Disabled man crawls out of store after worker takes away electric cart

[jnelsoninjax]

MASON CITY, Iowa (Meredith) --  An Iowa man said he was forced to crawl out of a store on his hands and knees after a worker told him he couldn’t take an electric cart onto the parking lot, despite his disability.

Shane Zahn posted video of the incident on Facebook to show what happened at Mills Fleet Farm on Monday, CBS affiliate KIMT News reports.

Zahn said when he tried to take the wheelchair out of the store, the worker stopped him, explaining the store's policy.

“I said I’ve done this before. She said the wheelchair is not to be out, it needs to come back in. I said, ‘What am I supposed to do, crawl out of the store?” Zahn told the news station.

Zahn is missing his right foot and usually brings his own wheelchair, unless he knows the store has an electric one. He said a worker brought him an electric cart when he was dropped off at the store.

In a Facebook post, Zahn wrote: “Went to Fleet Farm today to do some shopping. Paid for all my items and went to leave, was told I couldn’t use the wheelchair to go to the car. Returned all my items and had to walk out on my hands and knees.”

The CEO of Mills Fleet Farm told KIMT that it was a bad judgement call.

“We have policies and guidelines, primarily for the protection of our customers in terms of incidents that may happen when using electric carts in our parking lots, but in no way will we ever have a policy or treat our customers and deny them access to the carts as it appears in this situation,” said Wayne Sales, Chief Operation Officer with Mills Fleet Farm.

Zahn said he hopes it never happens to anyone else, which is why he decided to post a video of the incident on Facebook. That social media post has been shared more than 129,000 times, as of Friday.

Source

[Rippleman]

I see someone looking for a scam for publicity and gofundme money. Watch. So incredibly easy to get a payday nowadays with these types of setups.

[DocM]

This kind of bad judgement call by the employee deserves a whacking.  If it was due to bad training wrt store policy, so does the store.

 

Nothing, ZERO, prevents a store employee from escorting the customer to their vehicle and returning the cart - something which every store in these parts will do.  It's the decent thing to do, and it builds customer loyalty via the handicappers grapevine. Yes, there is one. A large one.

[FloatingFatMan]

2 hours ago, Rippleman said:

I see someone looking for a scam for publicity and gofundme money. Watch. So incredibly easy to get a payday nowadays with these types of setups.

Typical reply from Rippleman. Always assumes the victim is a conman instead of the employee being a complete jerk.

[Emn1ty]

1 minute ago, FloatingFatMan said:

Typical reply from Rippleman. Always assumes the victim is a conman instead of the employee being a complete jerk.

Even so, these are things that should be handled locally as they are not common. In fact, this is specific to this particular employee. Social media has made it so isolated situations are treated as if they were systemic.

 

I hope that employee gets the boot. This is just typical idiocy.