I am actually still a little bit shocked that this happened.
I was in central London today with a close friend who is now mostly confined to a wheelchair. It was necessary to visit a pharmacy as I had a prescription to pick up, so we went to Boots in Regents Street/Piccadilly Circus. It turns out the pharmacy here is downstairs with the main store itself at street level.
Things did not start out well. The customer lift was meant to be reintroduced into service about a week ago, but this wasn't the case. The staff saw that my friend (I shall call them S for this thread) was in a wheelchair and, after fluffing around and demonstrating that they had no had any training on assisting people in wheelchairs, offered to let us use the service lift to the rear of the building. Whilst the staff were explaining this though, they insisted on talking to me and ignoring S, which S felt was very dehumanising.
We were escorted through what can only be described as a building site to the rear of the building, to find that the promised service lift was also showing as out of service. This meant that, for no good reason, S had a lot of building dirt transferred onto their wheels and thus also onto their hands.
There was an escalator back at the front of the shop, which S was able to get themselves down in a move I've never seen a wheelchair user doing before - basically going down backwards and hanging onto the rails for dear life.
When we were downstairs, things were mostly alright from a service point of view. To get back up there is a set of stairs and, as S can walk very short distances very slowly, S climbed the stairs whilst I carried the wheelchair to the top.
When we reached the top, I placed the chair down and S started adjusting everything so that they could get back into the chair. At this point, the security guard came across to attempt to apologise for a mistake with the service lift - it turns out it was working fine but someone had pressed the wrong button. Again, the security guard was addressing me so I asked him to address S instead, as they were the one with the wheelchair. The security guard refused, stating (and this is an exact quote, bar changing the gender) "Yeah but <they> doesn't want to listen". Remember at this stage, S was adjusting everything to get back into the chair as they were about to fall over from being on their feet for too long.
Needless to say, I was taken aback by the comment and S was absolutely infuriated. We have both left complaints about the incidents, with S complaining to the store manager and me complaining to Boots HQ. Surprise surprise though, the Boots complaint form online only has a limited amount of space for the message - they clearly don't want to hear the full details.
I definitely left the store with a different impression to when I entered. I sincerely hope that Boots get a grip of this and implement some serious staff training. I appreciate this probably doesn't sound that bad to the layperson, but remember that we don't have to deal with what wheelchair users do, day in day out.
I was in central London today with a close friend who is now mostly confined to a wheelchair. It was necessary to visit a pharmacy as I had a prescription to pick up, so we went to Boots in Regents Street/Piccadilly Circus. It turns out the pharmacy here is downstairs with the main store itself at street level.
Things did not start out well. The customer lift was meant to be reintroduced into service about a week ago, but this wasn't the case. The staff saw that my friend (I shall call them S for this thread) was in a wheelchair and, after fluffing around and demonstrating that they had no had any training on assisting people in wheelchairs, offered to let us use the service lift to the rear of the building. Whilst the staff were explaining this though, they insisted on talking to me and ignoring S, which S felt was very dehumanising.
We were escorted through what can only be described as a building site to the rear of the building, to find that the promised service lift was also showing as out of service. This meant that, for no good reason, S had a lot of building dirt transferred onto their wheels and thus also onto their hands.
There was an escalator back at the front of the shop, which S was able to get themselves down in a move I've never seen a wheelchair user doing before - basically going down backwards and hanging onto the rails for dear life.
When we were downstairs, things were mostly alright from a service point of view. To get back up there is a set of stairs and, as S can walk very short distances very slowly, S climbed the stairs whilst I carried the wheelchair to the top.
When we reached the top, I placed the chair down and S started adjusting everything so that they could get back into the chair. At this point, the security guard came across to attempt to apologise for a mistake with the service lift - it turns out it was working fine but someone had pressed the wrong button. Again, the security guard was addressing me so I asked him to address S instead, as they were the one with the wheelchair. The security guard refused, stating (and this is an exact quote, bar changing the gender) "Yeah but <they> doesn't want to listen". Remember at this stage, S was adjusting everything to get back into the chair as they were about to fall over from being on their feet for too long.
Needless to say, I was taken aback by the comment and S was absolutely infuriated. We have both left complaints about the incidents, with S complaining to the store manager and me complaining to Boots HQ. Surprise surprise though, the Boots complaint form online only has a limited amount of space for the message - they clearly don't want to hear the full details.
I definitely left the store with a different impression to when I entered. I sincerely hope that Boots get a grip of this and implement some serious staff training. I appreciate this probably doesn't sound that bad to the layperson, but remember that we don't have to deal with what wheelchair users do, day in day out.
