Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Costco & Seeing-Eye Dogs

Costco instituted a new policy. Not many people know about it. You know, you've been confronted by the employee at the door who checks for your Costco membership card and makes a mark on the clipboard. Well, that employee has been granted a lot more power these days.

Say, you have an animal that helps you out because you have a disability ... a guide dog, a signal dog, or other animal trained to provide some assistance to you. Everyone is familiar with seeing-eye dogs for the blind, but there are other types of service animals, e.g., those that alert persons with hearing impairments, those that are trained to pull wheelchairs for those with mobility impairments, those that are trained to pick up or carry things, those that may help a person with balance, or those that give an alert when a person has a seizure.

So, you have your service animal, your dog, cat, monkey ... whatever, as you go into Costco to check out the wine selection, and the employee asks you what tasks or functions your animal performs that you cannot perform. You are insulted ... you refuse to tell the Costco employee since, "It's really none of your business."

The employee says, "Sorry, you can't come in."

Or you tell the employee that you need your dog for balance. The employee looks you over, atually walks around you like you are a Holstein at the county fair, and tells you, "Just walk over there and back without your dog, please." Do you really want to get into Costco that bad? Do you really want some Costco employee deciding on a whim whether you can go into the store? Do you really want to be ... graded ... in front of the others going into and coming out of Costco?

You see, Costco has a written policy that directs its employees to "inquire of the animal's owner what tasks or functions the animal performs that its owner cannot otherwise perform."

And the U.S. District Court in Seattle said that Costco could do that.

You may know that my lovely wife has a problem with balance due to a lesion in her brain stem. What's to say that the treking pole she uses to maintain her balance is not subjectively deemed by some dumbass at Costco or Morton's Steak House or Paul & Evelyn's Gift Shop or maybe the high school kid working the counter at McDonald's that her ambulatory aid, as it is known in the parlance of the Americans with Disabilities Act, is a hazard to other customers and tells her she can't come through the door? What's the difference between the nice doggy and the stylish Leki Wanderfreund treking pole?

You tell me that won't happen ... and I can't wait until it does.