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Is augmentable self-inflicted harm a true [Disability]?
Atomika
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
From the NY Post (via DailyWhat)
"First World Problem of the Day: Stocky stock broker Martin Kessman is suing White Castle for being unable to fit his 290lb frame into the chain’s stationary booths.
"The 64-year-old claims he injured himself at a White Castle in Nanuet, New York, while trying to “wedge” himself into one of the establishment’s table-seat combos.
"Kessman wrote the company to complain, and says HQ sent him back “three very condescending letters” with coupons for free hamburgers. After waiting two years for White Castle to make good on a promise to expand seating space, Kessman decided enough was enough, and filed a lawsuit against the company asking for bigger booths and an unspecified amount in damages.
"According to Kessman, White Castle is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. “I just want to sit down like a normal person,” he says."
It's an interesting point of view, to be sure, and similar to many scenarios that cross my path routinely in my line of work. At what point does a physical (or mental?) condition that is either easily controllable or self-inflicted, such as adult obesity, become a "disability," and available to all things such a connotation entails?
In cases like this, I think the guy is probably full of horseshit, of only because he's accusing a place of business of being unable to accomodate his lifestyle needs, all while it's a place of business that can only make his disability worse. Similar comparisons:
- A smoker with emphysema suing a hookah bar for refusing to comfortably accomodate his iron lung.
- A diabetic suing Hostess for not making their boxes of Ho-Hos easily accessible for people with puffy sausage-fingers.
- A guy with STDs suing a brothel for making him pay for his own condoms.
While I certainly think there's an argument there in this case for White Castle to accomodate customers like this guy (because, c'mon, that's your bread-and-butter right there), are they in the legal wrong for failing to do so?
"First World Problem of the Day: Stocky stock broker Martin Kessman is suing White Castle for being unable to fit his 290lb frame into the chain’s stationary booths.
"The 64-year-old claims he injured himself at a White Castle in Nanuet, New York, while trying to “wedge” himself into one of the establishment’s table-seat combos.
"Kessman wrote the company to complain, and says HQ sent him back “three very condescending letters” with coupons for free hamburgers. After waiting two years for White Castle to make good on a promise to expand seating space, Kessman decided enough was enough, and filed a lawsuit against the company asking for bigger booths and an unspecified amount in damages.
"According to Kessman, White Castle is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. “I just want to sit down like a normal person,” he says."
It's an interesting point of view, to be sure, and similar to many scenarios that cross my path routinely in my line of work. At what point does a physical (or mental?) condition that is either easily controllable or self-inflicted, such as adult obesity, become a "disability," and available to all things such a connotation entails?
In cases like this, I think the guy is probably full of horseshit, of only because he's accusing a place of business of being unable to accomodate his lifestyle needs, all while it's a place of business that can only make his disability worse. Similar comparisons:
- A smoker with emphysema suing a hookah bar for refusing to comfortably accomodate his iron lung.
- A diabetic suing Hostess for not making their boxes of Ho-Hos easily accessible for people with puffy sausage-fingers.
- A guy with STDs suing a brothel for making him pay for his own condoms.
While I certainly think there's an argument there in this case for White Castle to accomodate customers like this guy (because, c'mon, that's your bread-and-butter right there), are they in the legal wrong for failing to do so?
Atomika on
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And if the restaurant is already obliged to re-adjust their booths for these fat people (just as they might by law be required to wheelchair adapt their doors) then anyone, self-inflicted fatto or not, should be able to at least request a lawsuit from the government.
This is all coming from a Swedish POV where you are, I think legally obliged, to adapt your commercial business to provide handicapped people easier access to your services.
We have that here in the US, too. It's called OSHA and ADA, and it stipulates all the handicapped-accessible criteria that businesses have to accomodate.
I'm not back-to-front familiar with their policies, but I don't think "Make sure 300-pounders get bigger seats at fast-food restaurants" is explicitly covered.
I mean, I'm 250, and really not that tall, and I can still easily fit my ass into even the smallest seat, and not be a bother to anybody next to me. Or what, is 40 pounds really the difference between being chubby versus being unable to fit through building code door frames?
Weight and height can express themselves in different ways. I'm a tall girl, and when I have trouble getting in and out of something it's simply because there's not an angle long enough for my femur.
Sitting also isn't the same thing as sitting down/getting up. I can see a tight fast food booth being difficult to wedge yourself in initially.
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So uncomfortable to get in and out of, and that's when you're not fat - must be horrible for an obese person.
Not worth it for the theft-protection/order it brings to the table.
"They?"
He means exactly what you think he means.
Mormons.
As an epidemic? It's a recent phenomenon.
It used to be a sign of wealth and status... like, if you can afford to be fat, you must be pretty rich.
Nowadays it's more likely the opposite, as typically it's the poor and/or poorly educated that spend a lot of money on calorie-dense fastfood, aka, Diabeetus Catalyst.
Those thieving Mormons with their claws and camouflage stripes!
Like, this suit is going to cost thousands of dollars in legal fees and months of legal meetings, in and out of court, to settle an argument over an obese man's right to have a big-boy chair so he can eat his 35-cent hamburgers in comfort.
-Have you ever seen an iron lung? You use negative pressure ventilators when you're (a) in the hospital or (b) homebound, not when you're out and about at the bar. And there are barely any patients using iron lungs anymore anyway.
A better comparison would be if the smoker with emphysema were suing because the hookah bar failed to serve him while he had oxygen tanks with him (and even this is logistically a stretch), and even that doesn't map well. The claim would ultimately fail because the hookah bar could rightfully respond that open fire/smoldering coals near oxygen tanks constitutes a serious fire safety hazard. There would be no issue with a hand-controlled ventilator because of its small size. As for the issue of mechanical ventilators, any establishment surely has the prerogative to decline to allow its customers access to electrical outlets. The ones that are provided at bookstores and coffeeshops for laptops are courtesies, not requirements.
-What do you mean "easily accessible?" Like people with "puffy sausage fingers" can't easily slide their fingertip under the cardboard flap? Well shit, neither can I and I have tiny little spindly hands. I always maul boxes of packaged food when I'm trying to open them. Plus, there are a variety of tools like scissors available to consumers of packaged food. Assuming there were only booths and no chair-and-table setups at this White Castle, this analogy fails. "Not easily accessible" and "inaccessible" are different. Kessman injured himself getting into a booth at White Castle. Presumably person who weighed a hundred and fifty pounds less would not have sustained a similar injury. But a diabetic with swollen fingers and I might sustain the same injury (deep paper cut? i don't even know) opening a box of Ho-Hos. And the injury would have been totally preventable because the diabetic and I would both have had home access to scissors, knives, etc., that would have allowed us to open the box without injury. However, there was no way for Kessman to eat inside the White Castle without getting into a booth that was too small for him to the point of causing injury.
-As for this last one, I should say first that it seems implausible that a brothel would have a policy of requiring only those customers who have a sexually transmitted infection to pay for their own condoms while providing condoms to other customers. Either, I presume, they'd have a blanket policy of either providing condoms or not providing them to everyone. And again, as in the first example, there's a public safety claim to be made by the establishment, whereas there really isn't one in the White Castle case. White Castle's refusing to make the booths bigger for ....what? aesthetic? financial? reasons is not on par legally or morally with a brothel preventing the spread of infectious diseases.
Have you ever seen pictures of a thin Caliph?
Exactly.
Both King Henry VIII and a British queen I've forgotten the name of did get that fat.
I think, at the very least, we can all agree that the dynamics that led to obesity were quite different between then and now, and also that far fewer people were morbidly obese.
Cleverbot does not understand your words. Please rephrase.
Shure! (headphones, 2011)
Just from a quick look it looks like most of the Caliphs are overweight or obese.
If I lose my legs defending a bus full of orphans wrapped in american flags from a pedophile grizzly bear, I am not entitled to wheel-chair access where the law does not require it.
Should people be concerning themselves with how I lost my legs? No, because it seems pretty irrelevant. Same goes for this.
If we were talking about something like the ritual elongation of necks causing people to demand special treatment for their giraffe-like proportions, then I'd say fuck em because that is a fully conscious choice. The stated objective of neck elongation is elongated necks. Obesity, as mentioned, is not a result of a conscious effort to be obese.
He doesn't look that chunky, so I'm kind of surprised they don't have anything to fit him.
I'll be fine, just give me a minute, a man's got a limit, I can't get a life if my heart's not in it.