Most people are reasonably nice about my service dog. Some touch without asking, but since they nearly always have the decency to be embarassed when I tell them to stop it's hard to hold a grudge. However, there was one woman, who I remembered this morning on my way to the mall for some new pants, who apparently decided that acting embarassed was a stupid course of action when the whole thing was really my fault anyway, which has now earned her a post on my blog. Because I'm still pissed about it.
I live somewhere very small. Just big enough for businesses to come in and try their luck, but small enough that they're sent packing months later, completely broke. In my seventeen years I've watched five pet shops, two toy stores, one Payless, one music store, and a lot of stores I'm probably forgetting meet their doom. I spend a lot of time hoping that the book store isn't going next, and it's just passed the four year mark so I'm cautiously optimistic that it's going to be ok.
Back in January I went to the mall with a friend. We wandered around for about twenty minutes before going into the novelty shop that had arrived five months ago. We looked at some figurines and some stress balls and some large light-up plant-type things, and we were holding up some stretchy shirts and laughing about them when the one adult manning the store came up behind me and began petting my dog. I turned around and told her to stop. My next sentence was going to be about how my dog is a service dog and they can't be petted, but I only got part of it out before being severely scolded for my rudeness. Shocked, I looked up from my dog and saw that her expression suggested she was sucking on a lemon seasoned with Dramamine that had said something nasty about her mother. Surely, I thought, she was angry because my friend and I had been being loud, not because I'd told her not to pet my dog.
Nope, actually. It was the dog.
My friend stepped up beside me and told her politely that not even she could pet my dog, that was just how service dogs work. She cut her off as well to further criticize my social skills and say that the way I'd spoken to her had been horribly rude and I obviously had no respect for my elders. Beginning to panic, I stammered something about how respect didn't play into it, she just couldn't pet my service dog, it said so on his jacket. Once again, she talked over me about my rudeness, this time adding that I should be ashamed of myself. And then she threw me out of the store.
For telling her not to pet my dog, she threw me out of the store.
I was pretty sure that was illegal in some way, and tried to say so. She repeated that I was rude and that I should learn to respect my elders. Then she pointed toward the door and pursed her lemon-sucking lips even tighter. I considered asking to speak to her supervisor. I considered pulling out my cell phone and threatening to call the police and ask if she was allowed to throw me out for this. I considered behaving like the teenager I was and leaving in a storm of profanity. Not being particularly brave, the method of exit I chose was to gape at her for a few seconds, then slink out the door with my cheeks burning and blood pounding in my ears.
My friend and I found a new store to be loud in, occasionally tossing her more offensive statements back and forth and listing all the reasons she was a bitch. And then we realized something sobering. I'd left my coat in the store.
We returned to find it lying on the counter and the woman determinedly ignoring us as she fiddled with the register. Having had time to think about what I should have done, I asked to speak to her supervisor. She told me she was in charge here. I told her I was sorry if I'd offended her but service dogs just can't be petted. She told me, again, that I was rude and needed to respect my elders and threw me (and my coat) out of the store. Again.
By this time I'd overcome my initial fight-or-flight response to having and authority figure so angry at me and decided that I was no longer scared and was instead pissed as hell. I saw no disrespect in telling her she couldn't pet my dog and was unimpressed by her continual use of the "I'm your elder" card, in my opinion only slightly less irritating than the "It's because I'm black" card. My friend and I went down the the mall office intending to file a complaint, but found a sign saying that it was only staffed on the dates listed on the door, the day we were there not being one of them, and that if we wanted to report something we would need to call the listed number. So we got out my cell phone and called the listed number, got an answering machine, and discovered from the message that we needed to be able to tell them the name of the store. So my friend ran off again to find out what it was while I sat on the floor outside the empty office in the ghost town of a mall that apparently ran itself. Once we had the name we called again and left the message.
Two weeks later the store went out of business. I'm not going to pretend I was sad.
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