01.28.08
Making a fuss
I don’t often blog about deafness, but . . .
Last week Karen Putz, a fellow deaf person, fellow blogger and fellow Chicago-area resident, stopped at a Steak & Shake with her 10-year-old son to order a couple of milk shakes. Since she obviously can’t use the speaker and mike in the drive-through lane, she drove up to the pickup window instead to place her order, as she had done several times. The fast-food workers she had encountered thought nothing of accommodating a deaf customer that way.
This time, however, the manager refused to take her order, telling her she had to follow the rules. Drive around to the speaker and give your order to the mike, he said. I can’t, she said, I’m deaf. You have to, he said. Those are the rules. A heated disagreement ensued, and the oaf threatened to call the police if Karen did not depart the premises immediately.
That day she blogged about the incident, and it snowballed overnight through the blogosphere and onto the assignment desks of the ABC and Fox news affiliates in Chicago. The whole thing was an utterly unnecessary public relations disaster for Steak & Shake and a widely broadcast triumph for one pissed-off deaf woman.
Initially I had an ambivalent reaction to the incident. I belong to a generation older than Karen’s, a generation that grew up without the Americans with Disabilities Act. We were taught that when encountering a problem with hearing people, it was smarter to attempt an end run around a massed defensive line than to try to punch head-on through it. Get what you want, we were counseled, but don’t make a fuss. Noisy confrontations often result in hardening of attitudes.
Couldn’t Karen have done what I instinctively would have? I’d simply have parked and gone inside to order rather than try the drive-through lane. Mission would have been accomplished without fireworks.
But the younger generation to whom Karen belongs is not so diffident about exercising its rights. I can just hear her telling me that deaf people, too, have a legal and moral right to enjoy the same drive-through convenience hearing people do, thanks to the ADA. Unless deaf people use those rights, they may just disappear.
And let’s not forget that 10-year-old child. He learned quite a lesson: that out of humiliation can come victory, and that his mama is one tough, resourceful and brave woman.
I have to hand it to Karen, even though even now I’d probably still just park and go in without thinking about it. I’m a creature of habit.
But that’s my problem, not hers — thank goodness.
[January 30: Karen and representatives met with Steak & Shake executives today. Her report on the meeting is here.]
Karen Putz said,
January 28, 2008 at 11:32 am
Come on out to Bolingbrook next week and I’ll take you through the drive thru. You just might be a convert! (And maybe this time, we’ll get some shakes!)
pete said,
January 28, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I’m with Karen on this one.
Although in the same situation I’d probably have dumped the milkshake on the manager’s head and then gone someplace more accommodating.
Why are the words “customer service” an oxymoron in America?
Superiorgirl said,
January 28, 2008 at 2:25 pm
There is another option. A 10 year old is capable of placing an order at the drive through, especially if we are just talking about a couple of milk shakes.
However, I probably would have done just what she did even though I detest conflict. The manager behaved like a Neanderthal.
Henry said,
January 28, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Yes, a hearing 10-year-old could have done the job. But all of Karen’s three children are either deaf or hard of hearing, so that wouldn’t have been a solution in this case.
nadene said,
January 28, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Henry, now that my children are older I do park and go inside, but once upon a time I had infants and sometimes I just needed a soda to wake me up as I drove from here to there. So I’d go to the drive-thru window because parking would mean carrying sleeping kids and walking tired ones.
I once waited ten minutes at another fast food operation before the employee slowly moved toward the window, opened it, and looked at me as if to say, “what do YOU want.” He served me, though.
Therein lies the difference.
Janet said,
January 29, 2008 at 11:33 am
I”m a hearing parent with a 16 year old deaf daughter, and I am always looking for ‘role models’ for her. I can tell you, Karen Putz is up on the top of my list!!
John C said,
January 30, 2008 at 7:26 am
I think Karen did the right thing. But I can also see a bit where Henry is coming from. I think sometimes the ADA crusaders go a bit far. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s a breakthrough law and long overdue. But I think there are times when compromise is in order. I’m think of the small towns that have to spend large amounts of money to put a wheelchair lift at the town hall next to a flight of, say, four steps. That sort of thing. Here’s a hypothetical. But what if the Steak and Shake manager, instead of being a jerk, was instead undersratffed and overwhelmed that day and said something like this to Karen: Taking your order here really screws things up m’am. There’s a line of cars behind you and people backed up in the store. Can I ask you to come inside and order. The reasonable person - maybe Karen too - would say sure. But there are some, I know, who would put up a fight.
Henry said,
January 30, 2008 at 7:36 am
Good point, John. Often there are extremists on both sides of the divide — not that Karen is one! She was well and truly provoked that day at Steak & Shake.
But the Americans with Disabilities Act does have a clause about “reasonable accommodations.” Mom-and-Pop motels, for instance, don’t have to install wheelchair ramps if they can’t afford to. Of course, defining what “reasonable” means can keep armies of lawyers working far into the night, but it also allows third parties to bring the two sides together in compromises that satisfy everybody.
And that’s what the other employees at Steak & Shake had done before the incident with Karen. They’d simply said “Sure” and served her at the window. It was a reasonable accommodation.