Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to feel uncomfortable being served by woman with tourettes that kept swearing at me?

633 replies

racmac · 30/11/2008 17:30

I went to a well known high street store and was served by a lady who had tourettes. I have no problem with this or any of her ticks BUT she kept saying cunt and wanker - i dont use these words in front of my children so dont expect others to AIBU in expecting that she shouldnt be serving customers?

It was rather disconcerting to be told "thats £20.00 please, cunt, wanker"

Racmac

OP posts:
jimjamshaslefttheyurt · 01/12/2008 16:48

Young children don't notice. They really don't. They're very accepting. It's teens who are the worst for gawping.

Aitch · 01/12/2008 16:54

nor would i, claw. too knackered.

claw3 · 01/12/2008 17:01

LOL me too, im fucked and i dont have tourettes!

Must go cook some dinner, laters

SummatAnNowt · 01/12/2008 17:05

So what I'm getting from this thread is that Tourette's is an unacceptable disability then?

Is that right?

Shove the freaks in the backroom?

2AdventSevenfoldShoes · 01/12/2008 17:06

I hope by feaks you mean the knobheads who think People with disabilities should hide away

Aitch · 01/12/2008 17:09

jj i saw a guy the other day with a really bad scar on his head, he must've had an operation that pretty much required his face being taken off and stitched back on again, it was a really strange effect. you could not (by which i mean i could not) help but look because you would initially think that your eyes weren't seeing properly, iykwim?

anyway, no matter, he walked on down the street. no hat on or any cover-up so obviously happy with how he looked etc.

but a group of young lads, all really handsome, really privileged-looking, floppy-haired late teens were actually shouting at each other 'jeeeeesus did you see that guy's face ffs? etc etc' i was really shocked actually, it was like he wasn't human. i did draw them a look and say 'you should stop and listen to yourselves sometimes' but they were too busy, hands on their knees laughing. fuckers. i could understand it in people who didn't knwo better but this was a sport.

SummatAnNowt · 01/12/2008 17:10

Probably just as well I'm the one with the kid, I mean if my brother had decided to have children there would've been a child CONSTANTLY subjected to swearing and spitting I mean how could such a child not turn out to be a complete social undesirable!?!

How has my son so far managed not to pick up such things from his beloved uncle.

Come to think of it, my son hasn't even started shrugging his shoulders, winking at people, making weird noises in his throat, or slapping himself despite seeing me do it! Of course if I swore as well I would probably be judged as not fit to have him.

SummatAnNowt · 01/12/2008 17:11

2shoes

ruddynorah · 01/12/2008 17:17

wannabe- that's really interesting. my store's just bought a £7000 slim line electric wheelchair for one of our staff so he can move about the store without falling over all the time. he has calipers on his legs and uses sticks. he struggles massively and sweats so so much all the time as he tries to just get about. so with this chair he will be enabled to do more roles and help customers better.

it would be far far easier for m&s to sling him out, far easier for us as managers not to figure out roles for him to do, figure out how we should measure his performance, work out his pay rise etc, as compared with his fully able bodied colleagues.

this is a huge m&s store, and we can accommodate the adjustments needed for these people.

the difficulty really isn't in the physically adjsutments needed but the adjustments to people's mind sets who deem those with disabilities as undesirable in the work place.

2AdventSevenfoldShoes · 01/12/2008 17:24

Aitch what idiots

jimjamshaslefttheyurt · 01/12/2008 17:28

Well precisely Summat. I think there's a need for t-shirts saying 'don't worry its not catching'.

And Aitch - That's the type of people I would worry about my children being around. Not someone with a disability (any disability).

pingping · 01/12/2008 17:31

OP your very arrogant and Naive. I would rather my children heard swearing whilst I was there so at least I could explain to them that its wrong and rude

Original poster
racmac · 01/12/2008 17:49

OK Ive had enough - Ive changed my opinions and kept talking to everyone on here - you know nothing about me but call me arrogant and naive.

As i said previously i was not rude to this woman, i did not suggest she be locked in a cupboard or backroom or anything else.

I started a debate and am interested to hear everyones point of view whether i agree or not.

I have never said to my children anything bad about any disabled person and i never would - i do not want my children to hear swearing - thats my right as a parent to bring my children up how i choose - thats not wrapping them in cotton wool - i have not encouraged my child to laugh at anybody becuase of a disability.

There seems little point in continuing to engage in this thread when it descends into slagging off - carry on between youselves

OP posts:
2AdventSevenfoldShoes · 01/12/2008 17:54

racmac your op was fine imo, you jst asked a question.
unfortuamtly a few(we about 2) knobheads thenused the thread to voice thir weid veiws,
welcome to YANBU topic.

SummatAnNowt · 01/12/2008 18:10

Sorry racmac, I did see your later post about thinking on it and everything and I was really not directing my comments at you personally.

Aitch · 01/12/2008 18:12

i think it's been productive, racmac.

onager · 01/12/2008 18:20

I really don't want to upset anyone who suffers from tourettes. This thread for me is about the principle of employing people who can do the work effectively.

It strikes me that with tourettes you must be using words from your own 'forbidden' list. It must be all the words you've been told not to use or how else could it work? So a Frenchman would use french swear words and so on right?

Okay so I've no experience of tourettes, but I'd expect it to include other forbidden words, racist terms etc that you've been taught not to say.

The reason I mention this (apart from some genuine curiosty about the mechanism) is that some of you already thought I was a demon from hell for saying that some words deemed racist are not always meant to hurt and in any case are not blows.

I have to wonder how those people who screamed at me then will reconcile their "it's always offensive if someone is offended" policy with this thread.

jimjamshaslefttheyurt · 01/12/2008 18:30

I can't take you seriously since you compared TS to paedophilia I'm afraid onager. About 5% of people with TS swear. 95% do not.

And the DDA means you cannot reject someone with TS from a customer service role because of their tourettes.

I think you are failing to understand the difference between words (whatever they are) said with intent and a tic. Have you ever even met someone with TS? A swear word produced as a tic is nothing like a swear word produced with intent. It doesn't have the same delivery. It's really not hard to tell the difference. Even without experience.

jimjamshaslefttheyurt · 01/12/2008 18:34

you can educate yourself about TS here

onager · 01/12/2008 18:36

jimjamshaslefttheyurt, I stopped taking you seriously way back when I realised you were only reading part of each post and consequently were confused as to what I was saying. This post is no exception.

ilovemydog · 01/12/2008 18:36

A blind woman got onto the bus a few days ago, and wanted help finding the buzzer. So, I was trying to direct her, 'um, a bit more to the left, more to the right, up just a bit, you should see it now...'

Apologized profusely for my (poor) choice of words, and she very kindly said that one shouldn't change one's language to accomodate disability.

I thought this was very philosophical

ruddynorah · 01/12/2008 18:38

onager- because racism isn't a disability perhaps??! you are clutching at straws now.

wannaBe · 01/12/2008 18:42

ilovemydog IMO that's totally the right attitude. In fact I think that the more you amend your language to accommodate a disability the more you actually draw attention to it iykwim?

so for instance, if you were to say to someone "I'll see you later," how would you adapt that to take into account the fact the person could not see? "see" is just an expression after all...

I had a teacher at school who did say once she always found it slightly funny when, if she walked into the lounge (this was a boarding school), and there was a totally blind student sitting there, with their back to the tv and when she asked what they were doing they replied, "watching television,"

Seuss · 01/12/2008 18:43

Say for the sake of argument my ds started shouting a racist word, he wouldn't be able to help it, he isn't a racist it is just a word to him. We can't not take him anywhere just because he might shout it, we would have to hope that people did realise he wasn't meaning offence. And Jimjams is right, it is usually quite obvious to distinguish a tic from a non-tic comment.

onager · 01/12/2008 18:47

Ruddynorah, go sit with jimjamshaslefttheyurt. Maybe you can help each other following the longer sentences.