Quote:
Originally Posted by Lily Kerns
Forget the prescription from your doctor. In the first place, they are not allowed to ask for ANY information about the nature or extent of your disability. They are now required to accept any state issued disability tag OR your verbal statement unless they have some visual evidence to the contrary. If you are turning cartwheels...
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I always try to come up with some disability that would leave someone ONLY able to turn cartwheels -- unless they're on a Segway.
Though anybody with such a disorder who gets off their Segway for any reason in a store and starts turning cartwheels, probably deserves to be thrown out for that reason. STAY ON YOUR SEGWAY!
But seriously, that also applies to us. Don't give them a chance to form an uninformed opinion about your degree of disability. You're on a Segway because you need to be. That's all they need to know.
They may conclude you're able bodied just because on a Segway you're standing and agile. But they have no factual evidence, just prejudice, and if they never saw you off the Segway, the "visual evidence" thing can't even enter into it.
If I've been on the Segway for a while, though, my difficulties become pretty obvious. But a lot of people I talk to in stores -- generally other customers -- are surprised that I have a disability. You have to expect that store managers have the same blind spot. But they also have a duty. If they don't accept the copy of my placard on the front, or my verbal statements, then they get the full force of my ADA speech; that they've had 20 years to learn the law, it's enforced by the US DOJ Civil Rights division, and is now *explicitly* covered, because too many people had trouble with the concept.
I try to make it plain that down one path lies a whole lot of aggravation -- pissed off customer, legal hassles, bad publicity, perhaps monetary consequences, while down the other they get a pleasant, satisfied customer who causes no trouble.
My favorite moments are when bystanders jump in to offer support for my statements. Yes, sometimes random bystanders have a better grasp of the ADA than store managers.