I got into one of these altercations, and the management tried to put their hands on me. I’m a blind person with a dog, and they tried to throw me out. My dog pressed between us and stood his ground. And it threw the manager off. He threatened to call the police. I asked him to please do, because they’d want to see these business practices which are illegal.
Eventually he called the owner who came and said “What’s the problem?”
Afterward, the manager comes back to me and proceeds to apologize by saying “We have homeless people try to come in and use the restroom, and black people sit in our large driers, and people always say their dogs are service dogs.”
Nevermind the racism and classism of those comments…
I was like, “You need to leave me the fuck alone.”
I ended up reporting the business to the DOJ, which took six weeks to hear back about, and then it was put into mediation, where I got to meet the owner and explain in detail why everything about that situation was fucked up.
But here’s where my advice varies from the above.
I did buy a registration card for my dog, even though it isn’t necessary or legally required. I did it so that I could flash the card if I got harassed by some ignorant fuckwit who wanted to spend his afternoon aggression delaying my life. So I bought it, and when saying “This is a service dog” didn’t work, the card usually did. However, in this instance, at the laundromat, the man wouldn’t even look at it. He was absolutely belligerent. I wrote the longest yelp review of my LIFE. I even reported them to the better Business Bureau and the city.
I was so fucking angry. And my dog was so stressed by the physicality of the encounter, he vomited later. Looked up at me like, “I’m so so sorry I did that.”
But I know he was just worried for me.
Anyway, don’t do this shit. Don’t bring your dogs around and say they’re service dogs, because guess what, there is a code of conduct listed on the ADA site, and if your dog doesn’t obey those restrictions or training guidelines, it doesn’t count as a service animal, and one day, you’re going to meet someone who calls you on the BS. You’re making real disabled people’s lives even harder. Do they need that? Fuck no. Why would you do that?