Sorry it has taken me so long to get this story up. I am on vacation finally (after having the dishwasher break, flood the basement, and having insurance adjusters and water remediation people in) and we have no internet. This is actually being posted from a local public library.
On the way out of town yesterday, I had to drop by the Comcast office to give them my payment for our internet since I forgot to drop in the mail. Getting that stamp on the envelope two days earlier would have saved me a world of aggravation. In the Manassas Park office, there isn’t a drop box to just put into and run. The woman in front of me was returning equipment. So I would up standing and waiting in the office for about 5 to 10 minutes while DH and the boys were out in the car waiting for me.
While I was standing in the lobby, the door to the “employees only” was standing wide open. Three men were in there, apparently talking about colleague, rather loudly, discussing his intellectual ability, using timeless quotes s like “Stupid is a disability,” “Is being stupid a disability?,” and “Yes, it’s a disability if you were born that way.”
You have to feel bad for their karma in life, that the person standing outside the door listening was the mother of a child with a developmental disability, a woman who has spent years involved with the local Special Education Advisory Committee, and who cares passionately for this community of people. I was offended by their conversation. If they had any experience with raising a child diagnosed with autism or mental retardation or another cognitive disability, these men would not have been having a conversation using those terms. My life with my child, while it has moments of humor, isn’t a joke or a laughing matter.
I know people will invoke the ideas of freedom of speech and say that my response was political correctness run amock. I beg to differ. Complain about political correctness all you want, but if you are making comments based on disability, race, ethnicity, or gender, you are likely going to offend someone. Being different somehow opens you up to a world of comments, in my case ranging “What’s his problem?” to “Autism? Can’t you spank that out of him?” to “Couldn’t they tell you something was wrong when you were pregnant?” The implication to that last comment being that I should have aborted him rather than bringing him in to world different than everyone else.
You have freedom of speech on your own time. When you are sitting in a Comcast work room, wearing a Comcast shirt, with in earshot of customers, your speech reflects your employer. If I am a paying customer, I have the right to register a complaint about it. Heck, if these guys were behind me in a checkout having the same conversation, I probably would have said something. In this case, I got the number for the supervisor to call and complain. I also told the men on the way out how offended I was and that I was going to be calling their supervisor. They tried to say that I hadn’t heard the whole conversation, they were talking about a co-worker, and it wasn’t offensive. I didn’t hear the whole conversation. But I heard enough to know that it offended me and they shouldn’t be saying these things within earshot of me, a customer.
I left a message for the supervisor, a woman named Jeanette. Ultimately, I got a call back from her supervisor, a man named Dave. I relayed the incident to him. He was very disturbed by my account and told me he would be following up with the entire staff in the branch, especially the four techs (the three who were initially there were joined by a fourth during the conversation.) It is important that they show better judgment in the workplace in the future, especially around customers. I would hope that they would be encouraged to volunteer within the Manassas disability community, a special education classroom, the Matthew Center, something to illustrate that living with development disability, people often dismissed as stupid, is really not something to joke about.
**How’s the vacation going? We’ll be amazed if we make it through today. Jimmy is having a rough time being away from school and home. Like I said, my life has moments of humor, but it is filled with moments that challenge you and diminishes your ability to do things people take for granted, like go to a timeshare.**
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