As I walked past the table, I heard him say, “I’ll never eat here again. I wanted hot fudge on my ice cream and they wouldn’t let me have it. I said I would pay for it, but they said no.” We were at a restaurant having a good meal after a long day of traveling and disability rights rallies. The meal was prearranged and everyone had choices, but the choices didn’t include hot fudge. I am willing to bet that any other customer who wanted to pay for something on the menu would have been able to. Just what was behind this notion that “This customer is not right”?
We were able to find the answer when we asked the ‘boss’ to allow the customer to purchase the hot fudge. When the employee was asked to take the hot fudge order, I heard her whisper, “There is a good reason we didn’t do that. What if everyone wants hot fudge? She asked. (Wouldn’t that be good for business? I thought). She continued with, “Not everyone would have the money”. Hmmm….what an assumption….at most places, if you don’t have the money, you don’t make the purchase.
As it turns out, the employee with the ‘hot fudge assumptions’ about how to treat people with disabilities, worked for a disability organization. She is not a bad person. She has been trained to treat everyone the same, to be consistent and not to make exceptions. This happens every day in the world of disability services. Perhaps if instead, people were trained by the persons they are supporting, those supports would be truly person-centered. Perhaps if supports were individualized and not ‘one size fits all’, equity would occur. Perhaps if we all could see each other as having equal value as human beings, respect would be common place.
The young man got his hot fudge, but at what price? Let us learn from his experience.
