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.

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.