Thursday, July 28, 2016

Interpersonal interaction of the day

As I've mentioned before, one of the many things I dislike about myself is that I'm not (and can't seem to get) knowledgeable enough about how to treat people with disabilities. (At this point, some people will say "Like a person." This doesn't help for reasons that I will get into momentarily.)  I can't always tell when they need help or when they've got this. I can't tell when to offer help or when to wait to be asked. If the lady in the wheelchair drops something, can she pick it up herself or does she need help? When giving directions to someone who's using a white cane but wearing glasses, can I point or give visual cues (e.g. turn left at the big green sign?)

When I do my best, I sometimes fuck up, like the time I eagerly scurried to open a door for a lady with a cane and almost caused her to fall down, because she needed to hold onto the door handle for support. 

When I try to educate myself, I just end up feeling even less certain. For example, I saw some kind of awareness campaign saying that some people who use wheelchairs can walk. So when I overhear the couple in the wheelchairs saying "There it is on the top shelf," should I interrupt and offer to grab it for them, or can they get it themselves?  How do I tell?

I don't want to make people with disabilities do the extra work of having to ask for help, or do the extra work of having their day and train of thought interrupted to fend off unnecessary offers of help. And I hate the fact that I'm not good enough at being a person to tell, and thereby impose extra work on people for whom the simple act of going to the grocery store is more work than it is for me.


So with all this as background, I had an extremely interesting interaction in the grocery store today.  Behind me in line was an older lady in wheelchair who spoke broken English with a thick accent.  As I'm telling the cashier that yes I would like bags and try to balance the weight if you can and I have coupons and air miles, I see out of the corner of my eye that the lady in the wheelchair has dropped a bag.

Before I'd even had time to mentally debate whether I should retrieve it for her or see if she can get it for herself, she snaps her fingers and says "Hey!" to me. When I turn to look at her, she points to the bag that fell and says "Get that for me?" I promptly pick it up for her, she says thank you, and I go back to dealing with the cashier.  Shortly afterwards the bag falls again, she snaps her fingers, says "Hey!" to get my attention, and points to the bag again.  I retrieve it with a joke about how it really doesn't want to go home with her, we laugh, and I finish my transaction.


If I'd been reading this story in someone else's blog, the lady's actions would have sounded imperious and arrogant to me. But the dynamic IRL was that she was answering my unasked questions about what I should do (and thereby attending to my emotional needs). Her immediate reaction (rather than waiting to see if I'd react) and clear call for my attention spared me the debate about whether to get involved, so I had the positive feelings that come with helping the lady in the wheelchair rather than the uncertain feelings that I usually have in this situation.

Of course, I'm sure a huge part of the reason why this lady didn't sound imperious and arrogant was that I held all the privilege in the situation. It could very likely have read differently if I'd been young enough that she held the age privilege, or if she'd been white and I'd been non-white, or if she'd spoken the same generic Canadian English as I do, or perhaps even if she'd been male.

But, somehow, she read the convergence of factors right and managed, even in this unconventional way, to give me the information I needed and facilitate the interaction so we both left with our goals achieved.


Of course, none of this should be necessary. In an ideal world, I'd know how to be a person well enough that I wouldn't have to look to the less privileged person in the interaction for guidance. But since the reality of this specific situation is that my incompetent self was the person we were stuck with, I admire and laud this lady for handling the situation with such aplomb. It doesn't sound like something that should work, but it worked beautifully!

5 comments:

laura k said...

I have a lot to catch up on, but I had to comment on this first.

I'm glad this interaction worked out well for both people. I definitely would have been annoyed by the finger snapping and orders -- at least if I'm visualizing this correctly.

The rule of thumb I usually suggest is always asking first. "Can I get that for you?" "Can I help?" "OK if I help?" "Can I give you a hand with that?", etc. I use the same tone and expression I would if I was offering help to someone who did not a visible disability, such as an elderly person or a person struggling to carry something.


impudent strumpet said...

OMG, maybe all this time it hasn't been that I don't know how to treat people with disabilities, it's that I don't know how to treat people in general - because I never ask if I can help! I either swoop in and help, or I figure they can manage it themselves.

I've only had one objection to this approach that I know of (I ran into the street to retrieve a child's toy that had rolled off the sidewalk and she interpreted my action as I was trying to steal her toy), but I have no idea how many people were thinking "What an asshole!" after I left.

laura k said...

Sheesh, retrieving a child's toy is the right thing to do! I hope no one thought you were wrong to do so.

But yeah, asking first. Kind of the golden rule of helping, IMO. It allows the helped to control the situation.

impudent strumpet said...

The parents had no problem with my retrieving the toy (I was closer than they were, and they wouldn't have been able to reach it before the cars ran it over), but the poor kidlet couldn't read the situation well and started screaming "GIVE IT BACK!" So I handed it back and apologized for scaring her, but didn't bother to justify my actions. (Also, since her interpretation seemed to be unnuanced, I'd rather establish the precedent in her mind that if you yell at a grownup to stop interfering with your stuff they stop and apologized, rather than normalizing what could be interpreted as the grownup lecturing her about why she's wrong for making the perfectly reasonable demand that I not steal her toy.)

laura k said...

You're great about kids. I don't know why more people don't remember what it was like to be a kidlet.