Fear and Loathing of Microphones

What’s the deal with all the hatred and avoidance of microphones lately? (said in my best Jerry Seinfeld impression)

I briefly touched on this while at the National Association of the Deaf conference last month, but it was even more widespread than I initially reported.  While most of the ASL interpreters automatically used the microphones, I had to ask several of them to do so, and four of them flat-out refused to use them.  REFUSED.  I told them, “My husband is deaf, I have trouble understanding clearly, and we’re not fluent in ASL, so we need you to use the microphone sitting right over there on that table.”    And they actually refused to use them.  One interpreter even joked about it, saying, “You better sit close to me, then, because I’m not using that mic and I don’t plan on projecting very loud, either.”  We sat as close as we could, two rows behind, and of course it wasn’t close enough to hear them easily.  During a pause in the presentation, the ’terp turned sideways towards me and asked, “Can you hear me ok?” and I hissed back, “No, not really!”

We had another microphone problem when the wedding we attended in May was not accessible to Brandt.  It was an outdoor wedding and the pastor started off using the provided microphone, then quickly declared “I’m loud enough without it” because it was getting in his way, and turned it off.  Poor Brandt couldn’t understand a single word, and I struggled to understand everything myself.

I had forgotten about the issue, but then 2 weekends ago my mom went to a “Teaching with Technology” conference and encountered a similar situation (ah, the irony!).  The first man who got up to speak bragged, “I don’t need this microphone, I’m loud enough without it!”  This was in a large ballroom, with hundreds of people sitting in the audience.  Of course he wasn’t loud enough!  Where are people getting this idea?!  My mom sat there quietly annoyed, trying hard to understand his talk (she has normal hearing).  But when a soft-spoken, tiny little woman got up to speak—the microphone had completely disappeared at this point—she’d had enough.  She snuck to the back of the room and told one of the A/V guys, “You have got to get that woman a microphone!  There’s no way the audience can hear her!”  They quickly got her one, and after asking, startled, “Oh did I need one?” she asked the audience if they could hear her any better.  A collective sigh spread throughout the room.

That same weekend, Brandt was in Washington, D.C. for a different teaching conference.  With 100 people in the room, sitting at long tables, there wasn’t one single microphone.  So he had an incredibly hard time hearing what was going on, naturally, but it was too late to say anything.

Let this be a lesson!  You can never assume that there will be microphones available; and even if they are available, you can’t be sure that they will actually be used.  It’s important to let the people in charge know that everyone who speaks has to use a microphone, even if they think they’re “loud enough without it.”

So why do so many people hate using microphones?  Is it because it makes them self-conscious?  Do people hate how their voices sound on a mic?  Are they afraid of the screeching feedback that makes everyone cover their ears in pain? (ok that one I can understand, but still—get over it!)  Risking a few seconds of uncomfortable feedback isn’t near as bad as wasting your breath because no one can understand you.