Running

This sort of marketing feels tongue in cheek, until you are a member of the ‘tolerated’ group, and the ‘joke’ has been said to you so many times it feels passive aggressive.

I went out with my wife and some friends for drinks last week, and the beer garden had signage that boiled down to “if you’re not drinking alcohol, why are you here?”. One bartender made a big show of getting offended when my wife asked for a soda water, or when I ordered a LLB. We had to wait for our friends to depart before we called the bartender out on his shit. He has no idea why we ordered what we wanted. I could be a recovering alcoholic. My wife could be pregnant. One of us could be the designated driver. We did not feel welcome at that place because of their ‘jokes’.

I could see a person with limited mobility, weight, or health issues in a similar boat here. If I sincerely wanted to exercise, but couldn’t, and then a company or group started making snide comments about how I wasn’t actually welcome in their group because my mobility didn’t fit their idea of exercise, I’d feel like absolute shit.

It’s just as easy to welcome people into your group than it is to disparage them for advertising.