Good afternoon everybody and thank you for continuing with my updates. Today I am going to talk about going in stores and restaurants. I will start with restaurants. I don’t know if you have ever noticed the handicap sign on the end of a table at one of the chain fast food restaurants, but they are there for a reason. If you actually look at those tables, they typically have the legs at the outside corners of the table. This is so that if I pull into that spot in a chair, I have a place to put my feet, as the pad my feet sit on is in the center of my chair in the front. I typically have issues at the more “mom and pop” restaurants as a lot of the tables are a center post table, and I hit that post with my feet, so I have to sit further back from the table.
I like when they allow me to choose the table and when I do, I look at several things. The first part is how easy can I get in and out of the table. Is there another person behind me and how well can the waiter or waitress access the other people at the table. The other main thing I pay attention to, is am I in the isle, and if so how much room is there to get around me. Overall I actually prefer to not be in the isle but most of the time it does provide the most room and easiest access. However if I feel like I am blocking it or taking up enough space that another chair won’t have enough room, it makes me feel uncomfortable.
The other issue I sometimes run into is, how much room is in the dining area around the other tables. I know that they are trying to seat as many people as possible, but if there is consistently not enough room to get around the other patrons, I typically don’t go there very often. It is even worse if it happens to be a buffet or somewhere that I feel I need to go around the dining room more often. I know this can’t really be helped, but it is also hard to find a table that is the right height that the arm of my chairs will go under. As you can see, a lot goes into my dining experience and that doesn’t even include the bathroom, that I covered in my earlier post, as well as the parking (I require at a minimum 4 or 5 feet on the driver side of my truck to be able to enter or exit).
Going shopping at a store has different issues. Since I cannot stand up, reaching things that are tall can sometimes be challenging. My chair does raise and lower and that does help things, but you still sometimes have the issue of not being able to get close enough. If you need something from the refrigerator or freezer section, the door really gets in the way. It is extremely difficult to get close enough as I can’t pull far enough forward as my foot pad is against the glass and it only opens so far. The other issue is the weight of items. A perfect example is if the gallon of milk (especially if it is in the upper half of the refrigerator), it is extremely awkward as it is just heavy enough and far enough away that it can be difficult to not drop it. I usually push the door open with the chair and can’t quite go far enough in to actually put it in a non-awkward spot beside you, which doesn’t help anything.
People will help you if they see you struggle with it, but it always seems that people are around at the wrong time and offer to help you with the light easy non-awkward things like bread and are never seem to be around for the awkward stuff. Store employees will help if you ask or see you struggle. Most of the time they almost seem to be too focused on stocking shelves or something and almost seem as if they go out of there way not to see you.
The other issue I have while shopping, is if you happen to go clothes shopping with all the clothes racks. I am sure you have been one of the people to leave your cart in the isle as they don’t go through the racks real well. I have no issues with the carts as people usually do make sure there is room around them. However I do have the same issue when I try to go through the clothes rack as your cart usually does. I don’t really fit and sometimes you will move the racks or catch clothes, and honestly it is just a pain. A few weeks ago I caught a mirror that was on one of the end shelves and it fell and broke. I was OK but it is kind of embarrassing when things like that happen. Such is life I guess.