@silverfox said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@paris Ugh, this makes me so mad!
It drives me mad when adults/teens stare at my brother (he's a quadraplegic with no use of his hands and wrists, and some limited use of his arma) but don't bother to actually try to speak to him.
Mm-hmm. Just that dead-eyed staaaare. Bot and I have learned to not let our assistants stay right beside us when we're speaking at an event/signing anything/etc because people will talk to them and not us about us and our book/etc.
It also bothers me when they go to pet his service dog despite the vest that asks them politely not to. Even worse is when he asks them to stop they then DON'T look at him or apologize or anything. It's like he isn't even there.
This, so much this. Our service dog now barks when someone touches her without being introduced. We have not discouraged this. And folks get so outraged about it! Fortunately security is always understanding when we say WHY she made noise (usually one big bark): she's on a leash, so in order for that interaction to happen, the other person had to come over.
Otoh, she is now jumpy when people pass close behind her (when we're sat at a restaurant), so we usually ask to be sat where she can be against a wall or tucked back against a pillar or directly between B and I.
Worst of all is when kids come and are completely enthralled by him and his service dog WANT to talk to my brother, but their parents pull them away and whisper for them to leave my brother alone but don't speak to him themselves. Brother LOVES answering every question for every kid that wants to ask. He video chats into my classroom every year to speak to my kids about having disabilities and it's the highlight of his year. Adults can be serious jerks though.
Yeah, parents are often weird about it. Kids do sometimes ask rude and annoying questions, but they're kids; it's when the parents ask that it's a problem.
What I don't like is kids just grabbing my dog and the parents being ok with it. She's a service dog, so yes, she's socialised, but this has happened so often that she really does not like it and gets very edgy, and they completely ignore her attempts to back away. Then the parents get offended when I intercede.
They never did this to my other service dogs, but she's small (she's 55 lbs but she looks half that size) and has very big expressive eyes, so it seems to compound the 'aww I need to pet her' even when her vest very clearly says 'do not pet'.
We rarely have a problem with introducing her properly, but so few people ask.
I suspect that she'd get less attention if she did NOT have a service dog vest. I wonder if the increasing awareness about service dogs from facebook videos and stuff has made this worse.
