center of one eye leaves a hole in everything. For some reason, neither of my eyes makes sufficient tears so some days, my chapped eyes make everything fuzzy looking and I might as well not even try to read when that happens. Additionally, neither of my pupils works properly - it is as if the iris on an old camera is rusty and it keeps getting stuck in the wrong place. When I come into a building from bright light outside, I am blind because it is too dark; when I leave a building on a bright day, I am blinded because it is too bright outside. And again, for reasons that make no sense to me, I can no longer see mild contrasts - and this is the most frustrating experience with reading on a computer these days.

None of these issues should stop me from working, especially in these days of online classes and new computer-related technologies. I now constantly wear a big-billed ball cap both inside and outside to stop the contrasting glare from skies above me or bright ceiling lights billed hats are an old technology that works! My computer screens are set to maximize the contrast - I have a black screen with white letters and larger sized fonts thanks to the people who work at Microsoft.

But I have no control over the people who put forms online that use light gray rather than black fonts. I have given up submitting forms that ask me what is my name or office number or phone number, requiring that I type that answer in some light-gray-lined box that might be above, below, to the right, or to the left of the question. I can't see that box so I can't find it and it isn't my fault. It is the fault of the professional who was paid to make it disability compliant. I can rarely read anything well on a computer screen any more, but I usually can read albeit more slowly than in my younger days. These days I have been using a tablet computer a lot because I can get nose-close to the screen. But then, I can't do touch typing on a flat screen. So it takes me substantially longer these days to read AND write on a computer.

Unfortunately, we live in an "I need it right now if not sooner" kind of environment, and rather than being seen as a wise old professor, I am cast aside as not accomplishing enough. Regardless of past performance, my current performance is seen as too slow. All I can say is, please understand your customers - and that includes employees - and don't say you care when you won't listen to them. And while I have been unable to complete projects started in earlier healthy years, for the ride to get to where I am at, I can say thank you!

 

 

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