I use a cane a lot these days, and one of the most absurd things that TSA does is run the cane through their x-ray machine, and then expect you to proceed through the rest of the process without the cane — excuse me, but just what do they think the person who is *using* the cane are doing with it? Especially when ity’s a wooden one where most all the varnish is rubbed off the top portion through use.

This past summer I thought that the TSA had actually had an attack of Clue(tm), as the screener at TF Green had a (somewhat battered) “loaner” cane for me to use while my own was being x-rayed. I should have known better — on the return leg it was another case of take-the-cane-and-watch-the-old-geezer-hobble.

(and I am Officially Astonished at the fact that they felt they had to submit my harp case to explosives sniffing because the x-ray showed a battery in the tuner (you know, the thing that helps you check that the harp strings are at the right notes?) — the tuner itself is about the size of an audio cassette — and the first machine died partway through their “sniff test” and they had to start all over on another machine.

Security theatre, not security practice.

When people say “Well, I don’t want to ask because I might offend” and “I wait till they obviously need help” – what makes it so they obviously need help? People ignore my husband and I, or they stare at us while we struggle. Do they think that if they offer to grab the door they’ll be offending me? Do they think asking if we need any help will get them barked at? What struggle indicates that they need help enough to risk it? (In rereading that, I think it could be taken as snarky or angry. I’m aiming for curious and discussion, and I hope that comes across, but it’s hard in this medium.)
Generally, if people look distressed then I will help – or if it’s obvious, like someone with a cane trying to pick stuff up. But yeah, it’s hard to know, and I sometimes worry that I should have offered to help (I work in an area with a lot of elderly people).

Oh, and again, I am deeply uncomfortable starting conversations. I get incredibly stressed in crowds. I walk extremely fast and have a huge personal space in public. So offering to help does not come easily.

I don’t feel patronised when women offer to help (um, a woman is unlikely to offer because they assume they are stronger/more capable than me, it’s not exactly the same) but do not like to be helped by anyone of either sex. As I said, I hold doors for both sexes. I HATE men standing aside but seldom say anything.

I can’t believe that no one, from a steward on the plane to one at the airport to the airport itself didn’t step up to do it.

Holy crap the story is a pile of stupid.

And it’s the airline’s fault for having policies which lead to employees thinking they cannot step up to help someone.

I’m also a bit confused about the door-holding thing–I mean, I guess I see a difference between holding a door for someone and letting them go through first (not necessary and kind of silly in most cases) and not letting the door close behind you in someone’s face (common courtesy, I thought–but does that bother some people?).

The airline story is utterly appalling, and I am horrified that no bystanders even offered to help. I pretty much expect the airlines to make flying the most uncomfortable and humiliating experience possible these days, but I would have thought someone would have offered help. That’s just inconceivable to me.

And let’s not even start on the number of times I’m asked in airports to remove the brace and send it through the x-ray machine. They look offended when you say, “No.” They don’t understand how long it takes to get it positioned correctly not to chafe, nor how unflatteringly you have to position yourself to get it on. It’s always amusing to me when they swab it with filter paper and run it through the mass spectrometer looking for explosives. Oh, and after they run my crutch through the x-ray, they can’t bring it back for me to use to come through security since it’s been “cleared.” I have to hobble through on my own those 30 yards. How am I going to put something in it with all of them watching after I’ve been patted down and scanned with the hand-held wand?

My husband is legally blind. His vision at maximum correction is 20/70 with contact lenses, 20/100 with glasses. He brought me with him into this bureaucratic thing he had to do because he had forgotten his magnifying glass and would need me to read the paperwork for him. The security people didn’t want to let me in because it was policy that only the person who had to do the papers was supposed to go in, and when he explained that he was legally blind, they asked if he had papers to prove it. Um, yeah, it’s a legal requirement to *prove* that you can’t see jack unless it’s directly on top of your nose? They said “Well, it looks to me like you’re looking straight at me!” yes, hello, just because a man can see well enough to see *you*, human-sized security guy, doesn’t mean he can see well enough to read paperwork that was printed in a 10 pt font.

As for how this woman was treated, it’s appalling, but it doesn’t surprise me; flying has become more and more unpleasant and hellish since 1996, let alone after 2001, and simply the experience of being on a plane is so awful I’m sure it stresses people out and makes many otherwise good people too upset with the world to notice that someone else needs help. Also, the horrible conditions of flying encourage passengers to hate flight attendants, which results in flight attendants developing an “us vs. them” mentality that results in power tripping and disregarding the needs of customers. Frankly, I want trains to come back in a big way and break the back of the airline industry. It’s great that I can get to California in six hours but not if it’s actually going to be 12 hours and I’m going to be treated like I’m a subhuman piece of belligerent cargo for that time. I’d rather take three days on a train.

I hope this woman sues, and wins such a whopping huge lawsuit that the struggling carrier goes out of business, and every other carrier becomes so terrified of the possibility that they bend over backwards to meet the needs of disabled customers and fire the ass of any employee who so much as jokes about disabled people being a pain in the ass.

As opposed to, you know, a totally reasonable alteration in how she did her job based on her physical situation. So I’ve learned to never take the “disabled people are so entitled” claim at face value.

That’s true, it can.
But, not offering help can mean that someone who needs or wants help doesn’t get it. As with Julianna.

Ultimately, you have to choose which you think is less harmful: offending someone who doesn’t want or need help or ignoring someone who does.

Personally, I think that the world would be a lot better place if more people, not fewer, stopped and offered to help each other. Some people won’t appreciate it, it’s true, and if they don’t, you back off and let them do their thing.

When people say “Well, I don’t want to ask because I might offend” and “I wait till they obviously need help” – what makes it so they obviously need help? People ignore my husband and I, or they stare at us while we struggle. Do they think that if they offer to grab the door they’ll be offending me? Do they think asking if we need any help will get them barked at? What struggle indicates that they need help enough to risk it? (In rereading that, I think it could be taken as snarky or angry. I’m aiming for curious and discussion, and I hope that comes across, but it’s hard in this medium.)

I don’t know. But I wonder if people seeing Juliana (not the employees, but others in the airport) decided that she was either drunk, or that offering to help a pwd would have lead to them being yelled at, and they didn’t want that? Or was it just “Let’s pretend she doesn’t exist because we don’t want to catch whatever she has.”