by Van Fulghum
On his way to the Alabama Council of the Blind convention in Mobile, Huntsville member Curtis Tucker, his wife and his dog guide stopped for lunch at a Burger King a few blocks from the convention hotel. The manager refused to serve him, and said that he would have to leave because of the dog. Curtis, who has been a dog guide user for more than 12 years, had lived in other states and had never been refused service before.
When the manager refused to even acknowledge the fact that Alabama has a strong dog guide law, Curtis and his family left and ate lunch — without controversy — at another fast food restaurant a block or so away. After convention attendee and guide-dog user Jimmy Gibson heard Tucker’s account of this experience, he and his dog guide decided to visit the Burger King the next afternoon. This time when he was refused service, Gibson asked the manager to call the police. When the policeman came, he informed the manager that he had to serve our member, which he did reluctantly.
We saw these events as an opportunity to educate, not to chastise the Burger King, its owner, or the corporate management. After we contacted them, the restaurant owner — who lives out of state — and spokespersons for Burger King’s corporate headquarters apologized. They have agreed to notify all of their managers across the country about dog guide laws.
ACB member Jamie Ison has scheduled an in-service training seminar with the area-wide Better Business Bureau, all Burger King managers in the Mobile area, and the Mobile Convention Bureau. In addition, I have contacted the Alabama Restaurant Association about this issue, and they have agreed to publish the Alabama Dog Guide Law in their next newsletter.
We feel good about having accomplished our goal of educating this one small segment of society without making a mountain out of a molehill. To be sure, there are already many mountains we must climb — e.g., descriptive video services, Social Security linkage, etc. — so we need to confront the molehills as they come up one at a time, before they have the chance to become mountains. It’s too bad that there are so many molehills in some people’s lives. That goes for organizations too!