A tedious disease deprived me of my mobility in 2010; I’ve been wheelchair-bound since. Nevertheless, I’ve learned to live with my disability, to get along in the world with help from my wonderful wife and the kindness of strangers.

Regrettably, on Friday, 04 August 2023, the front-of-house staff at the Highland Miner Dunn made a spectacle of and humiliated me in such a way that I, for the first time in my life, was made to feel truly crippled.

Upon arriving at the aforementioned establishment, my wife and I were led to a booth by a waitress who implied I should seat myself therein. My wife explained to the young lady that I was unable to rise from the wheelchair and could not, therefore, occupy the proffered booth.

A long, uncomfortable interval ensued as the waitress—apparently flummoxed—said and did nothing.

Seizing the initiative, my wife inquired after whether she and I might be seated at one of two nearby, eminently unoccupied tables.

“Those are for parties of eight-or-more,” the waitress mechanically replied.

The mounting awkwardness drew, naturally, the attention of the restaurant’s diners, a few of which were kind enough to avert their eyes.

Attempting to mitigate the mounting weirdness, I maneuvered my wheelchair to the edge of the booth to which my wife and I had been initially led, only to find my legs wouldn’t fit beneath.

“That’s not going to work,” my wife quietly said, seeking to spare me further unwanted attention.

“You can sit there,” the waitress suggested, pointing toward an even less wheelchair-accessible corner booth.

Motioning again toward the vacant tables, my wife stated: “If we can’t sit there, we’re going to have to leave.”

“Okay,” the waitress said, shrugging with easy indifference.

Being wheeled out of Miner-Dunn under the weight of diners’ furtive glances and whispered comments was at once objectifying, debasing, and infuriating. A modicum of hospitality, empathy, professionalism, flexibility, or creativity on the part of the waitress or a restaurant manager could have mitigated or precluded entirely the spectacle to which my wife and I were reduced.

As a single seat could not be found for me, I cannot speak to the quality of Miner-Dunn’s food. I can, however, and do emphatically assert that my wife and I were treated with abject indifference by the establishment’s staff, and that we left the place feeling more like a punchline than two people who’d come looking only for a meal.

The handicapped—the wheelchair-bound in particular—would do well to resolutely eschew Miner-Dunn’s Highland location. I wish I had better to say, but I do not.