A good friend of mine has been running a shop on Dominion Road for the last ten years and as you can imagine, has seen it all. Dominion road is one of the more colorful neighbourhoods in Auckland with a good mix of people including a few undesirables, the weirdos, funnies, friendlies and everything in between.
I’m sure she thought she had seen pretty much everything that Dominion road had to show her by now but on Wednesday, in came someone that tried her patience in a totally new way!
My friend runs a recycled fashion boutique and said customer had come in to sell some shoes. Just as this potential customer arrived though, said friend was in the throes of a rather bad hypo and was scoffing down some ginernuts her son has just brought downstairs for her. Upon being asked if she wanted to buy the shoes, my friend politely replied by saying that she was “just tied up at the moment and would it be possible to come back in ten minutes or so please” – a reasonable request when one is hypo I think.
The customer however, apparently not happy with this continued to push the envelope after repeated requests to come back until my friend had eventually had enough and said, in plain terms that “I’m actually a diabetic having a hypo so can’t help you right now. I need you to come back in ten minutes and will be more than happy to help then, thanks”.
To which this person replied, quite unbelievably:
“Well, if I was overweight and a diabetic I wouldn’t be eating gingernuts. I would be eating fruit and nuts”.
I’m sure that this person meant well and that her intention wasn’t to offend but WHAT!!!!!!! I don’t think I would have been able to control myself. Much to my friends credit, she simply replied that she didn’t know what she was talking about and left it at that.If it were me, I don’t think I would have been able to keep my mouth from firing a tirade of abuse and fairly direct educational snippets on the difference between T1, T2 and the inappropriateness of her comments. I think we’ve all had these moments to varying degrees but for me, this takes the cake!
Sometimes in life you are presented with challenges that truly test your ability to be the bigger, better person and on Wednesday last week my friend came out on top. I’m sure that you can all sympathise and she is a reader so be sure to post a consolatory comment or two 
- Aaron
Posted in Hypos & Hypers, Slice of Life
Tagged as education, ignorance, ignorant comments
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11 comments have been made on this post
Debs wrote
Your friend is a better person than I’ll ever be! Kudos to her for keeping her cool.
Nic wrote
I know what you mean Aaron about her being better than you for not letting loose a total four letter word tirade…. I imagine myself in that situation and think I’d totally let LOOSE! However we all know what we’re like when we’re hypo and that comment is so jaw-droppingly AWFUL I may have been totally speechless – or burst into tears. Kia kaha to your friend.
Rachel (Spouse & Mum of type 1 diabetics) wrote
I agree the comment was totally & completely unnecessary and uncalled for. Unfortunately the customer obviously has extremely minimal knowledge of diabetes, and no scruples.
That said, perhaps things wouldn’t have amounted to what they did if your friend had simply called her son to come speak with the customer while she sorted herself out. Her son (if old enough – you don’t mention his age) perhaps would have been able to delay the customer politely (not saying your friend wasn’t polite – please don’t take this wrong way), or taken the customers contact details for your friend to make contact later on.
As I say, doesn’t excuse the customers attitude, and one can only hope that he/she will get just desserts, what goes around comes around …… I just wonder if it would have been avoided if initial action was different. Point to ponder.
Chris wrote
Hmmm.. I would have died from blood loss from biting my tongue, or been given a formal rebuke from my employer, as I would have offered some choice words for sure!
Sarah wrote
That is outrageous! I hope your friend gave the customer a bad price for the shoes to make up for it. I probably would have started swearing – I get very cranky when I am hypo. Maybe life was better when diabetes wasn’t on the news every day…
Michelle wrote
This is just a classic example of no education and especially knowing the difference between Type I and Type II diabetes. I get so sick of the judgements from others.
You do get to the point where you are so sick of banging your head against a brick wall and just have to laugh it of though. Feel sorry for the ignorant person who will hopefully one day be educated somehow and feel like a real pratt for treating your friend this way!!
James wrote
Well, it is unfortunate that the customer chose to verbalise their opinion, however, we can’t blame them for not knowing the ins and out of diabetes. I’m sure there are plenty of conditions out there that Aaron’s friend has erroneous knowledge about also.
If Aaron’s friend is a bit on the plus size as the customer commented on, then it’s an understandable, if tasteless, comment to make, given that the customer doesn’t know what a hypo is and equates Diabetes with “you’re too fat”.
As for the eating of gingernuts to treat a hypo, hopefully that was just a “I’ve accidentally run out of anything better” situation… really, I think a biscuit is far too slow to treat a hypo unless it is all you have, even if it is a delicious one [and no need to mention the "MUST EAT EVERYTHING" effect that hypos give us - and the inevitable regret which follows!]
Said friend of Aarons should keep a bag of jelly beans, or even just a jar of sugar in her shop. Lately, I’ve been dipping into the golden syrup tin. Mmm. Golden syrup.
Aaron wrote
I think the point here is that the comment was inappropriate – full stop.
If I saw someone with a medical condition that I wasn’t intimately aware of then rather than saying something debase and potentially offensive I would refrain from saying anything at all, as should this person.
The confusion is potentially understandable given the lack of knowledge as James said but why say anything at all?
Donna wrote
wow your friend had composure!!! i had a moment not so long ago when my “healthy hippie” uncle came to stay at my place. On this occasion we had white bread in the house, i was in the kitchen making everyone lunch and he came in and said “you shouldnt be eating white bread, its unhealthy, maybe if you ate brown bread you wouldnt be in the situation you are in now” (meaning being a type 1 diabetic) i bit my tongue but was seething underneath, later that day i proceeded to tell him exactly what i thought of him and others of the same mind and he looked very sorry, now everytime he phones he always asks about my diabetes and how it is going!!
Another person educated
Aaron wrote
Donna that’s brilliant! Thanks for playing your part in the education of the masses. In an ideal situation we would all be able to do that and knock them all off one by one!
Flash wrote
It’s been interesting reading the variety of responses to Aaron’s blog. What makes this space so special for me is it’s a place I can take my life as a diabetic and not feel under the often ignorant and sanctmonious scruitany of people who know nothing about our condition.
That is why I’m surprised by a couple of the responses to this blog.
Having been a diabetic for 21 years I’m more than knowledgable on the CHO, fat, fibre and protien content of every last gingernut I consume, and hypo mangement, like all of us I’ve got it down pat. Thankfully my weight is within healthy, and really, it’s not my sons job to educate the world. He was amazing, watching his jaw drop made it all worthwhile!
Assumptions are made constantly everytime we say the word diabetic, and the delight of this space is they rarely exist here.
So cheers NIck and Aaron….and now I think it’s time for a hot cup of tea and a gingernut.