3 women say they were abandoned by wheelchair workers at CLT | 13wmaz.com
The struggle is real. Lumy shared this story with me last week and it struck a chord with me for a number of reasons. Last weekend I travelled from the Charlotte airport to Atlanta and I was struck by the poor experience I had. Unfortunately for all the airports thru which I travel, I live in Atlanta and the Hartsfield Jackson airport is as far as I am concerned, the gold standard of airports and all cities should strive for the model used in ATL. ATL is (annoyingly) HUGE, is always under construction somewhere, somehow and at any given time there are always 5,000,000 people passing thru but believe me when I tell you that shit is efficient. Queues are constantly moving, there are signs EVERYWHERE so you definitely know where to go and the shit just runs like a well oiled machine. Maybe I’m also spoiled because there are “Special Services” queues everywhere and every step of the way…but then, it’s not like ATL is the only airport with “my” lanes. As a result, it annoys me to no-end when I go thru a schupidy, rinkydink airport that is quarter the size of ATL and my experience is sub par at best.
In CLT, I had to go thru the normal queue where there were 1000 people AND their luggage – rolling thru the tight queue lanes in a scooter or even for someone pushing a wheelchair is not easy, especially when bending corners – I always have to hope that I don’t ride up on the pole base; worse yet if I happen to have my luggage trailing behind and it rides up on the base and ends up at a silly angle so it’s twisted, increasing the potential to fall over…and…and…u get the drift. Then I get to the top of the TSA line and when I say the lady was barking at people, I really mean barking – she was horrible. Since I don’t walk thru the scanner, I always have to wait for someone to escort me and long story short, by the time that asshole came, I ended up barking right back at her too. I’d ended up telling them 3X that I couldn’t walk (side story about this…it took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that for purposes of going thru TSA security, I needed to say that I cannot walk – talk about a psychological hurdle); and I had to deal with her attitude making the assumption that I could walk because she saw me standing on the scooter. I was irritated, pissed off and needed to get away from these people before I started spewing bad words.
Back to the ladies’ stories. I cannot begin to explain just how happy I was when I found out that I could travel with my scooter. It affords me so much independence and because I use the scooter, I’m just a regular traveler because I don’t need wheelchair assistance, so nobody looks at me twice and I do my thing. Once pre-scooter, the wheelchair person rolled and left me at gate B12 (I had gotten out of the chair) and then the gate agents announced that the gate was being changed to D15. When I asked the agent to call for a chair for me, she looked at me and said, “What??? You can’t walk?” The other problem for me being in a chair is that I can’t work those things! Reading their stories, it’s quite possible that they couldn’t either. People using wheelchairs make it seem so easy (to me) but I’m assuming that comes after practice and therapy. Whenever someone remarks about my scooting skills, I say, “unfortunately I’ve had years of practice” and it’s true – I knocked over shit, rolled over people’s feet (this really happened in the airport once…it was a lil boy and I was mortified but he didn’t react, so I kept it moving) and drove way too fast ALL the time in those early days. Some might say that I still drive too fast now, but at least I know how to control Optimus et al vs. the other way around. Even before I had a poc hand and a spastic left arm and I tried to roll a chair where I wanted it to go, I couldn’t…and it was one of the hardest things I’d ever tried to do. So, couple the fact that you may not be able to work the chair with the pressure of having to pee? Gracious! I cannot begin to explain to you just how frustrated/annoyed/upset/all those sorts of words they probably were.
The airline, airport and wheelchair company “powers that be” should be ashamed of themselves and need to do better. There’s no excuse for what those women went thru.
Anyway, till next time…allyuh hol’ it down.
Stax