Should I Quit My Job? — I Work Part Time at a School Where There Are Loud Kids, School Bells, etc.

Hey everyone,

I work part time at a school and I'm wondering if I should quit. It's 5 days a week, 3.5 hours a day. At my job I teach a couple after school classes. It's loud with the kids yelling, people on the microphone, school bells etc.

About a week ago I got a tinnitus spike and it seems like it's starting to subside. I'm grateful my supervisor gave me the week off because of it.

I'd hate to leave the job but would I be making my tinnitus worse by staying? Do you think it would be fine to stay if I wore earplugs? I was planning on wearing silicone earplugs but it's pretty annoying to talk/yell in them with the occlusion effect. I tried Mack's musician earplugs. They were great at first but then started to hurt my ears.

Thank you very much for your help. Really not sure what to do right now.

 

Personally, if I were you, I would quit that job.

 

Find another job first. Stress from financial issues etc can increase tinnitus.

 

You can wear soft ear protection like swimmer's plugs, it is enough to protect your ears against small incidents while being comfortable enough that it will still allow you to hear your surroundings.

 

Earplugs can provide a false sense of security

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/learn-from-others-mistakes.29437/

 

Don't let T take your job and your livelihood.

Only you can make this decision, but with silicone earplugs, this job should be doable. You can also get some ear muffs and keep them handy if things get louder than the random yells, such as for a fire drill.

Make sure to take some breaks from the earplugs as you can safely.

 

Don't really understand the ear plugs my T is horrible when I plug my ears.

 

It depends, you have tinnitus.

But do you also experience noise induced pain from everyday normal sounds?

 

Yeah I don't want to let it control me. When you say silicone earplugs do you mean the soft moldable ones? I bought a pair of ear muffs and will definitely keep them with me when I go places.

 

I have tinnitus but no actual pain from everyday sounds.

 

This. I have a pair of silicone musician ear plugs with high level filters that protect me from most everyday sounds - but allow me to hear my surrounding. They are a life saver and would be appropriate for your situation @MikeO123 .

 

How loud do the kids etc get? Have you tried measuring the volume of these sounds with a decibel meter app on your phone?

The vast majority of people with tinnitus and or hearing damage don’t need to protect their ears from normal every day sounds.

My advice would be absolutely not to quit unless you are certain that you are getting hearing damage from your place of work.

 

Not the soft moldable ones, the silicone ones like the 3M ones.

https://www.amazon.com/3M-100805294...cone+earplugs&qid=1559581985&s=gateway&sr=8-3

 

I find the Alpine party plugs take off the edge but allow you to communicate. They may be worth a go. Cheap and easy to put in and remove from ears.

 

Thanks! just ordered a pair to try them out

 

Thanks! Just ordered them. Being able to communicate with them is really important to me.

 

I never measured the decibels but they can get really loud sometimes. Also my supervisors speak on the microphone and yell on the microphone sometimes as well. I never had a problem with it before though so maybe it's not as loud as I think.

 

You are welcome. I cut the string off of mine that was easy to do with a scissor.

I find that the musician plugs are like "half protection," but still hear conversation quite well. The silicone plugs I suggested are a notch more protective. If you need more than that, then go to a good fitting foam plug, but with those it is harder to hear conversation. Really, you need to get some options, and try them all out for yourself, but thankfully they are all pretty inexpensive.

Did you get an audiogram?

 

How do find talking to be with the 3m silicone ones? Since I'll be doing a lot of talking . With the soft moldable ones the occlusion effects is really bad for me. yeah I got an audiogram, they said I have no hearing loss.

 

All earplugs give some occlusion effect. I have never tried the soft moldable ones, so can't make a comparison. I have just learned to speak at my normal tone and volume, and it works out fine.

 

There is different types of tinnitus. The kind that I have is very much affected by ambient noise. With my tinnitus, it actually gets much better when I am in a very quiet environment, and the opposite when I am in a noisy environment. Thus, I absolutely have to insert earplugs or wear NC headphones whenever I am in a place like a coffee shop, etc. I have extreme hyperacusis in my left ear, and that feeds the tinnitus in my right deaf ear.

 

That sounds similar to my tinnitus. It's difficult to navigate life when loud noises are so ubiquitous.

 

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/new-reactive-whistling-tinnitus-sound-—-will-it-go-away.35018/

In this thread you said you had a history of loud noise possibly causing your tinnitus.

How could someone with noise induced tinnitus, not have some hearing deficit?

Maybe the audiogram is inaccurate.
https://hyperacusisfocus.org/innerear/#hiddenloss

 

Yeah I was suprised when they told me that. I'm wondering if my initial tinnitus wasn't caused by acoustic trauma and maybe just this latest spike was? Is that possible? About a year ago when I first noticed my tinnitus there was no acoustic trauma I can recall. I definitely don't notice any hearing loss.

 

I was being sarcastic but if you read the paper about hidden hearing loss, you will realize the hearing test is missing a whole lot of information. When a hearing test tells you have normal or even perfect hearing, it just means you don't have any hearing loss in the bare vitals of human speech range.

Tinnitus in most cases is linked to hearing loss
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4208401/

 

I'm very interested in this. May I ask what kind of shop can take measurements and produce custom ear plugs? I googled it but didn't find much. I found this for example https://www.acscustom.com/uk/how-to-buy but I am not so sure. I'm often in London UK and could try to find a shop there.

 

Check out dBud for some adjustable discreet earplugs

 

I have to go to schools as part of my job... What a freakin nightmare.

 

Yes.
That’s why I have given up teaching after 16 years.
Miss the kids, the energy, the love.
But my ears were suffering so much, I was popping pills just to get through the day.
Had to quit, sadly.
Self preservation... Such is life.