A restaurant chain has apologised to a family after a teenager with severe learning difficulties was asked to leave by the manager as they believed she was making too much noise.
Megan Brennan, 19, was out for a meal in Harvester with her close relatives to mark moving from home into full-time care when staff told her mother Helen that she was disrupting other diners.Maybe she was.
But maybe she wasn't, and the staff member took it upon themselves to act. Who really knows?
The most important thing is they’ve apologised. Right?
Although the company said it had got an "extremely sensitive situation" wrong, Mrs Brennan said she was "devastated and upset" by the way the family were treated at the Ham Farm Harvester in Eastleigh, Hampshire.
She told the BBC: "[Megan] was very excited and she was babbling quite a bit and when we were asked to leave by the manager, I was just devastated."
Miss Brennan, from Chandler's Ford, Hampshire, has the genetic disorder Angelman syndrome which causes seizures and difficulty with speech and has to raise her voice or make noises to communicate.Oh. Silly me. They must be punished for having the temerity to consider the effects on other diners…
Mrs Brennan, who has three children, said the family refused to leave and apologised to the other diners after the manager refused to admit any wrongdoing.How dare they feel that they had not committed any wrongdoing, eh?
Luckily, there is a silver lining:
The company said it had since discussed the incident with staff and has given the family a £100 gift voucher, however Mrs Brennan said she would never return.The other diners might be very thankful. As will the staff.
8 comments:
Have to say that's bullshit Joolz. Call me callous, but these places are not the Savoy Grill, they're what can best be described as "Choke and pukes".
The majority of these places have a round the corner, out the way table they can utilise. So utilise it.
I'm quite sure their are sections of the community who will put me right off my grub, loud mouthed Essex girls with a voice that could cut glass being one of them. I doubt I'd be on my own. Oh and Jamie Oliver.
Should I and other diners be ever sat next to say both you and Jamie, and request another table as you're putting me right off my grub, would you feel it fair for the establishment to take away your plates whilst you're still eating and say sorry but you'll have to sling your hooks as you're disturbing other customers?
The voice of reason:
The majority of these places have a round the corner, out the way table they can utilise. So utilise it.
Call in advance, explain that you're coming and that you need a bit of space and a mop.
Don't say "She wants to be treated like anybody else. But she's a DISABLED and needs special treatment".
Personally, I'd encourage her to throw a tantrum if she saw me not smoking so I could name and shame the establishments that ejected us when I was trying to calm her, collect the compo vouchers and get rat-arsed.
I well remember that Lyons' Grill during the 1960s. Saturdays saw many psychiatric in patients around town, we used to have over half a dozen hospitals nearby. Lyons' benefited from their custom, the atmosphere was fun, those were different days. Somewhere along the way we have lost something which makes us human.
@ andy
The difference is that back in the day you might have taken your shell-shocked Uncle Andy out to lunch, but the quid pro quo was that you'd try and tamp down the nutiness and accept that if he did insist on running through the joint with no trousers on shouting 'The Germans are coming! The Germans are coming!' then it was time to make your excuses and leave.
Nowadays the chav scum claim that they're victims, init, so everyone in the joint - even the new parents who are out for the first time in eight months - is just an extra in their production of 'Nutter's Day Out' while they exercise the Uman Rite to get hammered while Junior takes a leak on next door's table.
The sarcasm not shine through chaps?
Andy 5759, beautiful, man. Well said
Andy 5759, yr a gentleman, ava gr8 weekend
"...would you feel it fair for the establishment to take away your plates whilst you're still eating and say sorry but you'll have to sling your hooks as you're disturbing other customers? "
If my behavior (note: action, not simple existence) was genuinely disturbing them, then yes. That's fair.
As DJ points out, we once would be conditioned to consider the feelings of others, not wave a disability card in triumph as we demanded exemption from society's unwritten rules of behaviour.
"Somewhere along the way we have lost something which makes us human."
Maybe...
"The sarcasm not shine through chaps?"
Text is a hard medium... ;)
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