Your Disability Doesn’t Have A Leg To Stand On

(I work as an advisor at a bank. It is Halloween and we are all dressing up. Due to an accident as a child, I had to have my right leg removed just below the knee. I use this to my full advantage and usually dress up as a pirate, with an actual peg leg instead of my usual prosthetic. I am waiting for my two pm appointment when I hear a lot of shouting outside my office. I hobble to the door and open it.)

Customer: “THIS IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS THAT YOU REFUSE TO ACCEPT MY DISABILITY!”

(She turns to me and looks at my peg leg. She stares at it in horror before running out of the building.)

Me: “Wow, I wish I could run that fast… What’s going on?”

Manager: *who is dressed as one of the Village People* “Your two o’clock.”

Me: “What’s the problem?”

Manager: “She said she had a disability and demanded a wheelchair.”

Me: “We don’t have wheelchairs.”

Manager: “That’s what I told her, and offered her a seat, instead. She took offense to it and started shouting. Then you came out and—” *looks at my leg* “—scared her away.”

(She made another appointment a week later and came in in a wheelchair, with smugness the likes of which I had never seen before. She couldn’t navigate herself into my office, despite it being wheelchair-friendly, and in frustration she stood up, picked the chair up, and threw it across the room, cracking several of the floor tiles. She refused to pay for the repair work because again, we refused to accept her disability, before running out of the building again. She finally did pay, but made one final appointment to close her accounts. Her reason: for the third time, we refused accept her disability. We still don’t know what her disability was meant to be, but after all of this we suspect it may have been mental.)

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