almighty_patsy (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} almighty_patsy) wrote,@ 2009-01-08 18:42:00 |
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mostly because a dude with a trach in his throat walked in today...
We have a higher proportion of disabled (should I be saying "differently-abled"*?) customers than a lot of other shops in town, given that we sell such delightful things as ulcer dressings, in-dwelling catheters, wheelchairs and shower aids.
We have a higher proportioned of elderly customers, as well, given that are often offering these things wholesale at up to 80% less than many other shops of our kind.
Some of the reasons we can offer cheap products:
-We don't have scrubbed tile floors - we've got bare cement, or painted cement for the fancy rooms.
-We don't have flash displays designed by business executives - I am convinced that gnomes come into the shop at night to fuck with my surgical tools displays, which I could complain about more if these were anything more than sticky-labelled forceps and umbilical scissors hung on hooks on a plywood board.
-We don't run our own repairs and maintenance workshops - we'll smack a new bulb on your sphygmo and replace your tubing, and I've spent many a fond afternoon with pliers and cartons full of boxes of same, fiddling with the dials. But we don't provide the sort of service where we'll service your wheelchair.
-We don't run our own home-visits and deliveries system, with custom-printed boxes. I play a game of tetris to fit what's ordered into a fourth-time-used box that originally held needles shipped to us, and terribly sorry if the needle box made your neighbours think bad things.
-We don't have an adequate telephone system - well, we're Australian, and Telstra enjoys telling Australians that nothing is wrong, so I suppose that might be less of a money thing and more of a our-phone-service-screwed-us-over thing.
-We don't have air-conditioning - we have a nice collection of oscilating floor fans. We keep gloves and solutions and the kind cool. The vaccines fridge has its own alarm system (in the event of a 0.1ºC temperature drop). But things like, um, us, are not so important really, and things like glassware and bandages go in the attic. It is, of course, really fun to walk up the stairs in dead, hanging heat to grab a box of test tubes and lug it back down again, but to make things even more fun my father has devised a system whereby it is impossible to find the test tubes, as well, so you get ten more minutes picking up heavy boxes and sweating like a motherhugger to check if there's something underneath.
-We are not on a main street, in a shopping centre, anything like that - because of this,
-We also don't have fancy-shmancy entrances, and we're on a slope which is on a slope (if this makes any sense). If you're using a walker or wheelchair, you're in for a jolly treat, but once again there is an even more fun way of doing things.
Once you've come downstairs with those GODDAMNED test tubes, you may have the joy of realising your next customer uses a motorised wheelchair. These are absolutely impossible to manoeuvre into our shop without assistance, no matter what angle and speed and reverse and just-turn-a-tiny-bit-here is used. I look at others' wheelchairs the way I look at my own glasses - most of our wheelchair-using customers, at least, are going to be using them all the time. If someone taps my glasses, I find it very offputting; I try to make a point of treating any aid device as a part of a person's body. So of course when two sets of hands are needed to hoist wheels over the doorway, it's not that it's a hot and heavy-aired day and I don't want to lift things - I just feel so frigging awkward with my hands all over someone's person. I've never had to help someone move who couldn't speak, or couldn't speak well, but I can only imagine it would be worse. How can you vocalise that you want someone to stop doing that, or wait a second and then push, effectively? When they aren't watching you because they're trying to get that bloody chair up a slope?
We did have a bloke in today who couldn't speak at all. A trach in his throat - I assumed a recent change, as he was writing on notepaper to ask for what he needed, but that's pretty friggin' presumptuous and maybe there isn't a more effective way for him. I couldn't hear him writing, just my father's responses from the next room they were in. A one-way conversation with my father's voice getting louder with every response. Trachs don't hurt your hearing, but he was speaking as he would to a deaf customer.
POINT: pretty much everyone is frigging stupid and presumptuous about disability.
* I always thought this term was trite and somewhat patronising; I've heard disabled people say that they feel as much. Once at work a woman was buying for her daughter with moderate CP, struggling for a word, and Dad supplied "differently-abled"? She was flabbergasted. Had never heard the term. Thought it wonderful. "Yes! You're right! My daughter can do a lot of things most other kids can't, you know!" and she loved it. So I guess it's not as widely-used or as insulting as I thought?
We have a higher proportion of disabled (should I be saying "differently-abled"*?) customers than a lot of other shops in town, given that we sell such delightful things as ulcer dressings, in-dwelling catheters, wheelchairs and shower aids.
We have a higher proportioned of elderly customers, as well, given that are often offering these things wholesale at up to 80% less than many other shops of our kind.
Some of the reasons we can offer cheap products:
-We don't have scrubbed tile floors - we've got bare cement, or painted cement for the fancy rooms.
-We don't have flash displays designed by business executives - I am convinced that gnomes come into the shop at night to fuck with my surgical tools displays, which I could complain about more if these were anything more than sticky-labelled forceps and umbilical scissors hung on hooks on a plywood board.
-We don't run our own repairs and maintenance workshops - we'll smack a new bulb on your sphygmo and replace your tubing, and I've spent many a fond afternoon with pliers and cartons full of boxes of same, fiddling with the dials. But we don't provide the sort of service where we'll service your wheelchair.
-We don't run our own home-visits and deliveries system, with custom-printed boxes. I play a game of tetris to fit what's ordered into a fourth-time-used box that originally held needles shipped to us, and terribly sorry if the needle box made your neighbours think bad things.
-We don't have an adequate telephone system - well, we're Australian, and Telstra enjoys telling Australians that nothing is wrong, so I suppose that might be less of a money thing and more of a our-phone-service-screwed-us-over thing.
-We don't have air-conditioning - we have a nice collection of oscilating floor fans. We keep gloves and solutions and the kind cool. The vaccines fridge has its own alarm system (in the event of a 0.1ºC temperature drop). But things like, um, us, are not so important really, and things like glassware and bandages go in the attic. It is, of course, really fun to walk up the stairs in dead, hanging heat to grab a box of test tubes and lug it back down again, but to make things even more fun my father has devised a system whereby it is impossible to find the test tubes, as well, so you get ten more minutes picking up heavy boxes and sweating like a motherhugger to check if there's something underneath.
-We are not on a main street, in a shopping centre, anything like that - because of this,
-We also don't have fancy-shmancy entrances, and we're on a slope which is on a slope (if this makes any sense). If you're using a walker or wheelchair, you're in for a jolly treat, but once again there is an even more fun way of doing things.
Once you've come downstairs with those GODDAMNED test tubes, you may have the joy of realising your next customer uses a motorised wheelchair. These are absolutely impossible to manoeuvre into our shop without assistance, no matter what angle and speed and reverse and just-turn-a-tiny-bit-here is used. I look at others' wheelchairs the way I look at my own glasses - most of our wheelchair-using customers, at least, are going to be using them all the time. If someone taps my glasses, I find it very offputting; I try to make a point of treating any aid device as a part of a person's body. So of course when two sets of hands are needed to hoist wheels over the doorway, it's not that it's a hot and heavy-aired day and I don't want to lift things - I just feel so frigging awkward with my hands all over someone's person. I've never had to help someone move who couldn't speak, or couldn't speak well, but I can only imagine it would be worse. How can you vocalise that you want someone to stop doing that, or wait a second and then push, effectively? When they aren't watching you because they're trying to get that bloody chair up a slope?
We did have a bloke in today who couldn't speak at all. A trach in his throat - I assumed a recent change, as he was writing on notepaper to ask for what he needed, but that's pretty friggin' presumptuous and maybe there isn't a more effective way for him. I couldn't hear him writing, just my father's responses from the next room they were in. A one-way conversation with my father's voice getting louder with every response. Trachs don't hurt your hearing, but he was speaking as he would to a deaf customer.
POINT: pretty much everyone is frigging stupid and presumptuous about disability.
* I always thought this term was trite and somewhat patronising; I've heard disabled people say that they feel as much. Once at work a woman was buying for her daughter with moderate CP, struggling for a word, and Dad supplied "differently-abled"? She was flabbergasted. Had never heard the term. Thought it wonderful. "Yes! You're right! My daughter can do a lot of things most other kids can't, you know!" and she loved it. So I guess it's not as widely-used or as insulting as I thought?
