Being a very frequent coffee drinker and Starbucks customer, I was very upset and disturbed to see this story on Yahoo. Ironically enough, while drinking my coffee, I caught the tail end of the story on “Good Morning America” too.
I’ve talked a lot about the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) in previous posts. This law is supposed to prohibit discrimination of a person with a disability. Sadly, like when I was a child, there are still people who will laugh and make blatant fun of someone just because of their differences. While enduring some taunting by students in early childhood isn’t necessarily against the law, because kids sometimes do those kinds of things to others who may not be just like them, it’s a different story when you participate in that kind of behavior as an employee of a company.
I’ve seen “deaf chats” happen in places like the local mall and even at Panera. In this case though, the police were called to break up a meeting of a group of deaf individuals such as the “deaf chats” I describe above. Isn’t this a free country where people can assemble peacefully without repercussion?
I’ve previously worked with the local deaf community for many years, and understand there are many forms of communication that deaf individuals utilize to communicate with hearing individuals. In this story, one of the customers wrote their order on a piece of paper. As a result, the person at the cash register told them they weren’t going to serve them because they’re deaf. What if the person just had a bad case of laryngitis? Wouldn’t that employee have felt dumb?
Toward the end of the story, one of the attorneys suggests that employees receive disability sensitivity training so that similar incidences don’t happen again. While this seems to be needed and helpful, I hope the training doesn’t just focus on one particular disability.
After this incident, it’s my sincere hope that Starbucks and other companies realize the amounts of money disabled people as a whole contribute to their bottom line each year, and that this sort of thing never happens again at Starbucks or any other store.
What other measures do you think could be taken to smooth over this occurrence in the disabled community?
Thanks for reading..
cr
For more information check out the link below:
http://gma.yahoo.com/deaf-customers-sue-starbucks-discrimination-233751945–abc-news-topstories.html