Just a day or so ago I talked about how there has been an uptick in the amount of people that fake disabilities so that they can get special treatment at airports including priority boarding, skipping of lines at security and basically everything else, and they also don't have to walk anywhere.
To me, I think that if someone actually NEEDS this service that it should be provided for them, but many people are utilizing this system in order to get through lines faster and to not have to wait. I know a person who takes advantage of this and myself and a load of other people kind of loathe her for this. There are other reasons since she is basically an unsavory individual all around but this is just one more reasons to not like her.
The woman, we will go ahead and call her Jackie because that is her actual name. It's not like you are going to find her or anything so that is fine.
Jackie is in her late 50's, is overweight, probably hasn't exercised intentionally in 30 years, and drinks like a fish. Jackie does in fact have some mobility issues due to some sort of back injury but she definitely does not need a wheelchair ever. How do I know this? Well she lives in a building very near my own in Mexico and I can see her walking up and down the road on a regular basis. Like clockwork she walks something like 400 meters down the road to this one pub that she goes to every day.
She doesn't use a cane, she doesn't use a walker, and she certainly doesn't have a wheelchair. Yet, when she flies she always gets a doctor's note somehow that says that she needs priority disability assistance and while I don't really know how it all works, she ends up getting to skip all the lines as she is pushed around by someone that works for the airport.
She unabashedly has them push her to the airport bar as well, where she immediately starts to get tanked. I'm not saying that genuinely disabled people shouldn't drink alcohol, do whatever you want, but I'm just saying that Jackie does not need this service at all. She is perfectly capable of walking and standing in line and doing all the things the rest of us have to do when we are in an airport. She just doesn't want to do it.
I have pretended to joke with her about her tactics at the airport and she tells me that she just "hams it up" and makes it look like all movement is painful. During the time that she has to get on the plane and you can no longer proceed with the wheelchair, she has this cane and she behaves as though every bit of movement that she makes is agonizingly painful.
She is not in pain, she doesn't need the cane, I've never seen her use the cane and I see this woman almost every day.
She doesn't seem to be at all ashamed about the fact that she is abusing the system and she almost brags about it to the people that she sits with at that pub every day. I join them every now and then and this is why I know about it. She talks about this situation as if she was offering advice to the rest of us about how we too could cheat the system if we wanted to.
Here's the thing folks: If everyone starts doing what Jackie does the level of service that people who are genuinely in need of disabled services is going to drop or perhaps disappear.
Jackie gets some dodgy doctor to give her a note that says that she needs the wheelchair even though he or she has to know that she doesn't need it. This is pretty easy to do in Mexico though, the doctors will write you a note that says anything you want on it for $20 or something like that.
but this isn't a Mexico thing because I know of quite a few people that got some sort of doctor's note saying they have extreme anxiety and therefore need an emotional support animal on airplanes. These people got the notes from the United States and I presume that it is just something you can print off online. It's not like the airline is actually going to call the doctor.
So Jackie can kiss my ass and I tell her when I see her that she is a real scoundrel for doing what she is doing. I would actually like to take a video of her walking down the street to the bar and then sending it to the airlines.