PSA: Don't grab a stranger's wheelchair.
I was sitting in mine in the disabled section at the theater and other theatergoers kept grabbing my back handlebar en route to their own seats, like as public infrastructure. I am not a railing for strangers. I didn't expect how uncomfortable that'd be!
I have not yet experienced the "stranger decides to wheel you elsewhere" thing that other chair users have described to me, and I can only hope that that day I will have an ice-cold beverage and the presence of mind to toss it at them
Lucky to not need a wheelchair but I limp & run really hot. I walked to the Quickckeck & some woman pulled up behind me in a BMW & put a blanket over my shoulders. I pivoted hit a pothole & my bad hip gave out so I face planted. Do not touch ppl or their chairs you weirdos. Not unhoused just sick.
Still going to scream about this. Probably have more equity in my home than the woman that assumed I was homeless just bc I was disabled. It is absolutely humiliating to be treated like a white woman's good deed for the day.
Sorry still yelling. Quickcheck got me & chair & water & tried to track down the crazy woman. I called their customer svc # & talked them up so much. However I barely made it 2 blocks home. I laid down on my back stoop bc I couldn't make it up the steps. I'm scared to walk outside alone now.
Just thinking about the invasion of bodily autonomy this represents makes me angry. It's almost unthinkable, but yeah, I bet it happens a lot.
Wheelchairs should come with user-operated shock defences for this kind of thing.
I have seen folks install (non-sharp) handlebar spikes on their chairs to discourage others from grabbing them. But that really shouldn't be necessary (and neither should removing the handles entirely)
I'm lucky to not need a wheelchair but I limp & run really hot. I walked to the Quickckeck & some woman pulled up behind me in a BMW & put a blanket over my shoulders. I pivoted hit a pothole & my bad hip gave out so I face planted. Do not touch ppl or their chairs you weirdos.
I will say that hasn't happened to me in my foldable electric - yet - and didn't happen in the mobility scooter.
In my manual wheelchair, though? Hell yes.
Damn people really don't grasp that touching a mobility aid is like touching someone's body. Once saw a person having spikes on their handles and I totally get it.
When I was working in a library, a lady SAT ON ME. I just sputtered, "EXCUSE ME?" And she goes, "I needed somewhere to sit down." I pointed. "There's a chair over there!"
And the lion, the witch, and the audacity of this lich, she goes, "But you're right here!"
I'm sorry this happened.
.....ok, this does put the person who chose to just sit in my mobility chair (after Universal Studios asked me to use a transfer chair to go through a line) into some sort of perspective.
She said the same thing. "I just needed somewhere to sit," and it was like THERE ARE LOTS OF BENCHES HERE.
Oh my god, I had that too. I got up to retrieve a book for a patron, and I came back to find my boss in my chair. I had to give her the “that’s adjusted for me, please don’t sit in it” talk. She said the same damn thing!
Why are people like this? Also at Universal? There are benches everywhere.
This particular woman went on to tell me that her son was disabled so she "totally got it," and I was like THIS IS NOT A RENTAL MOBILITY SCOOTER. IT'S MINE. I PAID FOR IT. (manual wheelchair was covered by insurance; mobility scooter wasn't.) YOU DON'T JUST GET TO SIT IN IT.
And even if it HAD been a rental, SAME THING. And yet, I know TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE who had this happen to them when they were renting mobility scooters.
The amazing thing is that people don't seem to do this with the rental strollers. Just the rented mobility scooters.
I did indeed!
(And this is leaving aside the fun of having complete strangers making "jokes" about how "lazy" you are and "that's the way to take it easy" and.....I mean there are other reasons I now use a foldable electric, but.)
Literally sat on you like you were furniture?
Wow.
WOW!
the entitlement.
No consideration at all for any gnarly, painful limbs that might cause someone to use a wheelchair?
Agog!
Once, in a lift, a total stranger hung their shopping bags off my wheelchair handles so they didn't have to hold them up for the few floors we were travelling.
