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Starbucks Apologise To Woman After Staff Member Refused Her Use Of Disabled Toilet Because She Didn’t Look Disabled

August 19, 2015

Readers, please watch the video available in this link for the full story. It gets worse!

Disabled Alexandra Austen was reluctantly allowed to use the disabled toilet, despite suffering from arthritis in every joint in her body.

Full-time carer Lucy Challis, 21, was with her mum Alexandra when they popped in for a coffee at a branch of the multi-national chain, famed for paying very little tax in the UK.

But when the 41-year-old single mum asked to use the disabled loo before having a drink and a member of staff allegedly opened the unisex toilet and said “you don’t look very disabled”.

Alexandra was left “humiliated” by the incident in the Richmond, south west London, branch on Friday afternoon – just three weeks after she was forced to give up her job because of the pain.

Lucy said: “Both toilets were locks so I asked the lady if she wouldn’t mind opening them for me.

“She came over five minutes later and opened the unisex toilet for the girl in front.
“She then went to walk off and I said, ‘So sorry but could you open the toilet for my mum’.

“She looked my mum up and down and said, ‘She doesn’t look very disabled’.

4 Comments leave one →
  1. Nick permalink
    August 19, 2015 6:36 pm

    i always get that Sarah you don’t look very disabled’ my view on many people in the workplace is that you would be fired on the spot if your boss had been with me and even dare question my judgement

    i have done a lot of customer feedback for stores over the years and every time i have had to give bad feedback that person concerned has always been fired and rightly so

    hopefully this person in Starbucks will be fired also and the manager removed and down graded to just a staff member as a punishment as that is what i would do if it were my business

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    • August 20, 2015 8:56 am

      I think that it’s a very common thing Nick with the general public. I’ve experienced quite a few situations over the last 20 years of being ill, where people have made these sorts of comments to me, but it’s definitely become worse in the last 5 years as we all well know.

      I’ve even been put through the mill by ‘friends’ over my condition. The fact is that even though I’ve badly deteriorated over the last 10 years, I’ve got used to being very sick, so whereas I would be in bed at one time, I am able to carry on a conversation as if nothing much is wrong (not always but mostly). People assume then that all is OK. If I mention occasionally how ill I’m feeling I get the classic: ‘Well you look great and you’re speaking well…’

      I don’t want to burden people with how I feel all the time, it gets boring even for me lol, but people generally have no conception of how a person copes with a long-term condition, so it’s pointless to keep explaining. And when it’s demanded from me, either in a business setting or when someone marches up to me/shouts some quip during my now rare visits to the pub, I either tell them it’s none of their business or I shout something back!

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  2. August 19, 2015 10:35 pm

    I had know idea Starbucks were giving their staff medical training.

    Well you learn something every day

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