I had a cashier call me for a clerk for customer assistance. So I came down. It was to help a blind person get some items in the store. So I go up to the person and ask them what he needed to get. So he asks me if we have any toilet paper on sale right now. I tell him I don't believe so but I can check. He then mutters something which to me sounded like "hold on". So as I stand next to him, he stops and what I'd thought was him thinking about what he needed was apparently something else because he just storms out of the store with his walking stick and just starts yelling and screaming as he walks out. At this point I am completely perplexed. Basically toward the end he starts to yell they won't help me which had me confused. So later he comes in the store and yells at my manager about how the store is not blind friendly and how he is being discrimanated against. All the while I am standing next to him. He said that I had walked away and left him when the fact was I was right next to him when he left the store. And there were many customers and the cashier who called me who could vouch that I had not left his side.
In the end this whole situation was simply a misunderstanding. This man would not really listen, he seemed intent on believing that myself and my manager and everyone in the store was against him, when in truth nothing was remotely of that feeling. I have no problems with people with disabilities, what I do have a problem with, are people who have a chip on there shoulders and think that the whole world is against them. I can't vouch for all situations but this wasn't one of them. I even apologized to this man and he wouldn't really hear it.
It's not easy to handle people with disabilities such as loss of sight or what not. I try my best to treat them with the same respect I'd treat any other and I do realize that in this case they need my assistance and I don't go out of my way to baby them and I don't try to deny them what they need. THe thing is he didn't even call out for me or ask someone nearby if they could get me although I was standing next to him and this reaction came in a manner of 30 seconds.
Unfortunetly I don't read minds and can't anticipate ever persons needs. In all honesty even his expression which I read at the time made it seem like he was thinking after he said what I thought he had said.
He was going on and on about how it's against the law to discriminate against him and how he could take some legal action against the store. This just really bothered me, because it wasn't even the case he was figuratively... to blind to see or perhaps more appropriately stated to deaf to listen to reason. I understand that living with blindness must be awful and hard, but I don't think anything ever gives people the right to make assumptions and to not try to hear or find out what is really going on. I judge him not on being physically blind but the manner which he chooses as an individual to lash out at the world around him , to me is unacceptable. Granted if I had actually denied to help him I would understand the outrage, but he would not even listen, he decided in his mind that is what happened. That actually makes me feel sorry for him. Not that he can't see but the fact that he chooses what he sees.