#jacobscave

Earlier today, I wanted to book a tour for Jacob’s Cave in Missouri, so I called and asked that they set up an ASL interpreter for us for the 1 hour tour, hoping they could schedule it for the next day.

After talking to several employees who promised to set one up and call me back, they didn’t call back.

I called them several hours later and spoke with the owner.

Actually, the owner argued with, yelled at and belittled me for about 15 minutes, asking all sorts of rhetorical nonsense questions such as, “does he need a restaurant to hire an interpreter?”, “Can’t we just write notes to him?”, “Do people who don’t speak English force businesses to hire an interpreter?” “Fine, we will hire one but you can pay a special price of $500.00 for your tour (it typically costs $18)” And my personal favorite, “why doesn’t he just use hearing aids?”

Ultimately, the owner of Jacob’s Cave flat out refused to provide an ASL interpreter for the tour, so we didn’t go. He doesn’t care about the ADA (which I explained) or effective communication (which I explained).