Our regular contributor Peter Whitehead writes.
On a freezing evening long ago I walked into a shop, too cold to remove my motorcycle mittens or open face helmet until I had warmed up, and was immediately confronted by a security guard. ‘You can get that off!’ demanded the guard. OK …. I should have taken it off. Despite the fact that few robbers would use an open face-helmet in preference to a closed-face one, and although my features would be etched into every camera’s memory for a month, he had a point to make. Sadly for this particular guard he was very cold as well, and he wore a jacket emblazoned with a different contractor’s name to the one who supplied guards to this retailer, which could confuse the public, new staff and annoy the real security company enormously. The guard soon understood what it was like to be on the flip side of the discussion. ‘It’s cold, and nobody gave me a jacket!’ he said. I agreed and asked if I might just stand under the entrance heaters for a moment before I removed my Arctic attire and open-helmet. We laughed and shook hands.
But this sort of thing can happen often; guards and employees picking up dog-ends of rules and attaching them mentally to their own assignment instructions. For instance, some robbers have noticed that very few people can remember persons who wear hgh-viz clothing, so I expect that soon anybody wearing a yellow jacket and approaching a shop could be confronted and told to ‘get it all off’! I was recently waiting to pay for petrol in a filling station and a customer took a call on her mobile. The till operator called out loudly that mobile phones were banned. The lady queried whether this applied to the shop and was told aggressively to ‘turn it off!’ OK …. but some vehicle engines with coils and distributors are spattering sparks every millisecond as they turn over. not to mention starter motor brushes. Some security staff can pick up these rules and use them to insult people.
Dogs can suffer as well, which is really what this is all about. But some dogs have the mighty arm of the law on their side and an untrained guard can cost a retailer a fortune in lost business, bad publicity and a fine if they mess with the wrong dog, even in a food market. Every guard in Britain, whether working in a commercial, industrial or retail environment should know about medical assistance dogs, how to identify them and how to approach persons with unmarked dogs.
There are many types of medical assistance dog. Guide dogs for the blind wear high-viz yellow coats. Hearing dogs for the deaf wear reddy-brown coats. Seizure alert, autism assistance and disability support dogs can wear blue or yellow coats. Canine partner dogs wear purple coats. Or not! The point here is that any of these dogs are allowed to assist their owners anywhere whether they happen to be wearing their coats or not. It is the dog’s identity card which proves that it is a genuine medical assistance dog. That is why I was moaning on about difficult guards at the beginning. To avoid the situation where a contentious guard demands to see every medical assistance dog’s ID card, I think that guards should be instructed to accept either a coloured coat, any person who is obviously disabled with a dog, or any person who shows a dog identity card.
One point that needs to be nailed and bolted into the training session is that some disabled people don’t appear to be disabled, such as those who need support when surrounded by others, or in noisy places, and so on, and who need the assistance of a canine friend who can calm them and react to signs that their owners might be becoming agitated or close to panic. One more point ….. Medical assistance dogs are not always big dogs. A small dog held in the arms might still be a highly trained assistance dog. The Disability Discrimination Act is there to support and protect all disabled people, especially from the kinds of guards and employees described above, and everybody should take great care in how they approach a dog owner to discover why they are bringing it onto a premises.
