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.]
