How not to make my day

[muckefuck]

So, the run-in:

I was waiting for the elevator. There was an older man in an electric geri chair and a younger woman with him. She was wearing plastic gloves, so I thought she was a nurse or CNA despite not wearing scrubs. I greeted them and the man engaged me in conversation. "I'm on four. Where are you staying?" I explained that it was my husband who was in residence; he took that in stride, like most people do.

In any case, the elevator arrived (after I showed them how you sometimes have to push the button again to get it to open) and the man manœuvred the chair into it. I started to step in, but the woman said, "Is there going to be enough room? I need a certain amount of room to do things." This kicked off a confusing exchange between the two--the man encouraging her to come in, the woman protesting, until finally I muttered, "This is ridiculous. I'll take the next one" and walked out.

She stepped in, turned to me, and said, "It's interesting that you call it 'ridiculous' when you're gay." It took me a moment to realise what had even happened. I stepped forward and held the door. "Did you just make a thing of me being gay? Why would you even do that?" Turns out she felt personally attacked by my comment (even though it was directed at the situation, not any particular person) and felt--she explained--fully justified in attacking me in return. "I have OCD!" she screamed. Fine, okay, but then maybe have a plan for the utterly foreseeable event of having to share an elevator? And maybe communicate that to the people around you so they have some idea what the hell's going on? If she had simply said, "I'm sorry, I don't feel comfortable sharing an elevator," I would've been like, whatever, and waited.

Instead, she created a situation where she felt she had to say, "I'm not homophobic!" because she'd just demonstrated the opposite. I get that she was feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable. But when you've spent all of a minute with somebody and your mind goes right to, "How can I use the one thing I know about this person against them?" that doesn't say much for your character, does it? The poor guy in the chair was trying to calm things, but neither of us was listening. I could see that nothing I might say would make things better for anyone, released the door, and then stood there fuming, hoping that would be the last I would ever see of her in my life.

Comments

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Oh, hell no.

Perhaps I'm biased because I've seen far more than my share of people adept at getting their way by dint of pretense at convenient-onset [pick one: OCD, panic attacks, autism, other fictitious condition involving conspicuous and repeated utterance of "the spectrum", etc].

But no, sorry, "I HAVE O-C-DEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!" does not translate to "Me first, fuck you, everybody else has to do whatever I want". If she'd be traumatised by more than one other person in the lift, well, she'd best not take any lifts, then, had she—or she can wait until nobody else needs to use it. It's her problem—charitably assuming it's as real and large as she sounds to have claimed—not mine, not yours, not the rest of the world's.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm not adverse to making reasonable accommodations for someone. (And waiting for another elevator when I'm in no particular hurry is pretty reasonable.) Afterwards, I was like, "She did have the gloves", which makes me think she was being truthful. (Of course, those don't stand out in a care facility the way they do other places.) And I get being embarrassed about having to constantly depend on the goodwill of strangers to take your disability seriously. But if you want my sympathy, you have to extend the same courtesy--think, for example, how embarrassing it is for the outsider caught in that situation (and how much worse it would be for someone with paranoia or social anxiety or whatever). Her actions were really deficient in empathy.

[mollyc-q.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry you had to deal with that. I think you might want to report the incident. The hair trigger belligerence and the homophobia, either much less both is cause for alarm. She shouldn't be running around the facility feeling apparently very comfortable picking a fights, she may have prior incidents with other patients, staff, or spouses, family of patients. An administrator needs to tell her she isn't allowed to verbally attack other people. The administrators should know that it happened, it gives them a chance to take action, now or later.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I considered it. But I was already feeling wretched and I didn't want to take the risk of exposing myself to another person as lacking in empathy as this one. I know it's not very civic-minded of me, but all I could think was, "We're gone in two days and then she's entirely their problem".

[mollyc-q.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, especially given the massive slap in the face that was. To risk it being compounded, that doesn't have to be on the table. Get yourselves out of there, its justly the thing to throw your energies at.

[anicca-anicca2.livejournal.com]

Wow. A tad neurotic, that woman.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Bipolar, apparently, according to her husband, who I ran into again yesterday. He was very apologetic and mentioned that she'd gotten into confrontations with two other people the same day.