I am not a shopping cart or a coat rack. I may have wheels, but that does not make me an inanimate object.
Stop. Disrespecting. Me.
Augh. Man, I’m sorry you’re treated that way. People suck.
I feel the same way about the stupid cashiers in the grocery store who see me bagging my own groceries with one functioning arm and they come over and start doing it for me. Most of my friends don’t understand why I get worked up about this, but not only is it dehumanizing, I do it myself because I have a particular way that I want my groceries organized and it would take too long for me to explain to another person! Efficiency is important to me, grr.
Oh geesh. The least they could do is ask first if you need help.
Really, people. Personal space. It’s a thing.
Exactly! I’m careful not to snap at them, because I know cashiers get rude customers for no reason all day long, but UGH that just drives me NUTS
Out of curiosity, what kind of behaviors do you run into the most commonly using your wheelchair where people are being rude without realizing it? I made a small organization at work where I train interested associates about the perspectives of people with disabilities, so we can all do better work for our disabled customers, and I’ve never needed to use a wheelchair so your input would be really helpful!
…though I would never have thought of someone moving a wheelchair without permission, really WTF, the chair is basically the person’s legs, you don’t touch it without asking, this seems obvious to me ><
Yeah, I try to be polite to sales associates. It’s the other customers I tend to get a little more noisy with. Especially when they try to move the chair. And they DO. How they justify that to themselves is beyond me.
Input…well, let me think…
One big thing is being treated like an obstacle instead of a person. I know that I’m moving slow. I’m a fast walker, on days when I can. On days when I can’t, I can barely manage a wheelchair. It really helps if I have a somewhat wide berth and not a ton of people crowding around me acting like I’m going 30 under the speed limit. I need space to move.
I LOVE wide store aisles. Narrow ones, I tend to get stuck trying to move through them. I was in one today that I couldn’t even properly shop in and skipped half the store because there was no way on this earth my chair was going to fit. Or if it did, there was absolutely no way it was going to be able to get out. I take chances with the chair, but there are places even I won’t go. Also, if an aisle is badly lit, I avoid it probably even more than I would if I were walking. I hate knocking over displays. It’s really embarrassing!
I tend to buy more stuff at waist-high shelving because that’s at my wheelchair eye-level and I know it’s within reach. I always appreciate it when people do things like ask if I need assistance reaching something from the top shelf, if I’m shakily leaning on on arm, reaching upward, definitely about to drop thirty jars of peanut butter on my head. I don’t always have someone assisting me with my shopping, and I don’t always need it, but occasionally a helping hand is really awesome and makes my day. It also saves on peanut butter spills.
There’s the little matter of the only wheelchair-accessible bathroom stall always being filled, usually by a store associate taking their smartphone break. It’s difficult enough just to maneuver into bathrooms, but then to have to wait, usually blocking the way for other people…yikes. I realize that sometimes all of the other stalls are full, but the chair only goes into the handicap accessible stall. (this goes double for the moms who absolutely have to bring their eight kids into the stall with them, which is traditionally where the diaper changing table is for some godforsaken reason. THEY CAN NOT ALL NEED THEIR DIAPER CHANGED.)
Little things, getting constantly bumped into, reached over, stepped over, and having things dropped on me, people running into me, the occasional stare/glare combination designed to make me feel like wasted space. At the checkout, sometimes the cashier looks around for my “handler” when it comes time to pay, like I need a responsible adult around to make sure I’m not buying too much candy or trying to use silly money.
Doors are also a thing. I don’t know if it’s a problem where you live, but here, we have a door problem. There are no automatic doors, and I’ve only seen one push-button style door. It was on the other side of a regular door, so that the person going through would have to first go through the regular door, and then they could use the “handicap accessible” push-button one. Which makes absolutely no sense. There are also doors on freezers, bathrooms, bathroom stalls. I don’t know if it helps to know that, but things that are no big deal when you’re not in a chair become major puzzles or sometimes outright impossible when you’re in one.
I’m lucky enough that I can sometimes stand up and move a little, and I’m not completely reliant on the chair. I know some people are, and I have no idea how they do it without henchmen to assist with the groceries and provide bodyguard services.
Captain Koril 