People Refuse to Tolerate Anything

One thing that must be kept in mind is that this story is not about a new or improperly-trained manager who made the wrong decision. It is about the events that lead up to the decision to approach the Mom and inform her that the supposed problem was just too much for the complaining customer(s) to bear.

Events like this are becoming more frequent.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/01/13/it-was-hurtful-what-happened-to-a-disabled-little-girl-involving-her-special-shoes-prompted-an-apology-from-major-restaurant/

"A mother left a Panera Bread in tears during the first week of the new year after an employee asked her to remove her disabled toddler’s squeaking shoes, which were apparently “bothering someone.”

“We weren’t welcome with the shoes. It was very blatant,” Catherine Duke told WTOC-TV of her daughter’s prescription orthopedics.

Even after explaining to the assistant manager that the shoes were required by her 2-year-old daughter’s doctor in order to help her walk, the mother was asked to remove them.

“It was very hurtful, and I left the store crying, not a very good thing for a mom to feel like her child is being discriminated against,” the mother told the news station.

After repeated attempts to contact Panera Bread’s corporate office for comment, WTOC was informed just this past weekend that the Duke family had received a formal apology.

“They formally apologized to Emma for saying something about her shoes,” Duke told the news station........"

Reports such as the one in the below link remind me that the world of big government has produced a culture in which people feel that they have the right to live free of any types of sights, sounds, or smells that may be less than pleasant. They also convince me that our assumption that everything should be taken of has a major consequence - an absolute lack of empathy for others.

The mindset seems to be something out of dystopian future worlds such as that which was portrayed in the the 1970's movie Logans Run. We want everything to look and feel pleasing to the senses. The sight of slow-moving elderly people, the disabled of any sort, or anything that does not meet the criteria established by us is cause for raising our objections; and we demand no less than the enforcement of our minimum standards.

We have decided that parents of disabled children are, far from deserving or our sympathy and appreciation for being good parents, somehow obligated to take any steps necessary to spare us having to see or hear them.

We want to live in a city or suburban area, but don't want to be bothered by the sight or sound of someone less fortunate than we. We choose not to buy a home in an rural area, but complain when the neighbor's dog barks once in a while, when they have a once-a-year backyard party, or when the neighborhood children inadvertently send a ball into our yard. If we do buy a home next to a farm, we complain that the smell from the cows is too much for us.

-and we have no shame at all for cultivating this attitude.

We do, however, seem to have no problem with people using filthy language (even in front of children), allowing our girls to be used a sex-toys by maltrained boys at the tender age of 14 or younger, or people riding the subway while  dressed below the belt-line only their underwear*.

It's disgusting.


*http://www.upi.com/blog/2014/01/12/No-Pants-Subway-Ride-sends-thousands-out-in-underwear/1521389559218/