Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/29/arkansas-ihop-manage-put-on-le.html
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6 Likes
Oh, this is soooo not gonna end well for that manager.
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As if that family didn’t already have enough shit to deal with.
If you’re worried about germs - and let’s be honest, you run a fucking IHOP, you could have just double washed the table and community items afterwards. But they don’t usually wash salt shakers and shit at restaurants.
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In the pantheon of nasty, IHOP is a top 5 recipient, FACT!
This is what happens when you disarm American citizens.
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I feel bad for this manager, because “no feet on the table” is usually such a hard and fast rule, and encountering an armless person who eats with their feet seems like such an astronomically rare occurrence that most of us wouldn’t be prepared for it. Ultimately she made the wrong choice, but I can see how it might not have been obvious.
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it’s really simple. on the incredibly rare occasion that someone with this sort of disability comes into your restaurant. wipe down the containers when you bus the tables.
if you’re a really clever manager you can wipe down the containers after any customers uses them. but I’m IHOP isn’t that sort of high dining experience establishment, we sort of expect the handles to always be rather sticky.
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The boy’s feet is likely cleaner than the silverware and cups at IHOP. certainly cleaner than the menus.
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While I disagree with your assessment about the inherent uncleanliness of feet (as others are pointing out, IHOP is an immune-system-building establishment), you’re certainly onto something here. It’s a three-year-old without arms. If you have to throw out a cup of syrup* to let the three-year-old without arms eat at your restaurant, just throw out the damn syrup.
* Or syrupy substance
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If you’re such an obedient little automaton that you can’t deal with edge cases where the obvious and only moral thing to do is bend the rules, then don’t work in customer service. There are plenty of jobs more suited to tight-asses too rigid to think for themselves.
That said, IHOP is just covering their own corporate ass by pretending to care. They don’t care about the ableism. They care about the bad PR. The family would be well within their moral and legal rights to sue IHOP under the Americans With Disabilities Act, hopefully forcing the large restaurant chain to actually start following the law.
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I’m sooo stealing this expression for future conversations! 
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In Ada-speak, it’s called reasonable accommodation. If the restaurant can’t be bothered to learn it, they shouldn’t do business with the public.
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Okay, but would you be more likely to get sick from handling a dispenser held by the washed feet of a three year old, trained to treat his feet more hygienically than most people treat their hands, than you would a dispenser held by the hands of people with no such concern?
I agree that people with autoimmune disorders have to take greater precautions and should be provided with packaged condiments, but I’m dubious of the implication that the feet in this case are any more likely to spread germs than the unwashed hands of everyone else.
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“That’s not what I was trying to do”
Yet another human whose intent is more important than their impact.
I truly and deeply miss those times, the halcyon days of being held responsible only for my own intent, when the consequences of my behavior mostly went to others, but then I turned about 10 years old.
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Is this something about you that others should be tolerant of, or do we need to not serve you? 
Pro tip: When you reach plateau building your immune system at IHOP, begin exposing your system to Waffle House.
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denny’s…the layer of grease acts like flypaper and traps the germs on every surface.
(at least i think that is their slogan)
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That’s interesting, is blueberry somehow less triggering, or is that just your favorite flavor?
Threatened by a mod, so I’m deleting my posts.
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I find it hard to condemn a restaurant manager confronted with a young patron who must eat with his feet, especially as the manager soon apologized. We can’t all be instantly pitch-perfect in unusual situations.
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