McDonald's Cashier Frightened of Dwarves

[Fathom Zero]

http://consumerist.com/372268/mcdonalds-worker-screams-and-runs-away-from-little-people-probably-shouldnt-be-assigned-to-register

I would let something like that go, ordinarily, but it was apparent that they knew about her phobia and they still let her work the register, as opposed to putting her in the back or something. She obviously needs therapy for this and needed it years ago. Shitty business practices. Fast food joints are the worst, though.

[Pub Lover]

Dwarfs, midgets, & leprechauns turn up quite regularly in horror movies.

[sspadowsky]

Dude. She's a cashier at McDonald's. I have my doubts as to how much therapy will help her.

[Dr. Boogie]

Become a basketball coach?

[J. Tithonus Pednaud]

I heard about this story.

The question is, does she have a legitimate phobia or is it an attempt to excuse her reaction? I've seen people flip out first hand as in my past career I worked in tandem with dwarfs, but her response seems much more disrespectful than anything else. Her comments, and the comments made by her supervisor are deplorable.

I've seen people really flip out over clowns as well. Back when I was clowning, I used to love freaking adults out. Kids are all usually pretty cool.

Regardless, whether she has a phobia or not the little person should get an apology at the very least.

[Fathom Zero]

I've gotten over clowns. I had been afraid since I was on Bozo's show many years ago.

[Big Papa Goat]

I dunno, yelling in shock and running away sounds pretty phobic rather than just plain disrespectful, although I guess it's obviously pretty disrespectful to have a phobia about a certain kind of people. Either way it's pretty hilarious.

[MLE]

Being a person with phobias, I feel that Wade probably shouldn't have reacted quite the way he did, but I don't think that, if they knew her phobia, that she should ever be in visual contact with customers. I know my limitations with phobias, and I know to stay away from them in my daily life.

[Tadao]

Let's say that she can not work a fryer or a grill, or they have those positions filled and need front line workers. Would it be against the law or policy to deny her a job based on that? I think it wouldn't, but then again, HR usually has no balls when it comes to these things. It's also unclear if management was aware of the phobia, it might have been a friend of hers that tried to explain it to the little ugly freak.

[Sethomas]

I'm not going to read the article. Why?

Because this thread title gives the impression that some newspaper published a story with the headline "McDonald's Cashier Frightened of Dwarves", perhaps as a human interest piece. I find that hilarious enough.

[Big Papa Goat]

Why would someone mention having dwarfophobia when they started working at mcdonalds? Maybe she had never seen a dwarf before and she didn't know she had dwarfophobia until she saw one.

[Tadao]

That's what I'm saying. She probably told a coworker/friend that little people freak her out while talking about fears, and then it happened and an employee knew what it was about. I bet HR had no idea.