Source: Non-autistic customer who was also using the store.
Date received: August 2023.
Details:
Waitrose staff could have easily assisted customer but refused to do so and appear to be discriminatory towards autistic customers.
Summary of incident:
At 11 AM on the 26th of August, at the St-Neots branch of the Waitrose supermarket, an autistic woman was asked to provide a form that included a printed barcode, in order to access a service. It is not uncommon for autistic people to have difficulties with specific demands made in relation to Smartphones and other aspects of new technology employed to make life easier for retailers, and rarely with the convenience of the customer in mind. She did have ID and was able to present her Waitrose registered customer card, but this was considered insufficient by staff who were only concerned with following procedure and who would not make very minor adjustments to avoid causing the customer unnecessary distress.
With reference to the 2010 equality tact, analysis of presented difficulty is often used to evaluate how “reasonable” changes will be, to allow equal access to disabled people. Clearly, when only a small change to standard procedure that requires no additional equipment or training is required, a refusal to do so is unlikely to be the result of anything but wilful discrimination. Of course, equality regarding disabilities such as autism is very far behind that enjoyed by many other groups of people and so far, very little progress has been made to improve that situation in a large retail organisation.
St-Neots Waitrose, where the incident took place.
The customer who witnessed and reported the incident made the following observation:
“The one-track-minded attitude was shocking. Since they knew her, they should have personalised their customer service. They called the police and she ran away screaming. Who are the mentally ill here?”
Obviously, without wishing to provide personal details of the autistic woman, this is clearly a case where autism is accompanied by some other difficulties that make interactions very frightening and intimidating.
Waitrose have refused to comment and have so far not provided any additional information or clarification. It is unfortunate that they seem completely unwilling to learn or improve, and that the needs and concerns of vulnerable people are completely secondary to blind adherence to policy and the retailer’s convenience.
This incident spans nearly three years during which a victim of crime was mistreated by the Bedfordshire Police Force.
Summary of incident:
From the woman’s first communication with the Police Force, she made it very clear that she is unable to use a telephone and can only reliably communicate in a text-based format.
During the investigation of two crimes against the woman, one of which was the result of the former not being properly investigated, the Police force repeatedly asked the woman to phone people and also tried to use the telephone to contact her.
“A difficulty I often experience is people refusing to accept that I cannot use a telephone and then putting all of the responsibility for any matter that must be dealt with onto my mother. I strictly wanted to avoid this, in dealing with the Police in particular, but this was made completely impossible. The bigotry the Police display in refusing to accept that because they can use a telephone doesn’t mean everybody can use a telephone has no place in 21st Century society. Repeatedly, I felt I was being dealt with by people who hate me because I am not able to do everything they can do,” the woman has told us.
She believes she was a victim of discrimination by the Police force in a number of ways and that one or more officers displayed a particular prejudice and dislike for autistic people. Claiming to have been driven very nearly to suicide, the woman cut off all contact and ultimately submitted and could not carry on the complaints procedure, which she feels is designed to make people so upset and uncomfortable that they simply cannot proceed.
Not wishing to provide details of the entire series of events because she is still struggling desperately to cope after the trauma of fighting to receive fair treatment from the Police Force, she has simply said, of the wider experience, “Never expect the British Police Force to treat you fairly if they have made any kind of error or mistake. They will all circle the wagons and lie endlessly rather than admit any wrongdoing at all”.
Regarding their refusal to accommodate her disability, the woman said that officers tried to call her directly in response to emails that made clear her limitations, and then refused to answer any of her queries until an official complaint was submitted. Some wrongdoing was found as a part of this official complaint, but the actions in which the officer was instructed to answer her questions about her treatment and the criminal investigation were never fulfilled.
“The Force’s Professional Standards Department don’t care in the slightest, despite apparently being committed to honesty and integrity. I have written evidence of officers lying to me and about me, but the PSD avoids this issue by refusing to look at the evidence. They played a very confusing game of passing the buck to the IOPC, who told me very clearly that the PSD were responsible. It was like something from an old Monty Python sketch where they denied what was in plain sight and were willing to directly contradict themselves in single communications.”
The woman wants to pursue the matter for the sake of equality but found herself unable to continue in the face of bigotry, discrimination and brutal ignorance. She is confident she has a sound legal case against Bedfordshire Police Force but is also not well enough to take such action.
“They drove me so close to suicide and never provided any assistance at all to make it possible for me to complain despite my disability, even though they claim they will do that, on their website.”
This story is typical of the treatment autistic people are subjected to. Health services that are supposed to provide care and protection to vulnerable people seem to be horribly unprepared to understand or deal with the needs of autistic people.
Summary from the BBC article:
An autistic girl aged 16 spent nearly seven months in a busy general hospital due to a lack of suitable children’s mental health services in England.
Her local health and care system said it was “very sorry” for how she was treated “when she was most vulnerable”.
Campaigners describe the shortage of appropriate support for people with autism as a human rights crisis.
Directors of council care services are calling for an urgent government review of children’s mental health services.
The teenager, Molly, spent about 200 days living in a side room of a children’s ward at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth. It is not a mental health unit.
Experts say a general hospital was not the right place for her, but she had nowhere else to go because of a lack of help in the community.
Some examples of the mistreatment experienced by the patient:
“It feels like they’re torturing you,” she said. “It’s almost like the hospital room is like a small box, and you’re not allowed to leave it. There are phones going off, alarms, children screaming.”
Subjecting an autistic person to sudden and loud noises for an extended period of time will not only make them uncomfortable but can cause serious distress and even provoke physical reactions which, given the poor understanding and practices of many British health services, result in physical abuse of the patient.
From the BBC article:
Her family says she was traumatised by the hospital environment, being frequently restrained and largely isolated from other young people.
End of text from the BBC article.
The solution to an autistic person having a physical reaction to environmental stimuli that can cause them harm is not physical abuse from poorly trained and intolerant healthcare staff. The people responsible for the autistic person being in such an environment to begin with are firmly to blame and it’s disgusting, that in 2023, the victim in this situation was subject to physical abuse as a result of the shortcomings of the health care system.
Title: London Police Force happy to abuse autistic driver after seeing “Autism Alert” card.
Source: London, UK autistic man
Date received: April 2022
Details:
I received information about this case on a support forum last year and wanted to get more information. I did contact the man involved earlier this year, but he doesn’t want to provide more details and though he is happy for me to use his forum text, he is busy and doesn’t want to add more to the story, which I understand very well.
In his own words, here is a brief account of his experience:
I am a delivery driver and had to deliver to a police station. My instructions were to ring when at the gate which I did, waiting for my contact. Shortly afterwards I had someone banging on my door. I opened the window and what I can only describe as a vile human being was suddenly telling me I shouldn’t be here and I have a bad attitude and shouting other things at me that I could not make out. Upon this, I reached for my warning card telling authorities I am autistic. I have all of the episode on a hard drive as my truck has CCTV. I really think I need to pursue this complaint as it has made me feel awful all day and tomorrow I have a CBT session and feel it will be marred by this event. Should I talk to my social worker or go straight to solicitors as I have again been made to feel worthless again?
Update, provided two months later:
I decided to not complain. I did get an apology in the end and left it at that. It was a policeman, by the way.
Although not much information is available I decided to publish what I do have as it is not the first time I have heard of Police Officers reacting badly to being shown an Autism Alert card.
Title: Staff of British bank, Halifax, verbally abuse an autistic customer.
Source: British autistic woman
Date received: May 2021
Details:
A British plumber had carried out some work on a household and left them without a working water supply. After a number of visits, the plumber failed to resolve the problem and then became impossible to contact. The householders contacted Halifax to withdraw payment for the work.
After some communications back and forth, Halifax allowed the payment to continue to be made because the plumber claimed he was going to fix the problem, but at no time did he make any effort to do this and he refused to return to the property until the regulators “GasSafe” forced him to do so under threat of losing his certification.
The household was still left without a working water supply as the regulator only assures compliance with safety regulations and does not become involved with quality of work beyond those regulations. Halifax refused to change their stance although no attempts to fix the problem were being made by the plumber. During the conversation, a staff member named Irfaf, who apparently was a manager on the service desk in question, began to interact very differently with a member of the household when she explained that she is autistic and needed him to speak fairly slowly and give her sufficient time to reply. Comments made included:
“You aren’t able to grasp what I am telling you,” when the woman understood perfectly clearly what was being said, but contested that it was wrong as the plumber was refusing to attend to fix the problem.
“No, listen, listen, listen,” was said a number of times although the staff member, Irfaf, was only repeating the same thing again and again.
“I don’t want to talk to you. Let me talk to someone else,” after the autistic woman’s father had to stop talking to the Halifax staff because they were being rude and refused to listen. There was nobody else to deal with the issue and simply leaving it, with a large payment being made for work not carried out, was not a reasonable thing to do.
The woman is confident that the manner of the Halifax staff changed immediately when they were told she is autistic.
Ultimately, the woman made a complaint to the body that regulates Halifax and full payment was returned to the account. She is not certain if the plumber still received payment or not, and found that trading standards were not of very much help as they only record complaints until a sufficient number of them have been received.
The woman who dealt with the case for the regulators was very sympathetic and apologised that she could not help to take direct action against the plumbers. Halifax’s policy, as she was told by other members of staff over time, is that if a tradesman claims they will return to resolve a fault then payment cannot be withheld. There is no attempt to verify whether or not the fault is ever resolved. It turned out that some minor changes had to be made to the household pipework to solve the problem, which should have been well within the area of responsibility of the plumber as he had been under contract to that household for well over a decade, but Halifax did not care about any of this, and as recorded, became abusive when the woman tried to explain the situation.
A complaint was made to Halifax about the abusive behaviour of their staff but nobody ever contacted the woman about it, and once the problem was resolved she didn’t want to pursue the complaint as she just wanted to forget about the horrible experience. Of course, Halifax does make many claims about anti-discrimination compliance but in this case, were not interested in taking any action or even comment on the abusive and discriminatory way their staff dealt with an autistic customer.
Title: NHS nurse describes non-verbal autistic patient as “nightmare” within range of their hearing.
Source: London Autistic man
Date received: Jan 2021
Details:
While attending an NHS surgery for a routine appointment, an autistic patient who is rarely able to talk and most frequently communicates in writing with NHS staff, overheard nurses describe him as “a nightmare” while he stood in the waiting area.
A nurse who had previously seen the patient aproached the one he was about to see and was heard to say “Is it him? I just wonder if it’s the same one. If it is, he’s a nightmare.”
The patient was stunned to find them saying such things just a few metres away, behind a barrier which obscured vision but not sound.
The nurse went on to say “He’s very nice, but he’s a nightmare.”
The patient attended the appointment and went through the motions, as usual, providing information on the relevant medical condition and saying nothing about the conversation he had heard. Upon returning home, he sent a detailed email to the Surgery administrator and shortly after received a brief apology and a promise of an investigation.
Ten days later, the patient received a written letter apologising for the comments and claiming that the nurse actually said “Getting hold of him is a nightmare”. The patient disputes this, being quite sure of what he heard and also points out that when he once received a phone call from the nurse in question, she was told by another household member that he could not speak to her on the phone but would always reply to emails. She refused to email or write to him and a number of further appointments were wasted because of this. The issue was ultimately completely resolved through emails from the patient to the Surgery administration staff. The patient says he can present evidence that he has replied to all emails from the surgery staff in less than an hour, except for on one occasion when an email was received at late office hours, 18:27, when he promptly replied the next morning. He maintains there is no reasonable way to categorise him as difficult or “a nightmare” to get hold of.
The patient does not want to reveal the location of the surgery as he is going to take up the complaint with central NHS administration. He feels strongly that although there is no lasting harm caused to him by the nurse’s discriminatory comments, the double standard of NHS staff being free to insult patients whist their premises are covered in posters declaring “zero tolerance” regarding any abuse of staff, is simply something that should not be left unchallenged.
Title: Morrisons UK Supermarket staff refused to help and only confused an autistic woman who was looking for access advice.
Source: East Midlands autistic woman
Date received: Oct 2020
Details:
An autistic woman in her forties had trouble accessing supermarkets in the early days of the UK lockdown. She is usually totally isolated but found it essential to leave home to buy food as home deliveries were completely inaccessible for a period of time.
She queued for nearly an hour to enter a Morrison’s Supermarket in Derby to spend just ten minutes shopping. It had been the longest time she had spent outside of the home for several years and just before reaching home, she became incredibly distressed and had an emotional breakdown, while driving her car, as a result of the stress and anxiety of the experience. She realised that she would have to avoid repeating the experience at all costs.
Upon entering the store, once she reached the front of the queue, she saw a sign saying:
“Vulnerable people may be invited to enter the store without queuing”.
Not knowing the criteria for a person being considered as vulnerable, though she since discovered that the UK government and medical services do consider her to be, she contacted the supermarket for more information. She began this process by using the “contact us” form on the company’s website.
I have seen over twenty emails received by the autistic woman, none of which gave her any idea of what allowed a person to qualify as “vulnerable” in the eyes of the Morrisons Supermarket staff. She requested to be able to communicate with the manager and was told to phone him, which was not possible for her as she is not able to communicate verbally. Several times she was advised to write her question down and present it to a staff member in the store and received no reply when she asked how she could achieve this when she was unable to access the store.
She made it clear that all she wanted was to be able to avoid standing in public for a very long time and that she was willing to go to the store at any hour of any day. She received multiple replies advising her to use a telephone or give a note to a staff member. Apparently, the central administration staff for Morrisons find it completely impossible to communicate with the people who manage stores and have no way at all to pass messages along to them. The woman felt it impossible for her to queue for a long time to access the store, to be able to pass a note to anybody in the first place, but even if this were not the case, she felt that marching up to a stranger, in public, and thrusting a note in their hand with no accompanying explanation would be completely beyond her ability.
In desperation, she searched the internet for Morrisons email addresses that may allow her to communicate with people other than the staff who reply to the official contact form, who seemed to have no ability to communicate with other members of staff. I suspect this could be because Morrisons use an offshore service desk and they have no official communication channels with premises located within the UK. She tried each of the following email addresses a number of times, sending a brief and polite request for information on Morrison’s policy regarding “vulnerable” people:
She received no reply at all, from any of them.
The autistic woman only recently contacted me with details of her ordeal because she was tired and distressed from trying to explain her very simple need for information and being ignored or misdirected, time and time again.
Ultimately, as the lockdown progressed, she received communication from the government confirming that she qualified for a priority delivery slot with a British supermarket which she has been using ever since. Although she lives closest to a Morrisons store, she chose Asda as her active delivery and Tesco as a backup as she cannot bear to be in contact with Morrisons in any capacity, following her distressing experience. She also noted that when emailing Tesco, before she was able to receive a priority slot, she did receive authorisation to go to a Tesco store early in the morning and be able to enter without queuing, so long as she could provide documented evidence of her being autistic. She didn’t need to do this as it was soon after that she received a priority slot.
At no point did the woman insist that she ought to qualify as a vulnerable person, but in Morrison’s case was not even able to have such a status confirmed either way. This is a situation where somebody in the Supermarket administration could easily have helped an ordinary person who was having great difficulty buying food, but they declined to be of any help at all and instead confused and upset her. The woman also notes that in the early stages of her trying to get help from the government and NHS, she received an email telling her that a food parcel had been sent to her but it did not arrive and no further communication regarding it was ever sent.
Title: British GP fails to understand any purpose of autism diagnosis in attempted refusal
Source: British autistic man in early forties
Date received: Jan 2020
Details:
In 2016, a late-diagnosed British autistic man began the process leading towards diagnosis. After dealing with years of anxiety and depression and finding his lifestyle and life events very different to those of people around him, he did some research, realised that high functioning autism was a possibility and thought that receiving a diagnosis would help explain the long term difficulties he had faced. At that point in time, he had found himself unable to continue in his previous, long term career and had become almost completely isolated.
He attended his GP surgery, where he had discussed depression and anxiety over a period of time, had been prescribed SSRI and SRNI medication and had been referred for assessment to the community mental health team, who had provided no recommendations except for change of dose and alteration to spread of dosage for one medication type.
Having long experienced difficulties in getting people to understand his medical concerns, the man had prepared a page of notes to be read out to help make his case. He worked his way through the notes, providing examples as he went, and asked that he be referred for a diagnosis of autism.
The man says he did have confidence in the medical ability of the GP in question, Dr Roger Neal of “The Hawthorns” surgery, Lower Stondon, but that he displayed a consistent attitude of trying to take any actions other than referral for diagnosis. In his response, he attempted to dissuade the patient with the following statements, among others:
“Some say that everybody falls somewhere on the autistic spectrum.”
“I don’t think a diagnosis will help you.”
“There is no more kudos in a diagnosis of autism than depression.”
The previous statements were discouraging for the patient, but he found the final one extremely upsetting as it implied that there is some perceived benefit in the illness which he suspected had made his life very difficult to tolerate for a very long time. Ultimately, he persisted and was referred back to the Bedfordshire mental health team, who after two visits referred him to the Adult Autism team who did give him a positive and very clear diagnosis.
The patient believed the diagnosis was essential to him understanding the difficulties he has had, and though he remains mostly isolated and of limited ability to function around others, he feels he is now at least able to head in the right direction with his life rather than constantly struggling to fit in with everybody else and failing to understand why it is so difficult for him.
He believes that denied a diagnosis, as he would have been if he had not been very persistent in his talk with his GP, would have left him with worsening depression and that suicide would ultimately have been a likely consequence.
Lower Stondon “The Hawthorns” surgery where the patient received the upsetting comments from Dr Roger Neal.
Title: Restaurant manager encourages abuse of autistic customer
Source: British autistic man in late thirties
Date received: Jun 2019
Details:
In July 2017 an autistic adult visited a restaurant / public house in Hertfordshire with some contacts from his previous workplace who were not familiar with his condition or dealing with any instances related to it. This is not a situation that any autistic adult should enter into without careful consideration and without making sure they are very familiar with all locations that will be involved in an outing. The venue in question was the Pitcher and Piano public house which is part of a national chain, quite similar to those of the Wetherspoons company.
On entry into the location, a doorman dropped his radio on the floor in the entry hall and one of the work contacts of the man made a joke about it along the lines of “Well, that will be f*cked now”. The doorman did not look happy but there was no further interaction until he questioned the autistic man when he went to the seated area outside the front and believed he was leaving with an unrelated group of people who were also exiting the building and was, therefore, for some reason, trying to take a drink away with him. The people he was out with were still inside and he would soon be returning to them. The man explained he was not leaving and the doorman seemed hostile and abusive. We can only guess at the reason for this hostility, but you don’t have to look far online or in the news to find incidents where door staff at venues behave in a way that is illegal and harmful to the reputation of those in that occupation.
The autistic man showed the doorman his autism alert card, which looks like this.
British autism alert card.
The doorman reportedly looked at the card but did not take it from the man and did not examine it closely. The man reporting the incident is confident that the doorman read the text on the card but he made no clear acknowledgement.
The man was later stopped from trying to take a drink outside on a later visit to the front of the venue although other people were doing so. He approached the bar and asked for the manager as he felt he was being discriminated against. He spoke to a man who said he was the manager, though there was no way to confirm this based on his dress or any visible identification. This man’s name was James McIntyre (spelling not confirmed). A reasonable conversation followed for a time but the manager refused to acknowledge any different treatment. He offered to look at the CCTV which the man was enthusiastic about but then changed his mind. The man reports he was friendly with the man who claimed to be the manager and also tried to speak to the doorman and shake his hand but the doorman declined and looked on with a rather unfriendly expression. The man reports he said to the manager, “He clearly hates me for some reason or another. See the way he is looking at me”.
The man then returned to his table inside the venue and sat with the work contacts he was out with. The manager, James, later walked past the table and the man indicated his three friends and explained that was out with them and had no intention of trying to leave earlier when he was stopped by the doormen.
A little later the doorman from earlier and a second one approached the table and began to speak to the autistic man, who remembers being told to “drink up” but could not hear well over the music in the venue. He says that it is well known for having a loud jazz-pop track playing at all times and that conversation is not easy inside. It is often the case that autistic people have greater trouble than usual in isolating sounds and understanding words among a range of differnt noises.
The autistic man began to drink from his glass, then while his glass was in contact with his lips both doormen lunged for him and each grabbed an arm. The man was confused at this stage but is very sure he didn’t swear or shout and says that it is not in his nature to behave that way. He believes that the reaction and apparent discrimination towards him may have been partly because he is quite uncommonly well and quietly spoken and that some people do take exception to this.
During the process of the man being dragged outside he says he tried to speak to another staff member who had served them earlier, by the name of Lauren, saying that this was illegal and she should call the Police. She looked away from him. The man was then struggling to stay on his feet as he was dragged towards the door. At one point he was thrown to the ground, but one doorman then instructed the other to pick him up again.
Ultimately, the doormen dragged him to the doorway and then dropped him on the floor, having torn his top and badly bruised his arms. One of them then returned inside and the other remained outside. The man says he was very upset but knew that doing anything aggressive would put him on the wrong side of the law. The doorman reportedly said to him “The problem is that your mind is too small”. The man says he realised the best action was to move away and that he went to a different venue a few doors away where some of his more familiar friends might be but upon finding them not there, he called for a lift home from a family member.
There is much to learn from this man’s experience and the most important piece of that begins here. The man did not believe his injuries, which he reports as exceptionally bad bruising, but only bruising required medical attention. This means he did not have medical evidence when he later spoke to the Police about the incident. However, he did report it as a hate crime and had been told it was recorded as such. The man’s dealing with the Police was itself difficult due to autism but this case update is already quite lengthy so details of that will be recorded elsewhere on this website.
The owner of the chain of venues was later contacted by email, and the man also says that some autistic friends of his from online support groups tried to spread awareness of the incident but that the company did not show any interest. He actually believes that a staff member later tried to attack him online from an anonymous Twitter account but that is only a suspicion and he cannot be sure.
In this case it is only the doorman at the venue who exhibited a dislike for and discrimination towards autistic people, but the company owner did nothing but distance himself from the event by referring communications to a sub manager, who then said he believe the incident had already been investigated by the Police. This was likely a lie told to him by the manager of the venue as the man said that when he did report it to the Police, sometime after the event, the Police Officer involved was long assigned to the area of the venue and said he would have known if any investigation had taken place.
Other than learning that medical evidence is necessary in all cases of assault, however minor the injuries may seem, what is most important here is that autistic people should be very careful about being out in public when they are not with trusted friends who know what their condition is and can direct people who are confused about it and indeed perhaps, where needed, even assist the autistic person in protecting themselves. Clearly the door staff at this particular venue and at this particular time were not interested in providing any protection to or understanding of vulnerable people.
I went in with breathing problems and blood clots. They said I was hyperventilating and had autism-related anxiety. They left me in a room alone for hours. It turned out I had Bradycardia and ended up on the ward where they wouldn’t let me off the bed for days . It ended with me kicking off and self-discharging.
They also found a nodule on my lung when they shit it after they thought a clot had moved. 2016/2017 I was constantly at A&E accused of wanting pain relief when I already had morphine on me so I was there for genuine health concerns, not for medication. I was on a busy ward which was constantly overloaded and where staff were not able to pay adequate attention to individuals.
They said because I kept discharging it was my fault. I understand that technically their job was made harder, probably, yes, but their treatment of me is what made it so difficult for me to remain in their care when I had no confidence in their actions. the medical registrar stood at the door for over an hour, arms folded, watching me struggle to breath but said or did nothing to help.
They also said the clot didn’t show in scans, just blood tests. That was a lie. They couldn’t do the doppler scan as my leg was so bruised and sore. They still tried despite my obvious pain, with two men, one holding my ankle very hard to keep it still. At one point I could not help myself as I was in so much pain. I jabbed him with my fingers screaming “you’re hurting me,” and I have always had a high pain tolerance
For me to have felt so much pain and and openly react to show meant I really was in agony. Believe me, I was ready to chop my own leg off.
I feel that my complaint was not taken seriously, that those involved did not investigate my case sufficienly, look at the correct details or provide me with any kind of satisfactory response.
