THIS is how you handle something properly – Corporate, DID style… A niche, but hear me out:
My initial response:
“Hell. Fucking. No.”
Justifying my point to someone who said I was being too sensitive:
“Actually, I get angry when people make fun of people who have survived severe trauma. You call that offended. I call it common decency.”
My response as a consumer, to their international CEO in regards to their Advertisement:
[TEXT:
Mr Gainor,
It has come to my attention that in an advertisement for your banana split, you have chosen to make mental illness the punchline. This is in reference to the “Split personality? Order two!” sign. I would like to inform you that this is extremely offensive.
It’s called Dissociative Identity Disorder – and it is caused by chronic and severe trauma during early childhood.
I have been a customer at Dairy Queen for over a decade, and you have lost a lifetime of business from this former customer.
I would also like to inform you that DID occurs at a rate of 1% in the general population. You have just alienated and made a tasteless joke in reference to 1 out of every 100 customers.
And finally, I wanted to let you know that you have made survivors of the most horrific trauma and abuse a punchline.
Please reconsider this ad and remove it before you cause more damage to your company.
Sincerely, Eleanor Hutchinson (a real life person with DID)]
And today, to my shock and amazement:
[TEXT:
Dear Ms. Hutchinson,
Thank you for reaching out to John Gainor regarding the point of sale poster for the banana split seen in Texas.
I am so sorry we have upset you and offended you. Please accept my apologies on behalf of John and the corporation.
Everyone on Texas Marketing and Operations teams is working to have this removed and destroyed immediately.
Kind regards,
Carolyn
Carolyn Kidder Senior Fan Relations Manager American Dairy Queen Corporation
”: ]
My final response:
[TEXT:
Ms. Kidder, Your apology is warmly accepted. Thank you for listening and responding so gracefully. DQ has been a brand I have been loyal to since childhood, and have had the fondest memories. I’m reminded of fund raisers in the community; and the sponsorship of my high school’s hockey team, along with the Peer Mentors program. You have certainly won back my current and future business. I think I’m going to have to go get a blizzard 😊 Thank you for listening to the DID community’s feedback. It helps restore your faith a bit, you know? Take care,Eleanor Hutchinson ]
Long story short; A+ to Dairy Queen for being so responsive. I love you more than I thought possible :,)
While this blog primarily focuses on physical accessibility and ableism directed towards physically disabled people, this is a great example of how to respond to ableism anywhere- especially at a corporate level. Contact the company politely and explain why something is a problem to someone in charge. Don’t yell at employees- it isn’t up to them to decide. Ask the employees how you can contact the manager and/or owner of this branch. Some will refuse to help or lie claiming they don’t know how to reach their manager. If there is a customer satisfaction survey and employees made bs claims like this and stonewalled you that you fill it out with a complaint about their unwillingness to help you. Beyond that harassing employees does nothing. If they won’t say who to contact go directly to the chain head with what happened. They will get in touch with the manager/owner and ensure the issue is fixed because they don’t want their brand to look bad.
This was how I handled a recent incident where a security guard refused to let my working service dog come with me into hospital. I gave them the laws and wrote an info sheet on applicable local laws as well as federal and provincial around service dogs and disability accommodation. They have asked permission to make my info sheet I made to summarize things as a permanent part of their staff training. By going to the person in charge not just yelling at employees, especially if you are able to explain how to fix it, it ends up not only helping you but others who didn’t know what to do or who don’t have the spoons to handle it.
“The medical establishment in particular has been slow to comply with the ADA.“
“The medical establishment in particular has been slow to comply with
the ADA. Dr. Lisa Iezzoni knows why. Not only has she researched the
topic, she has lived it. At the end of her first semester in medical
school in 1980, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which
complicated her future — but not nearly as much as the prejudicial
attitudes that had already shaped the profession she hoped to enter. In
short, she successfully completed her studies and graduated from Harvard
Medical School but was prevented from applying for an internship or
residency by HMS higher-ups, whose biased, uninformed views on her
disability led them to withhold support for credentialing.
Since then, Iezzoni, now a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical
School, has distinguished herself as an expert in healthcare inequities,
especially for the disabled community. In a 2016 American Medical Association Journal of Ethics
article, she writes that physicians “have little understanding about
living with disability or the consequences for daily life or
health-related behaviors.”
She cites a seminal study of the attitudes of
233 doctors, nurses and emergency medical technicians toward treating
persons with spinal cord injury. She then compares their responses to
people who actually live with SCI. One statistic stands out starkly: Only 18 percent of the medical personnel said they could imagine being
glad to be alive following SCI, compared to 92 percent of those living
with SCI.”
A while back a ton of people saw a video of a turtle with a straw stuck up its nose. I was one of them. It was very sad.
So when places started proposing we ban plastic straws, I was like…
“Yeah! Fuck straws!”
But then the disabled community spoke up and tried to inform everyone that plastic bendy straws are essential for people with various health issues. Without them, people might end up having to make the choice of whether or not they can consume liquids in public. And that really sucks.
This community put a lot of thought and research into this and was unable to find another material that could be a suitable replacement in every circumstance.
They proposed a system where you could just ask for straws rather than places giving them out all willy-nilly. This would still reduce the use of plastic straws significantly without screwing disabled folks.
I assessed this new information and…
I CHANGED MY DAMN MIND.
*gasp* “The Frogman is a flip-flopper!”
Naively, I figured most people who consumed this new information would do the same.
But it ended up being a mixed bag of mostly sullen disappointment.
As I read the comments on various articles I noticed a weird phenomenon where people magically transformed into materials scientists.
Disabled groups thought long and hard about this. These groups did some great in-depth research. And all these groups pretty much came to a unanimous consensus that there are currently no satisfactory alternative solutions. They also found that plastic straws are actually a drop in the bucket of our waste issues. Furthermore, the “straws on demand” solution would make that drop pretty frickin’ tiny. The overall risk to turtle noses would go way down.
Despite seeing these conclusions thoroughly presented to them, people would think about the issue for about 30 seconds and be like…
“Okay, but what about paper straws? What about reusable straws? What about this? What about that? I have a metal straw that works great! Surely that will do!”
These internet dunderheads actually believed their 30-second brainstorm would come up with a sufficient solution that has not been thought of yet.
As if the entire disabled community is going to be like, “We did all of this research, spent all of this time looking for alternatives, committed all of these resources to spread our conclusions, BUT WE NEVER KNEW ABOUT PAPER STRAWS! Thank you, kind stranger! You have single-handedly solved this dilemma!”
I just have trouble wrapping my head around the kind of ego one must have to think they could solve an issue like this with an internet comment.
What makes it worse is some of these “what about” comments would be replies to actual disabled people. These sudden experts in the science of materials would start suggesting straw alternatives. And these disabled folks, who are probably exhausted and at their wit’s end, must decide if they should give these individuals explanations of why these genius suggestions won’t work for them.
“I know you aren’t feeling well, but can you do all of the research for me so I don’t have to spend 2 minutes googling shit?”
And when you try to tell these people they are being ableist and kinda shitty, they act like a wounded animal. Suddenly they are the victim. THEY WERE JUST TRYING TO HELP! Not trusting people who live with these problems is the height of privilege. And forcing them to make their experiences relateable while remaining calm and polite is exhausting.
Then someone made this amazing chart that couldn’t possibly make it any easier to comprehend.
And people were still responding to it with…
“OKAY, BUT WHAT ABOUT…?”
In conclusion…
IT’S OKAY TO CHANGE YOUR DAMN MIND.
Also…
YOU’RE NOT AS SMART AS YOU THINK YOU ARE.
(Unless you actually are a materials scientist and you are developing an alternative as we speak.)
@sirfrogsworth thank you for this, and for perfectly encapsulating what this whole experience has been like as a disabled/ill person who a) recently found out using a plastic straw greatly reduces my neuralgia pain and risk of aspiration, b) talked about it on the internet and c) has been living with relentless hate email, and redundant “but have you tried…” comments ever since.
And thank you for thinking about the subject with critical compassion and changing your mind, and being open enough to talking about the fact that you changed your mind. I think some people think changing their mind means they’ve made some sort of moral failing sometimes, and would rather continue to be wrong/hurtful but feel right, than actually address their own behavior and question their motives.
So thank you. Again. For this and the *barks internally* caption, it’s a mood 😂
