Having a handicapped child changes life completely. Simple tasks such as grocery shopping have become a major ordeal for me. I rarely go to stores alone due to the difficulties pushing a wheelchair and buggy simultaneously and family members work schedules leave little time to assist me with shopping. My three year old daughter is unable to sit independently, walk, or talk. To navigate stores I find it easier to use her lightweight stroller rather than her bulky and heavy wheelchair…
On Friday July 13, 2007 I was in the Hattiesburg, MS Target with my mother and handicapped daughter. We had over a hundred dollars worth of items to buy and several articles of clothes to potentially buy. The dressing room employee checked the number of clothes we had and that’s when the absurdity began. The employee informed me I could not go into the dressing room with my stroller but I could leave my stroller and child with her while I tried on the clothes. I tried to explain that my daughter was handicapped and used the stroller in place of her wheelchair but it made no difference. I was told that the stroller was a fire hazard and could not be in the dressing room under any circumstances. Again she said that she would watch my child. Arguing how absurd this discrimination was made no difference to the Target employee.
My mother asked to speak with the manager only to find the same pretentious fire hazard excuse for not allowing my daughters’ method of transportation into the dressing room. The managers solution was to call a 1 800 number with a complaint. We left the store feeling abused and discriminated against.
It is unfathomable to imagine why Target feels a store clerk is qualified to watch store patrons children much less a handicapped child. As if some high school store clerk cares or is prepared if someone’s child gets knocked over in the stroller, kidnapped, injured, chokes, or has a seizure. As a nurse I can assure you none of Targets’ employees are qualified to care for my handicapped child but as a mother I find that fact irrelevant in this farce. Why would Target assume that I would trust my child with a complete stranger that may be called to the floor or get preoccupied with other customers?
Target has no right to discriminate and further handicap mothers, their children, and the handicapped. In my situation shopping is hard enough without added obstacles created because Target is afraid someone might steal something in a stroller. In my opinion, the fire safety excuse for their blatant discrimination is a means to justify anti theft measures. Either way whether fire or theft is the reason the result is the same – I feel discriminated against.
I feel assured that if a fire swarms Target I would have less difficulty pushing my daughters’ stroller out of the dressing room than an elderly person or handicapped adult in the same dressing room. What’s next? Will the elderly be banned from trying on clothes or from the store completely as a fire hazard? Furthermore, the crowds of buggies piled high with rejected clothes that were backed up around the entrance/exit to the dressing room is a far greater fire hazard than a child’s stroller.
Ashley R.
(Photo: sylvar)
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I have a hadicappied girl that is 12 I am a single father and I understand who it is to be treated like dirt for no real reason. People treat you different when you have a handicappied child and it is not right. I have lost my housegave up most of the things i hae ever got to take care of my daughter. her mother left when she was two years old and never pays for child support. I can’t get ANY help from any agencys because i make to much money but with all the med bills and supplys we almost live on the street. I give up food for her meds everyday. It is terable the way Michigan and most people treat us and handicappied childeren in the great land of the usa. But it is the truth. I hope thing will change but i live in the real world. I don’t understand why so many people that don;t need the help get it and the people and the kids that do need it can’t get it. Allen H. Holland Mi.
I have to say that as a mother, I would not have been comfortable with a stranger watching my child. Target is not in the childcare/daycare business, so it was inappropriate for the offer to have been made to watch the patron’s child. It is possible that the woman and her mother were needed in the dressing room and, perhaps, the need for the dressing room was for the handicapped child to try clothes on. I find the situation to be disparaging and uncalled for. I believe that in that instance, the mother should have been permitted to use the dressing room without incident with her child in tow. I have a daughter who has been through many a surgery and, I have to say, that I was never turned away from my local Target when I needed to take her with me into the dressing room. She was initially in a stroller when it was too much to take her wheelchair in. I understand this mother’s complaint completely. I am of the opnion that her particular Target store made a rather severe error in judgment.
Funny how I found this while I was googeling Target’s Fitting Room Policy! I had a little run in with their rudeness and wanted to know if there was any validity to what they post as their so call national policies. What I see is that Target managers and employees need to be more diplomatic and learn true customer service. After all, consumers have made target and can break it (look at all these other stores going out of business)! Those of you who defend some strange employee watching someone’s child are not in touch with reality and the cruel things that happen to children- you don’t have kids, do you? I say, you should of sent the complain to the press see how quickly the tables turn. I would of walked in anyways and let the call the cops so you really had a written report to take the down with. The other thing is how is a stroller a fire hazard when they have tons of shopping carts crowding the entrance and rest o the fitting room (at least in my town)….. Maybe next time I”ll take pics with my phone and put the on BLAST>>>> Wishing you the best mom, don’t let anyone ever make you feel as if you were wrong.. If you put your kid first xoxo