Well, the airlines could keep a sharpened piece of copper tubing handy and just tap him like a maple tree, if that’ll help.
I didn’t quite get that impression, but I do get frustration and feeling like the aisle chair process is humiliating and degrading. Obviously other people’s mileage varies, and not all disabled people find this to be the greatest indignity in the world, but it’s an understandable lament. His posts are characterized by emotional fits (the EXCESSIVE CAPS and punctuation signal exasperation to me) and he tends to express generalized hostility toward the “they” who haven’t been able to come up with a more accommodating way for him to relieve himself, but I don’t see an honest demand that airlines remove seats and hire a squadron of engineers to create a seat just so he can piss more conveniently.
I’m sorry that you have a disability but it seems to me that governments be it local, state and federal have been bending over backwards to accommodate the handicapped, and yes sometimes to the point of inconveniencing everyone else.
Because of the thread in the BBQ pit, when I went to Lowes to pick up some lumber I counted the handicapped spaces in front of the store. There were 16 handicapped parking spaces with one being used at 10:00 AM.
I can maybe see that many for a Walmart but a home improvement store where you kinda need to be able to do physical stuff with most of the things contained in that store? Ridiculous.
You just can’t expect the airlines to make allowances for everybody with a physical condition. This is from someone who loathes the airline industry, but come on, try to be reasonable
Yeah, because his complaint, unlike yours, was actually compelling. And, by the way, he still lost.
Perfectly reasonable doesn’t get judged only from your point of view. Look back through this thread, especially Sam Stone’s. It’s simply not worth society’s time and expense to spare you nothing more than the indignity of someone having to propel your chair for you for some very minor periods of time that make up very little of your life.
It’s even worse than that. His only complaint seems to be that the aisle chairs aren’t automated or self propelled. He doesn’t like being pushed a few feet. Given that a lot of people using wheelchairs have to spend some amount of time in their lives being pushed, I really can’t work up any sympathy here.
For all those who so vehemently disagree with my P.O.V. on this issue, here is your chance; this is my case laid out plainly and clearly. Please present any argument against the case here, I eagerly await a logical, fair, coherent cross-argument. (and I apologize for the caps, it’s only because I’ve felt the need to stress certain words or phrases that seem to be escaping ppl’s eyes.
For the umpteenth time, it not just the lack of independent propulsion. It is the entire experience. I don’t know why I’m even writing this. No one will read it.
Fair enough. I’d find it frustrating that someone has to place me in a chair and wheel me to the bathroom too, but I can see how some would have the impression that he’s being whiny. Still, the responses in this thread seem to paint the impression that he’s being completely over-the-top, having a “snit” like a small child, demanding that airlines re-write their seating charts and spending habits just so that he can wheel a motorized cart down the aisle and piss in comfort, which I don’t see to be the case.
Anywho, carry on.
I have responded to your post. My response largely duplicates the content of a previous post of mine. You’ve been ignoring or have overlooked both of them.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13942307&postcount=187
Have you figured out what Sam Stone was saying in messages 171 and 178? Your answers don’t indicate that. In any case, I thought this discussion was about aircraft?
No, it’s not “fair enough”. You were correct in your original assesment of the situation. It’s the whole experience I find appalling. From being loaded and over-strapped like a piece of over=sized luggage, to being pushed back and forth in what is essentially a garage stool; simply in order to utilize the facilities. Part of my repulsion at this may in fact be due to my age and functionality in the world, but that is part of my point. Those aisle chair systems may be acceptable (and appropriate) to the 90yr old woman with crippling rheumatoid arthritis and brittle bones but disability is not “one size fits all”.
Yes I understand his point but that doesn’t change the bottom line point I am making in the “case” for accessible stalls. And the stall-discussion got brought in from someone else, I dont’ remember who. But also, his answers don’t indicate that he has figured out what I am saying either. He has simply refused to address it directly, as I asked him to.
At the same time, it’s not reasonable to have an infinite number of “sizes.” What the 90-year-old with crippling rheumatoid arthritis and you have in common is an inability to walk. In this case, if the solution works for both, it’s in the interests of efficiency not to subdivide the accommodations. I’m again asking you if you’ve read and understood Sam Stone’s posts. Do you understand the cost that you’re asking society to incur to solve a problem that already has a solution in place?
Jamie, why don’t you just stop being cheap and just go buy your own plane?
So you admit the aisle chair is:
A) Sufficient to enable you to utilize the facilities.
B) Necessary in order to enable other disabled people to utilize the facilities.
The airlines will clearly need to keep the aisle chair around in order to enable disabled 90-year-old women to access the restroom. Yet you would have them design, certify, purchase, store and carry another chair because you are embarrassed and “repulsed” at having to use the same hardware as a 90-year-old woman? Despite the fact that it does the job perfectly well?
Don’t make unreasonable demands of the airline because you want to be some kind of “macho disabled dude” and prove your independence and ability to the random slobs sharing the airplane with you. No one gives a shit but you.
I mean really, what is it, you feel like you’re better than “other” disabled people, you want everyone to know it, and having to use the same chair as those total invalids insults you and interferes with that? Get the fuck over it.
One final comment for tonight (I go to bed early). If airlines tried to accommodate every disabled person’s preferences (yes, preferences) they’d go bust. Accommodation is a two-way street.
It’s not a garage stool as has been pointed out before. You are whining way more than my 90 year old granny. Others have pointed out alternatives for you. Move on and get over yourself.
That sounds like an opinion from someone “in the know”. Can you elaborate? Or was that just a “parting shot” before bed? And you are right, I have a preference to be treated like an adult. Guilty. What preferences do other disabled individuals have regarding their treatment on airlines that are comparable? I’m seriously asking.
This is maddening. You and Sam are making the assumption, incorrectly, that I am demanding total airline renovations. I AM NOT. Do…you…understand…this. So if that isn’t your assumption, then you must be saying that to modify an aisle chair is just too much of a cost to society. Give me a break.
You are never going to understand. It has NOTHING to do with others and there reactions, or lack thereof. Unreasonable? We disagree. We have different definitions of that word, clearly. And I have no feeling of superiority towards those with differing, or more extensive disabilities than myself. But that doesn’t mean I should then conform to the same restrictions of mobility that they suffer. I’m done though. People hide behind computer remarks with ease. Especially you.
What it boils down to is that you’re pissed off that you’re a paraplegic, and you want everything to be the way it was.