Stuck in a Compromising Position

Pirate Alice sent me this article yesterday about a woman who was banned from a department store chain in Britain because she had some sort of accident in the restroom and had to push the emergency button to call for assistance. She has Cerebral Palsy and uses a wheelchair, and the store asked her not to return because its staff is not trained to assist her in an emergency. The ban has since been lifted, and management has apologized but still asks that she bring someone to assist her when she visits the store.

Here are just a few points that pop to mind as I think this through…

First, doesn’t the staff have some kind of emergency training? It’s possible that anyone could have something unexpected, like a heart attack, strike at anytime whether they are disabled or not. It’s discriminatory to assume that a person with a disability is more of a liability. And the association between being in a wheelchair and being unwell is odd to me because many people with disabilities are perfectly healthy and very capable.

Accidents do happen… to everyone. That’s what an emergency button is for. So you shouldn’t be punished for using it if you need to.

It would be another thing entirely if this woman regularly pushed that button and took advantage of the staff to do personal things for her that she should be able to do for herself, or have a paid assistant do. But that’s not an emergency, and it sounds like this was.

Let me tell you… it’s easy it is to get a wheelchair stuck in a public restroom, even if it appears to be accessible. Unfortunately, I’ve been in that compromising position more times than I care to admit.

In fact, when my friends and I visited Door County last year, I got my wheelchair wedged so tightly in an accessible stall at the state park that T had to crawl under the door and help me pop off one wheel so we could get it out. We told the park ranger what happened, and he was totally unaffected. But I wasn’t banned. So I guess that’s something!