SEATTLE — Bathroom politics is no laughing matter.
Just ask Lois Rogers, a Seattle woman who was about to have an embarrassing incident at a Circle K convenience store after she was refused use of the restroom.
After a heated argument, she finally got employees to open the door, and in doing so indirectly began a sensitivity training program throughout the 3,100-store chain.
The story began when Rogers was buying lunch at a Circle K in North Seattle. Rogers, who has epilepsy, suddenly detected an odor, a sign, she says, that she was about to have a seizure.
She blanked out for a few minutes, and then needed to use the bathroom. During a seizure, she says, she typically loses control of her bowels.
But when Rogers explained her situation, she was told the restroom was for employees only.
An argument ensued, she recalls, which attracted the attention of other customers. She was eventually allowed to use the restroom, but the experience embarrassed her and left her feeling helpless. So when a friend suggested she file a complaint with the Seattle Department of Human Rights, she decided to do so.
“At first,” Rogers recalls, “I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. But I needed a bathroom desperately and they were denying me the access.”
The outcome was a settlement that amazed even Roxanne Vierra, the Seattle human-rights investigator who handled Rogers’ case.
The Circle K Corp. jumped onto the case immediately after its Phoenix headquarters learned of the complaint. Its attorney, Doryce Hughston, and its western division human-resources manager, Diane Ketterhagen, flew to Seattle and met with Rogers, the Human Rights Department and the Circle K store manager.
The chain agreed not only to pay Rogers $1,000 in damages — the maximum allowed under the law — but also to train all of its employees to be more sensitive to customer needs.
Before the complaint, Circle K had distributed information on the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law this year, to employees in the 32 states where it operates.
After the settlement, the company revised its training manuals to stress compliance with the new disabilities law, trained its human-resources staff not to overlook potential customers who have disabilities and has begun to put its managers through an intensive sensitivity training program.
“We don’t want to pretend this didn’t happen,” says Judy States, Circle K’s spokeswoman. “We see it as a learning experience; it’s giving us a better understanding of what we need to address in the workplace.”
Among other things, Circle K is telling its store managers that its bathrooms should be available not only to customers but to passers-by who might need to use a toilet in a hurry.
“It’s a service that makes sense for us to offer for people who have a need,” States says.
Technically, Circle K doesn’t have to let customers use its restrooms. State health codes require convenience stores and supermarkets to provide restrooms for employees but not necessarily for customers.
Many convenience-store chains, including Southland Corp., which owns the 6,300 7-Eleven stores in North America, generally allow customers to use restrooms only in an emergency.
However, the fact that Rogers had epilepsy adds a different twist.
According to Vierra, the human-rights investigator, Seattle laws require retail stores, restaurants and other public businesses to accommodate those with disabilities as long as doing so doesn’t unduly burden the company.
While the restroom in the Circle K store was in an employee area that was used for storage as well as accounting work, States agrees it wouldn’t have been all that difficult for the store to let Rogers use the restroom.
She also said Circle K is trying to spread a message through its training of store managers that dealing with people with disabilities involves using common sense.
To Shelly Cohen, legal counsel for the Seattle Human Rights Department, this stepped-up training shows companies can … sensitize their employees to the needs of customers with disabilities.
“You hear so many stories about the ADA and hear people saying, ‘Oh God, how are we going to do all that?”‘ she said. “Here’s a case of how you can do something in a real simple way.”
As for Rogers, she can’t say enough about Circle K.
“They really have integrity,” she said. “All I wanted was a policy change for this one store so other people wouldn’t run into the same problem that I did. They gave me a lot more than I wanted.”
