Why couldn’t they have arthritis if they were doing that?
I have used those scooters a few times. Once I had to pick up my prescription by myself. I had pneumonia and was pretty wiped out just getting into the store. I didn’t park in a handicap space, so it was a pretty good walk, in winter.
The other time I was actually shopping after having dislocated my knee and bruised my hip in a mishap with the steps.
Someone who is temporarily disabled is less likely to have a wheelchair or scooter, or even really need one permanently. On the other hand, I helped an elderly woman by retrieving the scooter and bringing it out to her husband, whose wheelchair developed a broken wheel in the parking lot.
They are a nice convenience when you need them.
You indicated multiple cases of this (“I’m seeing what appears to be perfectly healthy people . . .”). All of them were conducting themselves in this fashion, were they? :dubious:
Of course, the conditions I mentioned were only by way of example. You (and anyone else) obviously don’t have the ability to diagnose by casual observation many conditions that may cause limited mobility that justify the use of a scooter, even if you imagine you do.
Well…I don’t begrudge anyone the use of something that helps them get around when it’s difficult. And I know that being obese can make shopping an absolute misery.
But…
At risk of irritating the moderator with conjecture, I think part of the question might really be related to the types of people who shop in said “big box store that is taking over the planet.”
If I go to the mall, I don’t see obese people ramming around on scooters. They’re missing from Sears, Macy’s, Kohl’s, Barnes and Noble…even art museums and the like. When one only sees hugely obese people with (forgive me mods and everyone else) neck tattoos, four teeth, and Nascar hats, wearing their pajamas and tooling around in “certain big box stores” one makes some unflattering assumptions about those people. Many of them are probably incorrect. Yet, when you see what looks like a trend of certain types of people engaging in certain behavior in a very specific area of the planet, it DOES make you wonder what’s going on.
And I would guess that it’s a legitimate concern that people who don’t necessarily need a scooter are causing an inconvenience for people who legitimately DO need help getting around. And for others in some cases.
And I suppose the cppd in my feet which keeps me from walking great distances prevents me from directing a flock of children with great vigor [well, if I had a flock of children to direct … ] and though I do actually have a wheelchair, it is not a power chair, and if I have to shop, what do I do pile it in my lap and wheel around while someone follows me around picking up the stuff that rolls off my lap? [oh wait, that must be what I am vigorusly diatribing the kids for …]
Though to be honest, I pretty much don’t go shopping for anything any more, unless it is a convenience store where I will be on my feet for a minimum of time and distance.
[Moderating]
You got it. This is exactly the kind of excessive generalization that I would like to avoid in this thread. I don’t want to have this turn into a discussion about the purported habits of “those types of people,” whether they are the obese, people with tattoos on their necks, or those who shop at big-box stores.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
(Cool username, BTW, even though I’m not a knitter, myself). Perhaps the main reason one does not see these people in Macy’s, Kohl’s, Barnes and Noble etc. is because those stores do not supply the scooters. I know that if I am fresh out of surgery, looking to get a 'script filled, pick up some beef and chicken stock-in-a-box, cranberry juice and Jell-O, I’m going to the store that offers all of those things and offers a handy way to get around the store.
I don’t have these procedures often enough to have my own wheel chair/scooter. But when I need them, I need them.
I don’t have tattoos, don’t follow Nascar (though it’s popular around here because we don’t have a football or baseball team), and have more than four teeth. I may, however, be wearing my PJ or lounge pants because, having just gotten through a surgical procedure, I’m way more concerned with what feels good than what looks good.
I’m not saying a majority of the morbidly obese you see tooling around the Big Box stores on scooters have just had surgery. Hell, I’m not even morbidly obese any more, I doubt I raise eyebrows. My point is, you don’t know, and can’t know exactly what the person’s situation is. So why waste time judging them?
I am permanently mobility impaired. When not in a scooter-equipped store, I use a walker. I could probably get Medicare to pay for a scooter for me, but I’m putting that off as long as possible, thanks. They are quite expensive, and, as I live alone, there is no one to manage loading and unloading the thing for me - nor do I wish to own a van to keep it in where I can manage it myself (as a former neighbor of mine did).
I am no longer able to shop in any large store that doesn’t have them. That means I can’t go to the local Kohl’s (one of my favorite stores before the arthritis in old injuries got to me), or any other type of department store, megastore or “big box” retailer without scooters.
I admit I do get irritated sometimes when I see people in the stores that do have scooters (WallyWorld, Target, Kroger & other chain supermarkets) that don’t have an obvious problem. Further, I get even more irritated at people who have quite obviously walked into Walmart, but insist on riding out, when the carts have signs on them clearly stating they’re for “in-store use only”. When I finish, I put my walker in a regular cart along with the shopping and push it out.
Some of the morbidly obese people do have reasons as others have mentioned above. However, it’s only in the last several years that stores have begun purchasing carts with a 500 pound weight limit. The older ones are only rated for 250, and they have been wearing out at accelerated rates because of heavy use by heavy people. I am somewhat overweight, but I have never weighed 250 in my life, and now am very comfortably under 200, and still losing. You can almost count on it that most people over 300 pounds have at least some of the problems included in “metabolic syndrome” (heart trouble, high BP, diabetes, etc.). If they didn’t have them first, they generally are a consequence of the morbid obesity. Still, you can see some people who are that heavy walking around Walmart; I certainly have, and I applaud them. If I could walk it, I would.
My son has been morbidly obese for about 20 years. It started when he was in his mid-20s and had to take steroids for interstitial pneumonitis. That, plus a lot of stress in his home life, made him unable to lose the weight. But he never used carts until he fell and hurt his back a year ago in November. Since then, he has a lot of pain, and really can’t make it around a large store on his own, even with the cane.
Nevertheless, I do think there are a number of people who simply take advantage, based on the fact that it’s there. But that’s strictly IMHO.
To get to the scooter I would expect you to use a cane which would be evident.
Obviously there are no absolutes but I stand by my observation that non-handicapped people are abusing the use of scooters in increasing numbers. Hopefully next time you need one it’s available.
I am a person of more or less average weight, with an old leg injury (shattered tibia and fibula, with plate and screws still holding together the fibula) and related post-traumatic arthritis in my left ankle, which has a very limited range of motion. This will probably be the case unless and until I have an ankle replacement, which my ortho doesn’t recommend at this point, because a) I am too young for it, because the current ones don’t hold up very well, and b) unless the joint deteriorates further, the cost/benefit analysis doesn’t justify it. Most of the time, if I am wearing shoes with orthotics in them, a casual observer won’t notice anything unusual about my gait. However, if I am barefoot, or if I have been on my feet too long that day, or sometimes just because my ankle decides to be a pain in the ass (though it has improved greatly in the past few years - my injury was 12 years ago, and my doc says that whatever I’m doing, I should keep doing it, because the X-rays suggest that I should have far more pain and mobility problems than I actually do), I have a quite noticeable limp and am in a fair amount of pain if I bear weight on my left leg.
I haven’t needed any kind of assistance walking in the past couple of years - usually, if I’m that sore, it’s because I’ve been on my feet too much, so I just go home, take some Advil, and stay off my feet for the rest of the day. But there have certainly been times, even getting on 10 years after the initial round of surgery (I’ve had 4 so far, and hundreds of hours of physical therapy), that I took advantage of borrowed wheelchairs at places like museums or the zoo. I don’t have my own (though I do have my surgery-era walker, a crappy wheelchair a friend got me for $5 at Salvation Army so I could go out one snowy New Year’s when I was post-surgical, and assorted canes and crutches in the basement somewhere), but they sure have come in handy and allowed me not to blow off planned activities.
I haven’t needed to use a store scooter yet; the pain isn’t consistent enough that I wouldn’t just put off shopping until I felt better, but I can think of plenty of situations when, say, my grandparents (both of whom were too damn stubborn to bring their own canes/walkers to the store, and have never given in and gotten wheelchairs) could be convinced by their well-meaning grandchildren to use the store scooter at, say, Target. And I think my 91-year-old grandmother weighs all of 85 lbs. these days.
A cane pretty much every day that I dont need crutches, and in general if it is bad enough for a chair, I stay home and do nothing=)
As someone said upstream, you can have good days and bad days, but most of my days are indifferent once towards the good. I can get around the house where we have grab rails without a stick.
It’s close to 100%. Obese or not, every person I see using these carts is using them for the intended purpose: Shopping.
Well… sometimes I wonder which came first with the fat folks on the scooters- the chicken or the egg.
My dad is a good example. He’s 300+ lbs, but the reason that he’s on the scooter is because he has Parkinson’s, and has a hard time walking well some days. Granted, the Parkinson’s has more or less caused him to put on some weight, but if you see him walk, it’s not the usual fat, arthritic guy walk, but this sort of odd shuffle that I’ve only seen in other Parkinson’s sufferers. I
KnitWit, I think one reason we don’t see shoppers on scooters in the stores you mentioned is that the aisles aren’t big enough to accommodate them. Heck, the aisles in my mall stores aren’t wide enough to accommodate a shopping cart. When you get off the main aisles and into the stock, there’s barely room for two people to get by each other. Then you have the stores with different levels, maybe just a step or two but not conducive to a scooter or a cart.
The big box stores sell bigger items and larger quantities than we’d buy in a Sears or Barnes and Noble. And the stores themselves are huge. There’ve been days when I was tempted to get on a scooter at Menard’s, even though there’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t go there often enough to know where everything is, and by the time I leave, I feel like I’ve done a walkathon.
Still a presumption.
My husband is permanently disabled (and has been since birth) but because he can walk he tries to do so as much as possible. On bad days, though, and in places that require a lot of walking, he just can’t manage it. So, even when relatively young he would sometimes use store scooters. He doesn’t need one often enough to justify owning one, but in large stores, malls, and various other venues a scooter is often the difference between being able to enjoy the place or not be able ot manage at all.
I agree with this. The scooters aren’t there because of some ADA requirement, they’re there to accommodate people who want to come to the store to spend money. If all the skinny, healthy folks are shopping at the Whole Foods and the fat and elderly folks are shopping at your store then why not make it easier for them to shop there?
It’s the same reason why there are so many goofy “kid friendly” shopping carts. Parents who bring their kids along are there to spend money. Having the special carts for kids entices parents to pack up the youngins’ to go shopping instead of making the decision to stay home because it’s too much of a hassle. Having a scooter available also eases the decision for a less-mobile person to come by and shop instead of staying home because it’s too much of a hassle.
I highly, highly doubt that the store cares one lick why you’re using the cart. As long as you’re there to spend money, bless ya.
And, FWIW, my dad has used a scooter before. He’s 6’ and 170#. The condition of his back does not allow him to stand or walk for long stretches. He looks great, healthy and young but don’t let that fool you - he’s a mess.
I agree, but the op is asking (I think) if people who have no real medical problems, but are just lazy, fat fucks are using these carts for their own slovenly purposes instead of leaving them for people who have true disabilities…
If so, again I agree, they aren’t violating any laws as these are not ADA devices, but it would certainly be inconsiderate to take a scooter if you were able, but just too lazy to walk while leaving a person with a real disability unable to get around the store…
I used a scooter in the grocery store a few times after I had surgery to repair my left knee. Early on, I had crutches on there with me. Later, I could manage short distances on my own, but a lot of walking and standing HURT. So I hobbled to the scooter and used it. (My grocery store, bless their bonnets, has a conveyor system in which they load groceries in your trunk for you when you drive through. So I didn’t have to deal with that.) In addition, I wore enormous sweatpants over my large ugly black brace because it was very, very cold. So I had no visible disability (except perhaps slovenliness; I hate sweatpants). At 33, I’m pretty young.
I was not taking advantage of the scooter. In fact, I hated the thing. It’s hard to steer and you can’t reach all the stuff. I hated being in it, too. Partly because I got curious and/or judgy looks from people some of the time. Could I have gotten along without it? Probably, or I could have had my mother do my shopping. But it was a great, great help to me at a real pain-in-the-butt time in my life.
You may be right that they are abused. And the story I offered is simply an anecdote. But I do think it’s important to point out that no, you really can’t always tell. I’d rather live my life giving people the benefit of the doubt.
I think a lot of it is for show. I worked in hotels and the ADA requires us to have a certain percentage of our rooms as handicapped equipped. But all this means is they have to be available. We never get into the habbit of policing said rooms.
For instance we had ten (the minimum requirement under the ADA) kits for deaf people. It does things like hooks up a door bell to flash a light and it puts device they can wear so if the phone rings it alerts them and of course the TDD machine for the phone, and other stuff.
But if 11 deaf people came in and needed it, that eleventh person was out of luck.
What this has done is most people who deaf now carry their own equipement with them thus rendering the need for them to use the hotel equipment.
Or the handicapp equipped rooms. They alway are (in the hotels I’ve worked in) single rooms with a king bed. But every handicapped person I’ve run into that wanted a room, wanted TWO bed, the didn’t travel alone. So they would make do with a double without the handicapped accessibility.
It reminds me years and years ago when I came out of a bathroom stall (it was handicapped equipped) and some guy said to me “You shouldn’t use a handicapped stall unless you’re handicapped.”
Well I don’t if another one’s available, but if there are three stalls, and the non-handicapped stalls are occupied, I’ll use it.
Those scooters look like a pain in the ass to me–they are SLOW, appear to handle like crap, can’t hold much stuff, and I see them getting hung up behind people–it’s hard to imagine a normally healthy person finding one to be the easier alternative to just walking. Teenagers on a lark? Maybe. But someone just being lazy? That doesn’t even make sense to me.