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UOR staff accused of "Fat-Shaming"

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quinnmac000

quinnmac000

May 14, 2014
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Seoul, Korea
Woman files complaint against Universal Orlando Resort saying she was fat-shamed by staff | Fox News

ORLANDO, Fla. - A woman said she felt fat-shamed when she was unable to ride Skull Island: Reign of Kong at Universal's Islands of Adventure.

Angel Morales said she asked workers if she could ride the ride bench with one fewer person so that she wouldn't make anyone sitting beside her feel uncomfortable.

Morales said she felt humiliated when employees declined her request.

Islands of Adventure ride: Woman felt fat shamed | WFTV | WFTV
 
they offered her a $100 gift card, movie tickets, and dinner and she still complained after just because she couldn't get extra room on a ride?
 
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quinnmac000 said:
Woman files complaint against Universal Orlando Resort saying she was fat-shamed by staff | Fox News

ORLANDO, Fla. - A woman said she felt fat-shamed when she was unable to ride Skull Island: Reign of Kong at Universal's Islands of Adventure.

Angel Morales said she asked workers if she could ride the ride bench with one fewer person so that she wouldn't make anyone sitting beside her feel uncomfortable.

Morales said she felt humiliated when employees declined her request.

Islands of Adventure ride: Woman felt fat shamed | WFTV | WFTV
Click to expand...

A quote from the Fox News article is where I will leave my opinion be, as it's what I actually agree with:

“She wasn't fat shamed. She wanted the park to accommodate her needs, and make everyone else wait . The park was busy. I'm sure of the lines weren't long, they would have been more accommodating to her,”

And that there lies another possibility, she didn't look at the ride signs for warnings for attractions like Kong.
 
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On the one hand, I feel like she's taking it a bit too far by going to the media with the "fat shaming" story and filing a discrimination complaint. On the other hand, she should have never been told they were "pushing for capacity". That's just not something team members should be telling guests, if that is indeed the phrasing they used. At the end of the day, she had a negative interaction and guest services offered her more than adequate compensation, in my opinion.
 
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Watch the video. She wanted to ride with her daughters. None of them are huge, the bench is designed for 6 so she wanted three extra seats.
TM comment was not correct but there was no shaming IMO.
 
JoeCamel said:
Watch the video. She wanted to ride with her daughters. None of them are huge, the bench is designed for 6 so she wanted three extra seats.
TM comment was not correct but there was no shaming IMO.
Click to expand...

Actually she wanted 1 extra seat. Just 1.

I agree that fat shaming in this instance is a bit of an overloaded term, this at the very worst was operations working against itself. Let me tell you from experience that TMs are fueled by their managers, who are of course also charged from those on up to push for capacity: the more people you get on in an hour is in the park's eyes, more satisfied customers. Of course this leads to stressful, almost machine-like dispatching at load and the groupers can get quite stressed from their leads and potential managers up at control and on dispatch on why such-and-such RV isn't packed with (insert number here).

It's very likely that the conversation was that the woman wanted an empty seat so it wouldn't be uncomfortable ride, the grouper says, "I'm sorry, we want to get as many people on here as possible." The grouper may have not known why she wanted it, maybe she wanted her own separate ride? Now if she told the grouper specifically why and they still said no, that's a complete 100% customer service failure and not only should the TM be reprimanded, but the entirety of the ride team for being that laser-focused on their capacity. If she just shrugged, rode, and then got upset after and went to guest relations... I dunno, that's a grey area.

Honestly the problem here is that we don't know the full story and likely we never will know.
 
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I feel like this is a customer service issue more than fat shaming or discrimination. It would've been nice for them to try to make her comfortable, but this certainly isn't law suite worthy or anything. To me this is no different than asking for a front row of a ride vehicle. N0, they're not required to do anything like that but, I think Universal should be better than what was described. Apparently they felt this was worthy of some fairly heavy compensation, and certainly the ride capacity of one person isn't worth $100. I do also wonder if they offered her a chance to ride again and she was perhaps too "shamed" at that point and/or felt she had a case and refused.
 
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