Wow, that's disgusting.

[apocalypsos]

Man's autistic son assaulted and harassed by the staff at a San Diego restaurant simply for trying to order. conuly, have you seen this? The first person I thought of when I read this was you.

In other news, there might not be much I like about my job, but being able to roll out of bed at one in the afternoon on my days off makes up for a LOT. :)

Am off to write fic. Was going to finish that Heroes stuff, but considering the focus of tonight's episode I figure it's probably better if I wait.

Comments

[florahart]

Well. That link has now raised my blood pressure quite nicely.

*imagines own technically-vaguely-autistic kid in that scenario* *knows there would be weeks' or moths' worth of repercussions*

*wishes to kick waitress and manager in question quite firmly, possibly with boots.*

[dargie.livejournal.com]

That account of the assault was horrifying. Clearly there's something wrong with the waitress because her reaction was way over the top, but it's horrifying that the manager backed her up. I hope they sue crap out of that restaurant, and press charges. Even if that child hadn't been autistic and had been difficult, she had no right to touch him.

[cikevin.livejournal.com]

I've been to that restaurant. It has notoriously terrible service, yet it remains popular with hip vegan kids with oversized sunglasses and clove cigarettes.

This incident has been a subject of some discussion among my friends as well as san_diego, and while I do condemn that waitress, I also suspect there's another side to the story that we're just not hearing from this account.

[conuly]

Yeah, I did. I decided not to post it because most people I know who are interested in the subject already knew about it, and also because I saw it at a high-stress point in my life, online and off. Well, you must have seen the cryptic posts, anyway :)

But thankies! *huggles anyway*

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd still be annoyed at the waitress but I'd understand it if it turned out that she were having a serious personal problem and that was the reason for it. But when the manager didn't offer up an explanation or apologize for her behavior and blamed the kid instead, that's when it went from an uncomfortable situation to really revolting. (God knows I've had days like that, where something serious happens and you still have to go to work and everybody's getting on your last damn nerve and you just SNAP, but at least when that happens I take the blame.)

[velocityboy.livejournal.com]

Even with two sides to the story (for instance, the party in question might honestly have been on the list of "annoying customers" for whatever reason... my restaurant certainly has a host of customers whose complaints we do not care about because they've caused unfair/untrue scenes too many times before, or actually ruined the dinners of everyone around them), I'm still going to argue that physical contact with children not one's own (regardless of disorder or behavior) is very bad form unless you are given supervision of said children. Looking at the management's POV, however, I too feel something's missing in this tale, because most management types bend over backwards to kiss customer ass... often at the unfair expense of their own crew... because many customers are full of crap and want free stuff or misbehave & cry out foul treatment when called on it.

Oh, if only full stories could ever be viewed...

[neonnurse.livejournal.com]

Man. If someone did that to my boy Mike (who is not actually autistic but has similar behaviors sometimes), the police WOULD have been called. Sadly, most likely because *I* snapped and punched the waitress out. Come to think of it, that might happen even if I witnessed this happening to a stranger. It's kind of one of my buttons labeled Do Not Push Under Any Circumstances Whatsoever.