Pet Peeve

When people consistently bring up and use their handicap.

While I'm very sympathetic to those that are less fortunate and have lost their ability to hear, to see, to walk - I always thought that they didn't want to be treated differently, or "singled" out. At least I was raised with the knowledge that even with these people's limitations, that they were, afterall, still human and really no different that me.

I deal with customer service in my workplace on a daily basis. I'm sure we have several customers with handicaps that we are unaware of. However, there are 2 that always made it necessary to point it out to us over the phone.

One customer always talked about her daughter in a wheelchair that was disabled. If this customer forgot to pay her bill on time, she'd call and say "Well, you see, I have a daughter in a wheelchair" or "I didn't call in my order on time because my daughter is in a wheelchair". The "blame" was always put on her handicap daughter.

Today, another customer, who has in the past let us know her situation every single time we talk to her, called and left 3 messages after office hours. The first 2 were the same "I'd like to change my order, if someone can please give me a call ...". The third message said this exactly "Hi, this is 'so-and-so', I'm wondering if someone can call me, I'm legally blind ..... and I have an order change."

Whether she was legally blind or not, she would have gotten a return phone call. Telling us she was blind did not result in any faster response. She called after hours, we were gone .... I returned her call personally this morning (and surprising that this time she didn't feel the need to tell me that she was legally blind).