I say the guy was being polite and offering to help. He probably didn’t spend enough time to examine evey nuance of your body position and where your chair was to notice you were hangin out. While it was obvious to you that you were just casually holding the door open, to him you were a person using a wheelchair stopped in an odd spot. He probably was breezing by, noticed you were stopped, offered to help. Split second decision without much thought on his part.
I don’t think it’s because you’re British. I’m going with the same answer.
Kinda like looking sharply at someone chewing gum with their craw hanging open and saying, “Is that gum good?”
Jamie, I’m thoroughly confused. You seem quite sure of the fact that this had nothing to do with you propping open the steam room door and 100% sure that he was just trying to help someone handicapped. If that’s the case, why did you start the thread, or rather why did you word the OP like that? It feels like you’re just playing mind games. I feel the real question at hand is “Why do people always feel a need to help the handicapped?” If that is in fact the question, I think you’re going to have to stop asking it because strangers are always going to trip over themselves to help you. You can’t do anything about it other then politely decline the offers (or take them up on it if you do need help with something, just like an able bodied person would). And you wanna know something else…there are plenty of able bodied people out there that have had a handicapped person come up to them and say “Why didn’t you hold that door open for me (or something else along those lines)?” It’s sort of a can’t win thing, but since, IME, more handicapped people would rather I grabbed the door for them then decline it I usually grab it. Besides, the ones that decline it can get it themselves. If I chose not to offer help to someone that needs it, then they’re stuck, so I at least have to offer.
Also, I like what you said up thread and I hope you remember it
You also don’t know what other people think.
If I see a handicapped (or not) person in public seeming to be stopped at a task I always very casually offer to help. I don’t scrutinize the person for any amount of time to verify if they absolutely need help or not, that would be extremely rude. Since the majority of the world is only half-assedly accessible it has little to do with me doubting the person’s ability. What are people supposed to do? Wouldn’t you rather people offer to help when you don’t need it than never offer to help at all?
Someone who could be stuck on a door and/or weak from too much steam might need help.
I would have offered to help or asked anyone if they needed something if I saw that situation. Of course I would have asked. Maybe something was wrong with the door or something wierd was going in with the steam room. And yes, if I saw someone with a walker or a wheelchair just sitting/standing there holding on to an open door I’d ask.
Because I’d feel like a schmuck if they did need help and I just walked on by. Id rather risk offering unwanted help than ignoring someone in need. It’s no bizarre mindset. Sometimes people, any people, need help. And sometimes people with mobility issues need help and I can do it. So I’d offer. BFD.
I think that you need help, for you find offence where none is intended and where a reasonable person would not take offence.
I think that underestimates the struggle that very often flashes through someone’s mind before they offer help.
I recently was on a train where they weren’t calling out the stops and I asked a blind man if he wanted me to tell him the stops (which he did). But right before I asked it did occur to me that maybe he took this train everyday and he was used to counting stops and would think my offer condescending. I just thought offering was more important than that possibility.
I have also seen people on the tube ignore a person who was crying, perhaps because of the same reason: they don’t want to cause offense by asking if they can help her. She was, in fact, glad someone offered.
To me, saying that most people always, irrationally think that disabled people need help discounts that struggle that I go through every time I do offer help.
Since I know none of you were there and can see what actually happened, I can’t really translate the nature of the encounter. You’re just going to have to go on what I say in these posts. There was absolutely nothing awkward or struggling about my appearance. My arms weren’t even being used.
This is not a rant about what happened. I wanted to know if others would have felt strange in a similar situation; all I can say is I’ve failed at communicating the strangeness of the encounter. There was nothing wrong with it, if more people were of the ilk of this man the world would probably be a better place overall. There was just something noticeable about it. Yes, as a person who uses a wheelchair I realize that I am different than my able-bodied peers in the world. Sometimes that difference shows itself in funny ways. I didn’t have a problem with what happened whatsoever; it doesn’t mean it wasn’t noteworthy.
Here’s another analogous situation: I once belonged to a multicultural organisation that had as one of its members a guy who was Pakistani. He was constantly getting into arguments with people. Every time he came out of an encounter he was all like “see, there’s so much racism!” He presumed every non-Pakistani’s actions around him were motivated by his Pakistani origins.
I wanted to slap him upside the head and tell him that no, most bad shit happened to him because behaved aggressively to everyone he met. In my observatioon, part of the reason for his behaviour was because he was a huge dick, and part of it was because he presupposed racism in every encounter, and he was wound like a hair-trigger.
It’s an imperfect analogy because you weren’t aggressive in this particular encounter, but presupposing people’s motivations is never a good idea.
I never said such a thing. I said some people, not most, think a person with disabilities needs or would be better off with assistance with whatever they are doing and that this mindset is overwhelming to the point of being irrational.
The situation was odd, for the passerby as well. It wasn’t an everyday sight, someone propping the door open, wheelchair or not.
So he saw something unusual, compounded with the person being in a wheelchair and asked. This is not noteworthy. This is common curtesy.
If I saw someone (handicapped or not) leaning against a steam-room door, I would think something might be wrong and ask “are you ok?”.
Also if I was heading into the steam-room and saw someone holding the door wide open, letting all the heat out, I might be annoyed and as a way to say “dude, close the door!” I might ask if you were ok.
Will you tell us what you said in reply and how it all played out?
As someone else with a disability I think that you are making way too much out of this. I am not sure what your disability is, but it sounds like the person was just trying to be helpful. I broke my back and sometimes have to resort to using a cane to get around. When I have the cane people constantly offer to open doors, carry packages and such. At first it was somewhat a novelty, then I became to get annoyed because it made me feel helpless. Eventually I realized that people just wanted to be helpful and it looked as if I could use a bit of help.
As far as constantly talking about it here. Many of my post on the SD are in direct relation to my injury. Asking about medication, causes, “cures” etc. I do tend to worry that people will think that I am whining or looking for sympathy. But hey, it is a MAJOR part of my life and I need answers, so hopefully people will understand.
Ambivalid said: “This man wanted to close a door I was
purposely holding open. I don’t
understand where he got the notion
that closing the door was somehow my
ultimate goal when he saw me sitting
there.”
Doesn’t the guy get points for ASKING you before he DID anything?
My late H was a BK amputee and understood and accepted people’s desire to offer unhelpful help. He was a very nice guy and didn’t have a defensive or malicious bone in his body.
I think that encounter was a decent CR for you, but your negative CHR modifier gave you a handicap straight from the start. You probably should have stuck with your strengths and fought it out. Me, I’d probably roll a sense motive check before doing anything else.
You’re overthinking the whole situation. You were doing something he’s not used to, he didn’t know why, he asked you a question. That’s all. He possibly didn’t ask in the same way he would have if he had more time to think about it but he didn’t. Most people are too wrapped up in their own lives to give you and what you’re doing much thought.
No, it is noteworthy because this is a self-closing door. This is a regular gym-member and the doors are recognizable as self-closing. In addition to the relaxed, non-active appearance of me sitting in my chair, this seems pretty strange to me. You may not view my description of the event as noteworthy but I am telling you, as the person involved in that event; it was indeed noteworthy.
Like I’ve said before when discussing matters close to me, the fact that I am talking about something doesn’t mean I am ‘making a big deal’ of it or am being negative in any way.
He saw something unusual; a man sitting half naked in the hallway of a locker room in his wheelchair. The fact that this man wasn’t in distress or in need of aid was understandably missed in the scant few seconds of his observation. He saw this man sitting near an open door…this is where I lose this man’s probable train of thought.
“Do you need some help”, which is the standard line of query, would have been totally sensible in this situation. It just defied logic to me when I got asked the question that I did; it cracked me up so I posted about it here.
Please tell me what CR and CHR mean? I get the feeling this is a bit of a burn.