ELSA

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Discrimination / Disability Policy

From: Gina Waggott
Date: 10/3/03
Time: 12:08:10 PM
Remote Name: 195.92.67.208

Comments

Just thought I would share a personal incident of discrimination...

I remember being fired from a job because I stuttered. I was only fifteen at the time, and worked two or three evenings a week in a Chinese Take-Out locally.

Now, very few stutterers are going to say something like "Foo Wong Chow Mein" fluently - and I certainly didn't. It got to the stage where every time the phone rang, the owner of the shop came and stood behind me to listen. Instant death. It got to the stage where I was physically shaking and dropped the phone.

Before they eventually fired me (over the phone - how nice!), they accused me of stealing. I am still convinced they said that to try and make me fed up and leave before they actually came out and said they had a problem with my speech. Finally they did, and said "We are going to find another girl... who can talk".

I remember it upset me greatly at the time and I kept it mostly to myself.

This is the problem with discrimination... many times it doesn't get reported or acknowledged, because the pws in question feels so humiliated. Also some people actually believe that they were rightly discriminated against, using the self-talk that "oh, I stutter and I was no good anyway".

I've shared this story just to emphasise that please, if anyone ever experiences discrimination, bullying or problems related to stuttering at work... there is legislation now in place to help. Hopefully employers will sit up and take notice.

Thanks for the paper, Edwin!

Gina


Last changed: September 12, 2005