2.5
City Hall Staff Attitude
During my latest visit I was in a queue outside the entrance behind someone who when searched was found to have a small half bottle (plastic) of a soft drink in her bag. She was told that she could not enter with it. The customer said she was diabetic and needed it for medical reasons. She was told the drink was prohibited and she would have to dispose of it. She was told that if she wanted to take it into the venue she must show her “diabetic card”. There is no such thing as a diabetic card. She had to put the drink away. On a previous visit about a year ago I wanted to purchase tickets online and noticed the restrictions on bags allowed in the venue. My companion is a medical oxygen user and needs to have a small medical oxygen concentrator with her at all times. It is the size of a handbag and is battery operated. It does not store oxygen. I wanted to check that the venue would have no problem with the concentrator. The person I spoke to on the phone said the concentrator would need to be risk assessed and that I could not purchase tickets until her manager had called me back to discuss the equipment. It took 5 days for the manager to phone me back and then she was insistent that my companion could only have an aisle seat. On the night we attended the venue, one of the door staff queried the oxygen concentrator and when we explained what it was he said, “we have first aiders here you know”, as if to imply that the equipment was not necessary. We had to explain further why the concentrator was needed. This venue’s staff seem to want to unnecessarily interrogate disabled customers and to treat them less favourably than other customers.
During my latest visit I was in a queue outside the entrance behind someone who when searched was found to have a small half bottle (plastic) of a soft drink in her bag. She was told that she could not enter with it. The customer said she was diabetic and needed it for medical reasons. She was told the drink was prohibited and she would have to dispose of it. She was told that if she wanted to take it into the venue she must show her “diabetic card”. There is no such thing as a diabetic card. She had to put the drink away. On a previous visit about a year ago I wanted to purchase tickets online and noticed the restrictions on bags allowed in the venue. My companion is a medical oxygen user and needs to have a small medical oxygen concentrator with her at all times. It is the size of a handbag and is battery operated. It does not store oxygen. I wanted to check that the venue would have no problem with the concentrator. The person I spoke to on the phone said the concentrator would need to be risk assessed and that I could not purchase tickets until her manager had called me back to discuss the equipment. It took 5 days for the manager to phone me back and then she was insistent that my companion could only have an aisle seat. On the night we attended the venue, one of the door staff queried the oxygen concentrator and when we explained what it was he said, “we have first aiders here you know”, as if to imply that the equipment was not necessary. We had to explain further why the concentrator was needed. This venue’s staff seem to want to unnecessarily interrogate disabled customers and to treat them less favourably than other customers.
