[nfb-talk] To Be or Not to Be, Irritated

[Michael D. Barber]

Jim:  I thank you for this story.  I think this office manager should have 
been fired for gross misconduct in the worst degree.  Perhaps your affiliate 
should stage a demonstration on the campus to protest this gross 
mistreatment of a blind person.

Michael
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Marks" <blind.grizzly at gmail.com>
To: "'NFB Talk Mailing List'" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 9:28 PM
Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] To Be or Not to Be, Irritated


> Changing minds can be tough.  I recently had a negative experience that
> still shakes me up today.
>
> I am a director of a university disability service office.  This summer, 
> our
> receptionist resigned, and our first search to replace the receptionist
> failed.  I then hired a temporary employee, a woman who also happened to 
> be
> blind.  She was fully qualified for the job and had just returned home 
> from
> one of our NFB training centers.
>
> An office manager from another campus department that shares the reception
> desk with my office immediately took issue with the idea of a blind
> receptionist for a high-traffic university service area.  My mouth dropped
> open in surprise when the office manager said that no blind person could 
> do
> the job.  She had not met the person I hired, and the manager seemed
> stupidly ignorant of the fact that she was airing her prejudices before
> another blind person.  I remember thinking, how dare she judge this 
> without
> any foundation other than ignorance!  I told the manager to give me time 
> to
> see whether it would work or not.  I figured I could bully the prejudice
> into submission, but I wanted to win her over by showing her how it would
> work.
>
> First thing the blind receptionist and I did was to create a working
> environment that could be handled with non-visual techniques.  The big
> hurdle was having the receptionist respond to walk-in visitors since the
> visitors often did not announce themselves.  To make it work, we needed 
> the
> collaboration of the co-workers.  Unfortunately, instead of getting
> cooperation, we got the opposite.
>
> The prejudiced office manager set out to do everything she could to 
> sabotage
> the confidence and reputation of the blind receptionist.  The manager 
> would
> leap up every time someone walked in and dramatically intervene with her
> superior powers of vision.  She would reprimand the blind receptionist 
> with
> constant tiny and pointless corrections.  And she encouraged others to 
> join
> her in her hostility towards blindness.  It was clear that the manager saw
> blind people in extremes, either as fools or super heroes.  She never even
> considered the possibility that a blind person could be her peer.
>
> The blind receptionist held up well, but it was tough beyond belief.  It
> helped that the president of the NFB of Montana works in our office. 
> Others
> joined in support of the blind receptionist, too.  Another office manager, 
> a
> sighted person, actually took time to sit beside the blind receptionist 
> when
> the going was painfully and obviously difficult.  At one point, I lost my
> temper and told the prejudiced office manager, a person I do not 
> supervise,
> that she was to back off and stay out of it.  I knew there was zero chance
> for her support, and adjusted my expectations from winning her over to
> simply getting her to stop her outrageous behaviors.  unfortunately, she 
> did
> not stop, and the situation continued on.  Then, the blind receptionist
> asked for a reasonable accommodation.  She asked that the interventions
> cease through a formal request for reasonable accommodation.  The manager
> sort of complied, and the drama lessened.  When it went to the level of
> civil rights, the situation became marginally better.  But it was still a
> hostile and ugly situation, and it was occurring in my shop under my 
> watch.
> Attitudes were the problem, and, for the life of me, I knew no way to deal
> with them in any effective way.  I still do not, except that it's 
> important
> to be relentless.  We can never give up, never.
>
> The story ends badly.  When we re-opened the position, the blind
> receptionist did not get the permanent job.  The pool contained applicants
> who were more qualified than she was.  Had the blind receptionist been in
> the pool during the first search, she would have had the job.  But this 
> pool
> was too strong.  The blind receptionist handled herself very, very well 
> all
> throughout the weeks she worked in my office.  She's now going to school,
> and is doing great.  I will likely hire her for work as a student employee
> in my office.  I decided to sever my relationship with the prejudiced 
> office
> manager.  We no longer supervise people together because I will not work
> with someone who is so bigoted.  I am polite, for I will not stoop to the
> same level of bigotry, but damage was done, and it's irreversible insofar 
> as
> I can tell.  So, maybe in many ways the story ends better than I thought,
> but it's hard to see the good of it.  Thing is, I am still shaking my head
> over what happened.
>
> Those who think our battles are over are out of touch.  I am in it for the
> long haul, and the NFB really does give us a vehicle for change that we
> could not possibly accomplish on our own as lone wolves.  We hunt in 
> packs,
> and that's the way nature intended it.
>
>
>
> -------
> Jim Marks
> blind.grizzly at gmail.com
>
>
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