Terrible Customer Service

[Cavalol]

I'm not sure it's got much to do with training, but is more to do with some flipping decency or manners. Do people really need to be told to not talk over disabled people or ignore them? It's frightening if so, and maybe the people that do so are in the wrong job, perhaps better suited to being locked in the store cupboard all day long to replicate the cave that they probably emitted from.

 

[vernon]

Do people really need to be told to not talk over disabled people or ignore them? It's frightening if so, and maybe the people that do so are in the wrong job, perhaps better suited to being locked in the store cupboard all day long to replicate the cave that they probably emitted from.

People don't need to be told not to talk over disabled people they need to be educated/taught how to deal with them. It's no different to any other social interaction skill. The staff at Boots are not in the wrong job, the Boots store ordinarily could have coped with wheelchair users. The security guard didn't deal with the disabled customer in a manner that was expected - it does not extrapolate into Boots being discriminatory or its staff being neanderthal.

Semi hysterical responses to a low key problem adds nothing to solving the problem. A more reasoned response might well have been to politely ask the security guard to address the wheelchair user directly and/or use some of the logistical solutions identified earlier on in the thread. A calm polite letter sent to Boots suggesting disability awareness training would be as far as I would go if, and only if, I hadn't challenged the security guard over his behaviour.

Like I said earlier, this appears to be a fifty quid fuss over a fifty pence problem.

 

[asterix]

Why don't Boots put their pharmacy at street level. It seems daft to put a facility that is for the less able or sick up or down stairs!

It couldn't be that such a facility isn't 'sexy' enough for a commercial enterprise to put in a more prime position, could it?

 

[Leodis]

Why didnt S have a look around and you pop down for your creams?

 

[Arch]

Semi hysterical responses to a low key problem adds nothing to solving the problem. A more reasoned response might well have been to politely ask the security guard to address the wheelchair user directly and/or use some of the logistical solutions identified earlier on in the thread. A calm polite letter sent to Boots suggesting disability awareness training would be as far as I would go if, and only if, I hadn't challenged the security guard over his behaviour.

From the OP:

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".

Sounds like he was challenged, and refused to alter his behaviour, hence the advice to write to Boots about it.

Any of us should think about how we'd like to be treated in that situation. When NT ruptured his Achilles last year, I took him out in a wheelchair a couple of times, just down to the supermarket for a change of scene, when it was too far for him to manage on crutches. Several times people patronised him (other customers, I should stress, not staff), one old lady, a complete stranger said "ohh, you silly, what have you done to yourself?" in the sort of voice people use to talk to babies.

I'd want people to address me when it was specifically relevant, and otherwise to include me just as they would include more than one person in a group all standing. I wouldn't much care if they leaned or crouched, as long as they didn't treat me like an idiot!