not looking disabled?!

Lou76

I have a Scottish Entitlement card (allowing free travel on buses/reduced rates on the Subway etc).

When I first received my card I was too paranoid to use it at my local Subway station; these were the same people I used to see each morning on my way to work.

I was worried sick they'd demand to know why I was entitled. I don't look "disabled", I don't feel "disabled" but, for all intents and purposes, I'm 'disabled' enough to warrant a travel card.

I built up this defence, in preperation for someone asking, which thankfully I never needed, but none of it was telling them about me.

I had it all planned, if asked; I would LOUDLY ask how they knew the difference between me & someone with terminal cancer etc. The idea was to shame them for asking in the first place

Thankfully, on the odd occasion I see them, they've never asked.

Thankfully no one has ever challenged me, as I can be mouthy on here but not in person. :rotfl:

easy

BUT ... there is something I really don't understand.

We all hate it when non-disabled people use our parking spaces/toilets etc. Yet you lot get sooo offended if someone asks why you are using disabled facilities if your disability is not an obvious one.

We can't have it both ways. If you want/need to use the facilities, you must accept that sometimes you will be asked why you are using them. Otherwise, of course every Tom, !!!!!! and Harriet will use them.
Why are you so ashamed of saying that you have some sort of hidden disability? You don't need to go into detail, just a simple comment would suffice in 99.9% of cases.

It does annoy me that some of you get so rude to people, who in many cases are trying to protect the facilities set aside for us.

jetta_wales

easy wrote: »

BUT ... there is something I really don't understand.

We all hate it when non-disabled people use our parking spaces/toilets etc. Yet you lot get sooo offended if someone asks why you are using disabled facilities if your disability is not an obvious one.

We can't have it both ways. If you want/need to use the facilities, you must accept that sometimes you will be asked why you are using them. Otherwise, of course every Tom, !!!!!! and Harriet will use them.
Why are you so ashamed of saying that you have some sort of hidden disability? You don't need to go into detail, just a simple comment would suffice in 99.9% of cases.

It does annoy me that some of you get so rude to people, who in many cases are trying to protect the facilities set aside for us.

That's a perfectly fair point but in most cases these aren't people who wish to ask if we have a disability or not it is people who have already decided that we don't and wish to acuse us missue of such facilities because they don't think for a second that there's a possibility that a person can genuinely be dissabled if they don't 'look' dissabled. If somebody politely asked me if it was my blue badge I would politely reply that yes it is because of my sight. What they should do though is ask a parking attendant to ask us as they don't really have the right to to be honest and it's unfair to have to justify ourselves to every Tom !!!!!! and Harry. In most cases though these people are far from polite and that is where the problem is.

A sensible thing to say to these people I guess would be to politely inform them that "If you wish to ask a parking attendant to check the picture on MY badge then you are quite welcome to do so and I will be happy to show it to them."

easy

jetta_wales wrote: »

That's a perfectly fair point but in most cases these aren't people who wish to ask if we have a disability or not it is people who have already decided that we don't and wish to acuse us missue of such facilities because they don't think for a second that there's a possibility that a person can genuinely be dissabled if they don't 'look' dissabled. If somebody politely asked me if it was my blue badge I would politely reply that yes it is because of my sight. What they should do though is ask a parking attendant to ask us as they don't really have the right to to be honest and it's unfair to have to justify ourselves to every Tom !!!!!! and Harry. In most cases though these people are far from polite and that is where the problem is.

A sensible thing to say to these people I guess would be to politely inform them that "If you wish to ask a parking attendant to check the picture on MY badge then you are quite welcome to do so and I will be happy to show it to them."

'Parking attendants' being so thick on the ground of course, that a concerned person can find one at 10 seconds notice

jetta_wales

easy wrote: »

'Parking attendants' being so thick on the ground of course, that a concerned person can find one at 10 seconds notice

Then customer services in any supermarket etc but still it is not the polite people that we take issue with (because there pretty much aren't any) and that is the main point, it's those who are rude and acusing, sometimes down right nasty and there is simply no excuse for that.

daska

This was a status of a friend on Facebook yesterday: "PMSL at the face of the young lad who approached me in the park this morning to ask if I wanted to be a hairdressing model and have a free haircut! The funny response, on here or facebook, would have been to whip off her NHS wig and gone TA DAAAA! But that wouldn't have been funny for the lad who had asked a genuine question, so she thanked him for the offer but declined.

It's a somewhat different situation in real life though when someone comes up and essentially alleges that you are abusing a privilege you are not entitled to, especially when they do it aggressively and/or rudely. The woman who shouted "Are you actually disabled" at me when she found me (8+ months pregnant) sitting in a disabled seat got a perfectly appropriate and polite response when I quietly said "yes I am". But she wouldn't leave it alone, shouting the odds and accusing me of being "just pregnant", at which point I whipped out my blue badge, my DLA award paperwork and all my medical notes and offered to give her my GP's number (I was planning to be away for a while so it had seemed sensible to pack them just in case I went into labour early). The conductor stood by with his jaw on the floor when I then politely offered to move so that she could sit with her friend. ROFLMAO

easy

jetta_wales wrote: »

Then customer services in any supermarket etc but still it is not the polite people that we take issue with (because there pretty much aren't any) and that is the main point, it's those who are rude and acusing, sometimes down right nasty and there is simply no excuse for that.

You are right, there is no excuse for it. BUT being rude back doesn't help either, just makes things worse.

Oh, and in my experience, customer services at the supermarket have NO interest at all in the abuse of disabled parking spaces.

jetta_wales

daska wrote: »

This was a status of a friend on Facebook yesterday: "PMSL at the face of the young lad who approached me in the park this morning to ask if I wanted to be a hairdressing model and have a free haircut! The funny response, on here or facebook, would have been to whip off her NHS wig and gone TA DAAAA! But that wouldn't have been funny for the lad who had asked a genuine question, so she thanked him for the offer but declined.

It's a somewhat different situation in real life though when someone comes up and essentially alleges that you are abusing a privilege you are not entitled to, especially when they do it aggressively and/or rudely. The woman who shouted "Are you actually disabled" at me when she found me (8+ months pregnant) sitting in a disabled seat got a perfectly appropriate and polite response when I quietly said "yes I am". But she wouldn't leave it alone, shouting the odds and accusing me of being "just pregnant", at which point I whipped out my blue badge, my DLA award paperwork and all my medical notes and offered to give her my GP's number (I was planning to be away for a while so it had seemed sensible to pack them just in case I went into labour early). The conductor stood by with his jaw on the floor when I then politely offered to move so that she could sit with her friend. ROFLMAO

Gosh you forget how often these things happen. I had to get a train by myself with a change which I hated and couldn't do without assistance. I was taken from the first train and the guy to my suitcase and led me to a seat on my next train and as it was an end of isle seat he said he'd put my suitcase just behind my chair and then he left. A little while later the ticket attendant came by and I was on my phone so he started having a go at me for that because apparently it was the quiet cartage. "You can't use your phone in here can't you see all the no phone signs?" he shouted" Then he saw my suitcase and demanded I get up to look at it. "That's a wheelchair space! That's why there's a picture of a wheelchair by it so do you think it's ok to put your suitcase there?" oh he was tamping and on a right rant.
My reply
"no I can't see the no phones signs and no I can't see the wheelchair sign either, I'm registered blind my sight is severly limited at best and I was guided to my seat by a member of staff from the last station and it was he who put my suitcase there not me!"

Yes his tone changed pretty quick then and he muttered about how it is was the other guys fault then blah blah, didn't actualy say sorry though.

nannytone_2

a good few years ago now, i was in safeway with my friend ( shopping obviously lol)
a man with a buggy cam through almost at a run, and i didnt notice him and walked into the buggy as he was passing.
i got a toorent of abuse and my friend said....she's registered blind
his response......
well she can see well enough to shop though cant she!!!

jetta_wales

nannytone wrote: »

a good few years ago now, i was in safeway with my friend ( shopping obviously lol)
a man with a buggy cam through almost at a run, and i didnt notice him and walked into the buggy as he was passing.
i got a toorent of abuse and my friend said....she's registered blind
his response......
well she can see well enough to shop though cant she!!!

Oh !!!!!!! My blood would boil!