I live in the neighborhood of 5th Avenue and Roosevelt in Phoenix in the Roosevelt Arts District. I am 60 years old, have Parkinsons, and a service dog named Scottie. Scottie is a miniature schnauzer that is 5 years old and a lover. He has come to this particular Circle K for months with no problems. As you may know, this is not the safest of neighborhoods. As a matter of fact one of your security guards is female and was hit in the back of her head head by a homeless drug addict a few weeks ago. I have not seen her since. I only say all of this because the customers at night are a little seedy. My service dog stands up on two legs for one of your other cashiers. She loves him. The security guard loves him. Scottie does have a tendency to bark occasionally when someone he deems as threatening is near me. That's one of his jobs. The cashier by the name of Alissa, if memory serves me right, yelled from the register that if my dog were to continue barking I had to leave the store. I tried to explain that Scottie was a service animal and protecting me. Mind you I was fourth or fifth in line and she's yelling this over other customers. She accused me of having a phony service animal. She told me that service animals don't bark. She is clearly wrong. They bark when they feel the person they're watching over is threatened in anyway. I might add that he has not barked in that store for months. The manager of that store convinced me to join the $5.99 a month drink club. I did so and have been doing so for some time. We are there almost daily getting our drink. I have to tell you to berate a 60 year old man when there are questionable people in the store doesn't make sense. Why did she single me out? She is the slowest cashier as well and doesn't give a darn about her job. That is blatantly obvious. I am a good paying customer and I live in the area where million dollar homes are located. The store's floor was so filthy and the drink counter was saturated with sticky coke and trash. I used to be a litigation examiner for Nationwide Insurance Company before I retired. I'm not used to being treated the way this youngster treated me. It isn't conducive to good business practice. I may never go into that store again. I ended up walking home after the incident and got my service animal's paperwork in order and copied it on my copier and walked back to Circle K and handed the information to the clerk to prove to her that Scottie was indeed a service animal. I did not like being accused of being a fraud. In all honesty, I was calm for the most part when I was in the store. However, like any other human I have feelings and get angry. As I left the store, I only said one word. Bitch. I was angry at myself for lowering myself to that level. When I returned with the paperwork I talked to the security guard and apologized saying I shouldn't have called her a b**** and I was sorry. I told the clerk the same thing. She, at this time, didn't care and was on her cell phone like I didn't even exist. I asked her to keep the paperwork in that store in case there's future problems. It looked to me as though she was going to throw it into the trash. What has happened to our society? I pray for this woman. She needs to get the anger out of her system. If she were my employee, she wouldn't have a job anymore. But, in these times, with people quitting their jobs right and left, I know it's hard to keep staff. Perhaps that's why she's still there. Someone needs to take a seriously close look at this store. read more
