To have got really fucking annoyed with customers in a shop?

[PavlovtheCat]

Well, I bloody well know I wasn't actually, I am so fucking upset and furious that we live in a world where there are so many people who will not help others, and no cost to themselves, so I just need to vent.

I was in a new Pound Stretcher opened in a retail park as DH told me they had some reasonably priced storage baskets. It was an absolute scrum in there, so many people and really unorganised, boxes piled in the aisles, hardly able to walk past people who had stopped to pick things off shelves.

At one point I walked, (with my crutch as I have a problem with my lower spine which affects my mobility) behind a man in a wheelchair, with boxes stacked at the side so I could not walk past him with the pull-along trolley that I had to take off DD at one point to stop her from hitting people's ankles.

In the final 'corridor' which is huge, there are a pile of lamps on the bottom shelf, just sort of thrown there in no order, wires hanging off the shelf. I was a way off, and heard a smash. turned to see the guy in the wheelchair, who had a full basket on his lap had run over/somehow pulled off some lamps from the shelf, just as he reached the start of a really fucking long queue (seriously long, about 35 people deep, some couples/children so a good 50 people in front of him). He didn't seem to notice at first, or didn't realise a lamp had broken and carried on to get in the queue. Whatever, regardless, there were several people who Just fucking overtook him and got into the queue, having seen what had happened, walking past the broken lamp and two other lamps on the floor. He had by this point turned around in his wheelchair, with no hands free really as he had a full basket, went back and started to try and pick these lamps up, leaning over in his wheelchair, looking around at people with hopeful eyes and clearly feeling fucking embarrassed.

People just walked past him, to the queue, around him, deliberately avoided him, stood where they were, wherever they were and stared and everyone in this queue turned around and fucking watched him. They just fucking watched a man in a wheelchair with a basket of stuff, leaning over to pick up some fallen things on the floor (some having just overtaken him to get before him in the queue) and DID NOT FUCKING HELP. just stared.

I was walking toward him, and I walked over to him and use dmy crutch to get myself to the floor my crutch (which was hugely fucking painful, but at least I could get there, unlike the guy who was trying to pick it up) and put the ok lamps back and picked up the broken bits of the other china lamp base. While 10 feet away maximum there was the start of the long queue and faces looking down at us. I said to the man 'these people are so rude, how can they just stare?' 'i know' he said 'it's awful isn't it?'

I looked up right into the faces of these people, some of whom had again walked past us, this man, to join the queue, and shouted so they could all hear 'how can you just stare? you just walked by while this happened, you have just watched and stared - why didn't you help? why don't you help now?!!' and ALL OF THEM turned and looked the other way, as if nothing had happened. I watched them open mouthed, shook my head and said to this guy 'that is unbelievable'.

The guy said to me 'you get used to it' smiled at me, but in a quiet, resigned way. I was furious. I didn't want the guy to think I felt sorry for him but I had to fight back tears of anger. I would have helped anyone who struggled somehow if I was able. I told him that it was not right and while I had a voice I would not get used to it and he laughed. but clearly this was not the first time he had experienced people walking by when he needed help by his manner.

I told him to go back to the queue and I would get an assistant to come clear it up. I had put the broken lamp on the shelf in a pile. He said 'just leave it, I will tell them when I get to the front'. I said goodbye to him and put my basket down and walked out the shop telling the children I was not queueing for stuff I didn't even want.

I thanked my children for also trying to help (they are too little to pick up broken china) and we talked about never ever walking on by when people need help, unless it puts themselves in danger. I reminded them that we all need help sometimes and we will all need help in the future in some way and we will be thankful that people didn't walk on by and to make sure they were never like those people in that shop.

And I feel really fucking tearful even writing this.

I guess I am being unreasonable in how much this has upset me. but it really, really has.

The End.

I just wish people would stop being so selfish and blustering on to justify it.

I wish my kids would stop being treated as non people and invisible because they are in a wheelchair.

But it's not going to happen. Society is too selfish.

To you that do or would help thank you. As you can see you are very much in the minority and make a massive difference to the lives of families like mine.

This thread makes me feel sad to the core. I can't even get the energy to explain exactly why, but it brings me back to all the times I've struggled and needed help, and people have probably justified in their heads why they shouldn't help me. Or my DD.

I've been shoved past because I am slow, ignored because I have to wait for a gap so as not to run anyone over with my wheel and had to wait basically until everyone was gone before I could progress. I've had people judge my parenting when my DD has melted down. I've had people walk past me when I've fallen. I had people watched as my DD ran away from me in a busy town centre but ignored me asking them to stop her because I can't run myself. I've had to stand on buses, with my stick useless, holding on to two children for their safety and in great pain, with no one willing to let us sit, even after explaining myself.

A lot of these things would have taken a little bit of understanding and a kind comment to go away. There's a difference between disabled people wanting to be treated like others, and in watching them suffer difficulty without even enquiring if they would like help. I've been in that wheelchair trying to make eye contact with someone to ask for help, because I sure as hell don't want to shout and seem needy and add to their entertainment for the two minutes we come into contact with each other.

I'm disabled and I'd go out my way to help others if they needed it and I am able to, I wish that everybody realised the barriers people face in day to day life, could take a couple of minutes from their lives to help another. It's not about disability even, it's just about recognising a need for a little human compassion and kindness. I'd rather offer to help and be turned down, than assume if I offer that they'll be annoyed with me, so just not offer anyway.

Like a mother with two children on the bus, one sick and vomiting (travel sickness) all over the mother with half the journey to go. Would you watch that and complain to the driver, or would you find a couple of tissues, maybe a spare plastic bag for the child to be sick into, say a few kind words to lessen the mother's abject humiliation that no one is helping, and she has a sick child, and she had vomit all over her top and down into her bra, and can't clean up because she has to hold the sick child, direct his vomit onto her so less goes on the floor for people to vocally complain about, assure him it's okay when he panics about it. Just one bit of help would have made that experience easier for her. Someone vacating a proper seat so her son could lie down in it, so she could get her baby wipes out and make the best of a bad situation. Even just not looking on in revulsion as she tries to deal with it.

I dunno, I can't come to a conclusion and my efforts of trying to make myself understood are poorly written. I just don't know where the separation came from between helping out your fellow person, and ignoring a disabled man in a bit of a situation where a couple of minutes of support might have made a massive difference to how he felt, how you felt, how the outcome of the situation went. Saying that people often say they don't want help when they are disabled is just a cop out. Asking if they'd like help, whether they turn you down or not, would be the humane thing to do. Engaging with him in conversation and offering some sort of support would be better than nothing. An "I'll grab a shop assistant, it's ridiculous how badly lain out the shop is", or an "Are you alright with that or could I help?" Being ignored when you are struggling has to be one of the worst feelings in the world. Being treated like another normal person in a bad situation is miles better, we don't want to be ignored, have your eyes slide off us when you note the wheelchair, have people assume we'll reject offers of help that you would give to any other human being who'd had a mishap, be lumped into your one experience of trying to help out a disabled person that was turned down, because all disabled people aren't the same, just the same as all able-bodied people aren't. Our wheelchair or disability doesn't define us, we are still people, and we react far better to being treated like ordinary people.

I think I am going to quit because I'm not even sure I am making sense any more. Just one last thing... if you saw a short person struggling to reach something, would you pity them and offer help, or would you just see the logistics of a person in a situation where they need a bit of help? So if that person was in a wheelchair, would you treat them differently

I don't think the op did anything wrong. Helping people is never wrong. She did a lovely, helpful thing.

The bit I don't understand is her rage at others who didn't do what she did.

Not one person has had a go at the op for helping this guy.

The rage comes from experience of this sort of thing happening over and over to a certain group of society. Not right maybe, but it doesn't come from nowhere. I've read the stories from other people, have a fair few of my own, and that is just from a small selection of society, I can imagine that it's only the tip of an iceberg of ignorance. When you have to deal with it day in day out, you do get angry. And as a newly disabled person, the OP still has the strength and the will to call people out on it, unlike the man who knew it wasn't going to happen.

I kind of get your point dog, I've had moments when I've vowed never to help anyone ever again when I've received a particularly bad reaction to what I've done with the intention of being polite and helpful. For instance when a door was grabbed off me and slammed back in my face after holding it open for someone. Apparently I was being rude by implying she was helpless. I had had it drummed into me that you hold the door open if someone is coming close behind you. I'd have held it open for an Olympic athlete just the same.

However I'm weird and that resolve never lasts more than a couple of hours. The urge to help people has got me into lots if scrapes but I couldn't live with myself if I was rude to someone or worse, ignored someone who needed help.

fan you are so right. I just don't get it. I just cannot get my head around it. Why you would not help someone else, disabled or not disabled, who needs some assistance at that particular time.

And you are also right that I am 'new' to this. I think part of his comment 'you get used to it' was aimed at me, it felt a bit like he was letting me know to get used to it, hence my own comment about using my voice as long as I have it. I didn't really shout at them with any expectation that they would actually help. I wanted them to think about the fact they had not help, to know it had not gone unnoticed, yes, to embarrass them. And, the more I think about that, the more I am not ashamed I did that, called them on it.

I still don't get it eight years in to being disabled. My friend who has had CP since birth doesn't get it either, but you do find the flame of anger dulls down after years of the same treatment and not being able to do much about it. Don't let it destroy your image of human kindness, because there have been many moments of that for both of us too, but there does seem to be a herd mentality out and about that means people stick with the herd and don't stand out, which means walk on by and leave it to someone else to deal with.