Checkouts for handicapped people

[freescorfr]

AA meetings in France are rarely funny - unlike the Glaswegian ones.
I have just returned from one here in Normandy, wriggling with an internal mirth, and feeling that the guy who said this might be much better off back on the bottle.

"I was in the supermarket today," he said, "with Nicole {his partner}, and you know she is handicapped." Nicole has great difficulty walking due to a neurological illness.
"I am very protective of her, so I went up to a woman who was waiting in the handicapped checkout queue and asked if we might go in front of her. This woman replied, 'I'm pregant', so I told her that didn't count as a handicap, and asked her to move."

What do you think? Do you find it odd?

 

[sigh]

Pregnancy is not a handicap. It's the quintessential natural condition. It does though make life a bit more difficult for a few months. I remember feeling HUGE the last month or so, but I still would have moved aside for someone with an obvious physical disability.

 

[freescorfr]

Pregnancy is not a handicap. It's the quintessential natural condition. It does though make life a bit more difficult for a few months. I remember feeling HUGE the last month or so, but I still would have moved aside for someone with an obvious physical disability.

Yes, I can appreciate that pregnancy is just that, sigh, and imagine well that you would have moved.
I am wondering what I find so strange and I think it is maybe the legalistic interpretation of what the checkout is for. It is surely for those who have a need for this convenience over those who have less of a need. If a pregnant woman feels she needs to get through quickly, then she has as much right to be there as a person with bad arthritis.

Maybe though, I smile, because I remember the story of the boy who got on the bus with his girlfriend and said to an old lady, "Can you give my girl your seat please?"

The old woman looked a bit startled and said, "Why, what's up with her?"
"She's pregant!"
"She doesn't look pregant to me. How pregant is she?"
"20 minutes. Will you get up, her legs are still shaking?"

 

[Weird Harold]

Pregnancy is not a handicap. It's the quintessential natural condition. It does though make life a bit more difficult for a few months. I remember feeling HUGE the last month or so, but I still would have moved aside for someone with an obvious physical disability.

Although stupidity should be painful, it's not a handicap either, and shouldn't justify using handicapped parking or checkout lanes.

I gather from the context that the woman was not visibly pregnant or at least not visibly suffering from it.

I don't know the rules in France, but there is no legal requirement to let handicapped go first in handicap accessible checkout lanes. Even without a requirement, though, it seems to me that "common courtesy" would send those suffering the most from standing in line to the front.

I habitually wave people in front of me in checkout lines who are struggling with an armload of stuff, trying to deal with a whiny kid, or just have fewer items than I do. I have trouble understanding people who don't.

 

[perks]

I'd have to agree with WH on this one.

I'm always waving people ahead of me. I know I take more time, cause I have a kid with me.

If someone obviously needs the extra space and time, hell yes, go ahead of me.

It's not a pregnancy line, it's a handicap line.

 

[lovetoread]

But I must step up here and say that I wish those wonderful spaces stores have for mothers with babies and for pregnant women now could have been there when I needed it.