Cagey people make me nervous. Acting
like you have a secret is usually
not the way to inspire
trust in one's potential customers. True enough, but let's talk
cases here.
I called the LDS Leather Company today, wanting to find out about
their "service dog etiquette" and "service dog information" cards.
They don't have any examples up on their web site, and I wanted to
find out how they differ from the 500
Service Dog
Cards I already have from SitStay.
The woman who answered the phone wouldn't give me a straight answer
about the content of the cards, except to say that one set was
intended for the general public, and one set for business. Well,
yeah, but do they say what
I would want them to say? "Buy
a pig in a poke and find out," seems to be this vendor's
attitude.
I'm reasonably happy with the SitStay cards, but disagree with one
of the "allowable questions" contained on the inside flap. It's not
that the information is wrong, per se; it's just that I try to
discourage people from asking detailed, task-based questions which
would allow them to infer my disability from the nature of the
tasks. Personally, I think asking "Is that a service dog?" or "Is
that your dog, or are you a trainer?" are both reasonable
questions, provided there isn't a lot of nosey follow-up.
Still, the matter at hand isn't the content of the SitStay cards,
or that I'm interested in finding an alternative that I like
better. The issue is that I don't think it's reasonable to ask
people to buy something without at least an idea of what it looks
like or the information it contains. Can you imagine Borders trying
to sell books with no dust jackets, no back-flap material, and
without allowing you to leaf through the book to see if you'll like
it?
There's a reason most people don't buy books from a catalogue
containing nothing but titles. It's the same reason that LDS
Leather gets a resounding NRM (no-reward marker) for being
cagey.
I expected better of them.